If you live by these 5 rules, you won’t need a lot of money to be happy
When you dream of being happier in the future, you probably dream of being pleased with what you have. Maybe you can imagine a new home or a luxurious lifestyle. But what you really imagine is to be satisfied with these things. You’re not just imagining wealth, but you depict satisfaction.
This is the feeling that we are all after us. But most of the time, when reality does not meet the expectations, when we get something new, we immediately start to ask for everything next.
While researching and writing my book, “The art of spending money: simple choices for a happier life“I have gained some fascinating information about why running leads to less happiness.
1. There is always beauty.
French writer Marcel Proust once told the story of a young man who was obsessed with their lives. rich and powerful. Proust later told the young man to spend his time focusing on artist Jean Siméon Chardin.
Chardin painted scenes of daily life – food, animals, nature. The issue was to appreciate the objects he had already been in front of him. Learn to appreciate the life he has instead of focusing on his dream life. “When you walk around in a kitchen, you’ll tell yourself, it’s interesting, it’s big, it’s beautiful like a chardin.”
The lesson is to appreciate what is in front of you instead of standing in what you don’t have. What a great analogy for money.
2. The happiest people are not richest. They are the most content.
The happiest people I know are the most content. Not necessarily the richest, healthy, beautiful or the most successful. Whoever reaches the point of saying, “I’m glad I have and who I am.”
Some of these people spend a lot of money and live incredibly materialist lives. But most of the time, I think of my mother -in -law, who retirees with very little money, has experienced inadequate social security control and has something else. It was technically on the verge of poverty. But he was perfectly satisfied in his small garden and was reading a book from the library.
He was very little, but he wanted less. And he was one of the happiest people you could ever meet.
3. No matter how much you want something you don’t have, you focus on the fact that you are not happy right now.
For most people, there is an expenditure hierarchy with such a thing:
- If you don’t want anything and you don’t have it, you won’t think about it.
- If you want something and you have it, you may feel good.
- If you want something and you don’t have it, you may feel motivated.
- If you want something and you don’t have it, you will definitely make yourself crazy.
If you can look around and say “this is enough” (regardless of your income or lifestyle), how quickly you realize that you are rich from the beginning.
4. Low expectations create psychological wealth.
I met half a dozen billionaire in my life-one of them was not as happy as my brother-in-law. It was easy to see why: their low expectations gave him a sense of satisfaction, which became an enormous source of psychological richness in which some of the richest people in the world were missing.
Psychological wealth is a very important concept and comes from appropriate expectations with money.
5. All happiness in life is only the gap between expectations and conditions.
The person who has everything but wants more, feels poorer than a person who is very few but does not want anything else. How can it be different?
This is not an objection to live like a monk. Your big home can have an expensive car, you can have incredible holidays, and you can be satisfied with all of them, you don’t want anything else. This can be an incredible life.
The key is to realize that happiness is the state when nothing is missing, regardless of the lifestyle you live in.
Morgan Housel He is the author of the new book “The art of spending money: simple choices for a richer life“And the New York Times Best Sells”Money psychology” And “As always“The Best Business Award from the American Business Editors and Writers Association won the Best Business Award and the New York Times Sidney Award. Marketwatch called it one of the 50 most influential people in the market. Collaborative fund and the host Morgan Housel Podcast.
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