“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
-Zig Ziglar
PARADIGM SHIFT
Can Money Buy Happiness?
We’ve heard it said that money can’t buy happiness.
Rich, poor or middle-class, there are happy people across all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum.
So what is the common thread?
Consider the one who first said, “Blessed (also translated ‘happy’) are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).
How is it possible, then, for him to also show approval to the very wealthy Zacchaeus, who made it a point to be both fair and charitable?
Poor or rich, there is something beyond this material standard which determines a person’s happiness.
I believe it comes down to something like the sense of purpose based upon a worthy aim.
As Dr. Jordan Peterson has observed, “You experience positive emotion by noticing that you’re moving towards a goal.”
In other words, positive emotion is not the direct result of a lot of money.
That’s good news. Because the prelude to wealth accumulation is the willingness to risk loss and failure. If happiness does not depend primarily on material possessions or money, that means our natural fear of loss is actually an exaggerated fear.
That fear of loss, fear of the unknown, is what keeps most people doing the same thing today that they did yesterday.
It’s also what causes the biggest mistakes when it comes to investing. Fear of loss, combined with the illusion of knowledge, costs many investors a life-changing fortune over the course of their lives. Fortunately, many of them never stop to calculate just how much that opportunity cost is, so they don’t have to experience the regret.
How do you escape this fear of loss? There are several ways, but here are a few practical steps:
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- Practice being grateful. Consider all of the good things that you’ve already experienced in your life that has already made this whole wild ride a priceless gift.
- Make your dreams come true as much as they are in your power to perform. That means identify what they are and set an end date for when you will attain them. Then follow through. Don’t leave it up to “someday.”
- Remember when you had less than you have now. Were you as concerned about loss then as you are now? Consider why or why not.
- Realize that you have more power to make money today than ever before in your past. If you lost it all in a worst-case scenario, you could rebuild it faster than you built it when you had less knowledge and experience.
Determine your aim and take calculated risk to achieve it. The experience will be powerfully transformative regardless of the missteps along the way, and you will discover new parts of yourself that emerge out of that courage.