Think Money Buys You Happiness? Flip It!

How many people do you know who would love to win the lottery? Chances are you may be one of them. If so, what do you think the money will buy you? If you list ‘happiness’ as one of your items, think again. The latest research conducted by the National Academy of Sciences in the US shows that if you think this you need to adjust your viewpoint 180 degrees – in other words, turn it on its head. If money equates to happiness then it certainly doesn’t explain the number of very rich and extremely unhappy people out there. What the research does reveal however is that being happy can make you more money in the longer term!

Researchers looked at more than 10,000 people at ages 16, 18 and 22 and looked at their incomes by the time they reached 29 (the time of our Saturn return). They factored in various things that were thought to contribute to financial success such as IQ, education level and self-esteem. What they discovered surprised them. Whether you are smart, dumb, well-educated, unqualified, tall, thin, short or fat, confident or insecure, happy people earn more money than unhappy ones. The deeply unhappy teens in the survey ended up earning 30 per cent less than the average while the very happy teens went on to earn 10% above average! The team then took this one step further comparing 3000 people in sibling pairs who shared the same parents and presumably the same socio-economic status and opportunities. Once again, the happier siblings still did much better financially than their less-happy counterparts.

Michael Norton, a behavioural scientist at Harvard Business School, says these findings suggest that encouraging positive thinking in kids and teens could greatly improve their chances of future success.  Just think how different your life might be today if Positive Thinking was on the school curriculum!

All this proves that your thoughts create your reality and your experience. Let’s face it – we live in a material world and as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has proved – we all need our basic needs taken care of before we can start to think about larger and more spiritual matters. Wanting money for its own sake or to buy us things we think will compensate for lack of self-worth is counter-productive to our long term happiness. If we are seeking abundance – riches in every area of our lives not just money – then happiness really does seem to offer the key to us attaining true wealth and that’s the wealth of a satisfying life. Money is just a by-product of that!

2013 and a new spiritual awakening is taking place, our one true spiritual task that we give the most priority to, should be concentrating on being happy. Because when we achieve that, everything else will follow.