Money vs Happiness

Generally speaking, people believe in “money cannot buy happiness” but for one reason or the other, many people fall in what I call “making more money will bring happiness” trap.

One of the reasons for this might be because money does buy happiness, or at least up to certain point. When you buy new goods it stimulates the brain and creates “happiness signal” (or chemical for that matter). The feeling could almost be like taking a recreational drug and sometimes leading to addiction (multiple credit card debit caused by continuous shopping spree). We somehow mistakenly believe this is the highest form of happiness and thinking having a lot of money will enable us to continue to acquire what we desire.

I recently read “Deliver Happiness” written by another Tony Hsieh who is Zappos.com CEO. In his book, he describes 3 levels of happiness.

Level 1) Shopping kind (example: eating food, having sex)

Level 2) Achievement kind (example: improving sports/musical skills, goal oriented)

Level 3) Being a member of an organization (example: being a member of a family)

Although we do experience all three level of happiness in daily bases, our focus is mainly on level 1 and level 2, even though level 3 is the one that can provide a continuous stream of happiness in our life.

This finding has made me re-evaluate my thoughts about the path that I have been taking.

What have I been trying so hard to do what I do? Is it because I want to make myself happy? Should I instead focus on something bigger? Maybe put the focus on my family?

What if what I do is for the entire family to be happy?

What about the projects that I have been working on at work. Maybe the project is going nowhere because the focus has been on personal/team success rather than organizational success? What if we remodel it to make it a win win situation for everyone instead of only our team will get the credit?