It’s a funny thing about money. Those who don’t have it are sure that if they only had some, they’d be far, far happier. But the Beatles were adamant when they sang “Can’t buy me love, no no no, no.” And the Beatles, by that time, had a pretty fair idea what money could and couldn’t do for them.

We see the beautiful people of the world – the superstars on the playing field, on the screen, and in the business arena – we see them with their messy divorces, their drug addictions, their blowups and crashes, their swindles and suicides and murders, their stupendous mood swings – we see all this every day in every kind of media, and yet we persist in believing unquestioningly that more money would bring us the contentment we presently lack.

Now, I’m not going to trot out that tired old Biblical quote that the love of money is the root of all evil, because frankly, that’s a load of bull. Evil was around long before money ever even came on the scene. Old Paul just got carried away in that particular instance.

But be that as it may, there is an awful lot of evidence suggesting that money and happiness are totally independent variables. Not connected at all. And lately, we’re seeing some interesting studies that dig even deeper into this whole idea.

Sharing some of these insights with us today, guest columnist Peter Vajda pulls back the curtain and discusses the alternatives in…

Happiness – Money Vs. Inner Work
By Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C.

“Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.” – Henry David Thoreau

These are tough times. Millions of folks are experiencing pain and suffering – lost jobs, reduced wages, foreclosures, bankruptcies, lack of health care and on and on. According to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the most basic need is that of survival. These folks are experiencing that desperate state – simply looking to survive.

Curiously, there’s another group among us which is surviving, has covered their basic needs, but who experience a similar state of desperation – namely, unhappiness. It’s those who feel that more money is the one element that will bring them happiness.

Recently, researchers from the University of Warwick have found that, for many of this latter group, some form of inner work – therapy or counseling, rather than an increase in income is 32 times more effective in reducing or eliminating emotional and psychological unhappiness and distress, that once our “basic needs” (a la Maslow) have been met, income increases don’t do a whole lot to increase our experience of happiness and well-being.

In their study, the researchers found a four-month experience of therapy or counseling produced a greater impact on folks’ sense of well-being than an increase in income, e.g., pay increase, or even winning the lottery. Even the monies won for “pain and suffering” in lawsuits do not repair emotional or psychological harm.

What I find interesting when I read about the state of our country’s health, is that many base their assessment of “health” on the basis of the GDP and similar economic and financial statistics. Me? I choose to look at the country’s mental health statistics – e.g., rates of obesity, cancer, heart disease, depression, suicides, abuse, addiction, etc. Why? The results of the research also point to the phenomenon of a steady decline in mental health and happiness in developed countries over the past fifty years. Individual and collective economic growth has not increased national happiness.

On a personal level, Daniel Gilbert, author of the recent book “Stumbling on Happiness,” suggests that “by and large, money buys happiness only for those who lack the basic needs (Maslow). Once you pass an income of $50,000, more money doesn’t buy much more happiness. Our culture implores us to buy bigger, newer, better things, but research shows “stuff” does not buy happiness.”

In the end, there’s a vast segment of our population that spends their lives doing things that they hate to make money they don’t want to buy things they don’t need to impress folks they don’t like, all in the attempt to experience happiness. Is that you? And if so, to ask the ultimate trite but important question, “How’s that working for you vis-a-vis experiencing true and real happiness?”

“If all the gold in the world were melted down into a solid cube, it would be about the size of an eight room house. If a man got possession of all that gold — billions of dollars worth — he could not buy a friend, character, peace of mind, clear conscience or a sense of eternity.”
- Charles F. Bunning

So, some questions for self-reflection are:

• What do I want money to do for me?
• What is happiness to you?
• What things, qualities, service, purpose do you value in life?
• What is the role of money in your search for meaning? Does it even have a role?
• How do you relate to money?
• Does money scare you?
• How does money rule your life?
• Is money your servant or your master?
• What was your and your family’s experience around money like when you were growing up

SpiritHeart – Coaching for Essential Well-BE-ing
— at the intersection of body, mind, emotion and spirit
Values-Based Coaching, Counseling and Training
Phone: 770.804.9125 (Atlanta, GA, USA)
E-mail: pvajda [AT] spiritheart [DOT] net
www.spiritheart.net and www.ahchiyo.com
“What makes you think work and meditation are two different things?”
— Buddha at Work

Back to Charles:
Abe Lincoln once observed that, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” If he was correct, and I suspect he was, then money is absolutely unrelated to your state of happiness… except in one tenuous way.

If you’ve made up your mind that you’re definitely going to be unhappy, then the excuse you choose to blame it on may be “a lack of money.” In that case, it’s still not really related, but the lie you’re telling yourself makes it seem like it’s the cause.

So how do we stop hiding behind this belief in the power of money?

Actually, the steps are not hard. But taking those steps can be. An excellent place to start is to ask yourself the questions that Peter suggested above. And I don’t mean flip out a two-second response to each one. We really need to sit and explore deeply the ideas and feelings these questions can stir up within us.

Here are a couple more questions you can play with:

• What if you could go ahead and be happy right now, without waiting for a change in money status?
• What if it were not the lack of money causing those feelings you get?
• What if the unhappiness you feel were just a long-standing habit that you learned at an early age, and it’s not really even yours?
• What if your belief in what’s causing your unhappiness was something you started doing because you needed some kind of reason to make sense of feeling that way, so you invented one?

Remember, the secret to asking good questions is to stand outside the situation and look back in, as if you were a stranger seeing the whole thing for the first time. This gives rise to a lot of “what if” and “how” questions – the best kind.

But don’t ever let yourself get sucked in to “why” questions. They’re not so bad (in principle), but from long habit, we mostly use this type of question to blame somebody or something for what’s happening.

So what if you could be happy right now – with nothing added… just by making a simple decision?

What if?

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

P.S. – Do you even think this is possible?

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