MANY PEOPLE WHO SUFFER from anxiety are drawn to the Eastern practice of meditation, believing it will relieve them. But they often find the mental concentration required to be extremely difficult. When asked why Westerners have such a hard time with this practice, a Buddhist teacher had this answer: "You will not get the benefits of meditation if you meditate for the sake of getting its benefits." This saying contains a profound truth about many of life's rewards: you can only truly get them when you are not looking for them.
Consider the relationship between money and happiness, about which you've surely been getting mixed messages all your life. On the one hand, your grandmother probably taught you that money can't buy happiness. On the other hand, today's mainstream culture insists that they can. So which of the two perceptions is correct? The paradox of meditation provides the answer: both. Money can buy happiness, as long as you don't try to buy it.
The money-happiness relationship depends more on the kind of relationship you have with money than the actual amount of money you have.
Social scientists have been investigating whether money increases well-being for many years. The conventional answer among economists is yes, at least up to a point. The most famous study supporting this conclusion was published in 2010 by two Nobel laureates (Daniel Cainman and Angus Deaton), who estimated that various quality-of-life satisfaction indicators increase until individual income reaches about $110,000 (in today's prices), so the extra money has little benefit. This finding has since been partially disputed by researchers such as Matthew Killingsworth, who, using a much larger data set, showed that the "stabilization" of happiness generally occurs at higher incomes.
Psychologists answer the question about money and well-being a little differently: the money-happiness relationship depends more on the kind of relationship you have with money than on the actual amount of money you have. Researchers writing in the Journal of personality and social psychology in 2014 demonstrated this mechanism by examining materialism, which is defined as "values, goals, and related beliefs that focus on the importance of acquiring money and possessions that convey social status." Analyzing 259 datasets on the topic, they found that materialistic values were negatively correlated with overall life satisfaction, mood, self-esteem, and physical health. Conversely, these values were positively associated with depression, anxiety, compulsive shopping, and risky behaviors.
We can get even more precise when we look specifically at why people earn money. According to a 2001 article in the same journal, psychologists found no negative correlation between well-being and having money for the fundamental purposes of security or family support. The problem arises when one desires to earn money for reasons of social comparison, gaining power, demonstrating success, and boosting self-confidence. Simply put, if you're trying to get rich to feel superior to others or to boost your self-esteem, the process will lower your happiness index.
These findings reinforce the notion that your well-being depends on how you spend your money. Buying possessions generally does not increase happiness, while spending money on either experiences with loved ones or more free time does. This makes sense if we think about the type of person who will buy a fancy watch or an expensive car to show off their worth, rather than rent a nice place to spend a quiet week with their partner. Research suggests that money follows a version of the meditation paradox: it helps your well-being, as long as you don't pursue it because you think wealth will improve your well-being.
With data from "Atlantic"
Source: lifo.gr
