How to Achieve Happiness Essay Example

How to Achieve Happiness Essay Example How to Achieve Happiness Essay How to Achieve Happiness Essay There is a saying that states that â€Å"Money doesn’t buy happiness,† and most of the time, the response to that is: â€Å"Yeah right, whatever, keep on dreaming† or â€Å"Yes sure, but you have to admit that it helps when you have some†. Indeed, when we think about money, we either start daydreaming about the projects we will realize once we have it in our hands or we end up having nightmares about what we will be losing once it has vanished. So for sure, the common answer would be that money is definitively necessary to be happy. However, recent studies, as author Richard O’Connor (2008) claims, show that Americans with higher wages still show no sign of being happier or even worse become sadder then what they were before. If money was supposed to be the source of happiness, why do we still not stay happy when we have some? It is probably because money just represents a small part of happiness and if this is the case then that must mean that other factors are much more important in making us truly happy. As said before, money is a source of happiness for many people or at least that is what they think. It is true that when you lack money, you usually cannot take proper care of yourself. So in this particular moment, you feel like money is a major need. Indeed, like author R. O’Connor (2008) said there are two situations where money is a definite source of happiness: firstly when it â€Å"lifts you out of poverty† and secondly when it â€Å"satisfies a basic need† (p. 42). In both of these cases, money is playing a role in people’s happiness because it helps them take care of themselves. In other words, as author Michael Argyle (2008) states by the use of â€Å"Marlow’s Theory (1954),†- showed in the pyramidal graph below stating that once our basic needs were completed, we move on to higher needs that need to be accomplished in order to gain â€Å"social acceptance, self-esteem and finally self-actualization† (P. 142). Put simply, once we have taken care and paid with our money the food, water and other primary needs we needed, we can now use the rest of our time to satisfy higher-hand needs rather than to impress our neighbors by buying the new car that we always wanted but then we end up thinking about the new plasma television that we can’t afford anymore or the last telephone bill that showed up in the mail. As a matter of fact, we obtain what we want, feel happy for a while, and then go right back to the state of being unhappy again. So, we can probably say that since we have not gained all of the things we wanted, we still haven’t reached the happiness state that we think of. We still need to work more to make sure that we can get money for our children’s college fees or we have to get that promotion in order to get a trip to Hawaii. As M. Argyle (2008) mentions: â€Å"People think that what money can buy will make them happier because spending it produces short-term positive feelings or because it will increase their control over events. † (p. 144) In fact, we are deeply conditioned to believe that money is the key source of our happiness. Indeed, when thinking about our careers we are not focused on the success or the joy of obtaining something but rather on the fact that we need to have more of things that makes us feel happy for one second, namely, material possessions. However, the research contradicts this ideology. When Dan Seligman (2010) shows a survey done by Diener et al. , where they asked random people on how happy they are, the results that came out were quite a shock, since more than one-third of the people categorized as super-rich were actually less happy than the people categorized as average. You would not expect that people considered as rich would be less happy, but they are. In fact, they just prove how much we are stuck in the belief that money equals automatically happiness when it actually has no direct connection to it. So then what explains our false beliefs about money? For Dan Gilbert (2004), this is called an â€Å"Impact Bias†, where one has a tendency to â€Å"exaggerate the outcomes of the situation,† where we actually end up thinking too much and getting lost in our personal obsessions and where we end up putting importance on the wrong things. To prove this matter, Gilbert (2004) did a research based on which kind of future would be a happy one. He gave two choices: winning at the lottery or ending up being paraplegic. On a first basis, a common sense person would have made up their mind really fast and would have said that winning the lottery would definitively make someone happier. However, the results showed something completely different since both types of choices lead exactly to the same degree of happiness. In fact, both types of futures end up at the same level in happiness after a period of time, not one being higher than the other. With this research, we are proven for sure that we have a really hard belief concerning money and happiness. Indeed, we think that if we have money we will be able to take control of events or achieve better comfort or a greater materialistic security. However, we forget that, by doing so, we end up focusing on getting rich than actually on life itself and as R. O’Connor explained we end up losing track of what really makes us happy. Also, we lose precious time of our life because in the end we still end up with the same amount of happiness. Nevertheless, if money isn’t the source of happiness, what is then? Well, probably anything that we use money for and probably everything that we forget while we try to gain some. In the case of author Ruth Brown (2010), family and social interactions are far more likely to have a better effect on happiness than a wealthy financial state. In her research, she has discovered that people who are considered as â€Å"successful† obtain certain advantages such as power and prestige, yet they are still unhappy since they have to spend countless stressful time working and spend less and less time with their family or relationships. As Brown (2010) mentions â€Å"humans are social animals† and therefore it is only normal that we become less happy when we are cut away from our connections even if we still gain something out of it. In other words, we would be far better if we appreciated small things in life, even if we can’t obtain everything we could want. In the opinion of the author O’Connor (2008) we should â€Å"save money for what it is really good for† (p. 266) and use it for security, freedom and time to enjoy life, in order to appreciate little things in life. We shouldn’t stand on the materialistic view of society, but just appreciate everyday life to its fullest. He also thinks that having fewer choices would be helpful. Dan Gilbert (2004) also mentions about the fact of having less choice. He presented a survey on two different groups of Harvard students who were told to choose between two pictures, keep the picture they really liked and get rid of the other, with a few changes concerning the disposal of the picture: the first group was told that they would have to get rid of the picture they least like immediately whereas the second group was given a few days to decide on which picture to surrender. His results showed that the students, who had the choice and time to get rid of the picture, were less happy than the ones who got rid of it immediately. This result shows that we just stay in our own belief system when we can simply adapt to the situations and become happy. In fact, like Gilbert stated, we choose to be unhappy like his experience showed with 66% of the students who decided to have a choice if they were decided to get rid of the picture. The more we wonder, the more we end up depressed or obsessed about it, just like money issues. Another way to be happy according to authors Paula Moyer (2007) and Martin Seligman (2004), we should apply a process of â€Å"Positive Happiness,† meaning that we should just focus on the major meanings of life and be grateful for the small things we can accomplish with our own strength. Their research was based on different groups of students that were put on a constant work pressure. The only exception between was that some of the groups were being pushed to their limits and were given no encouragements on any types of grades they would obtain whereas some of the other groups would be encouraged and taught to be grateful and happy about each effort they made without paying attention to whether the grade was acceptable or not. The results showed that the groups who actually improved the most and where happy, even if they had failed the class, were the ones that were submitted to a positive environment and who were taught to appreciate any efforts they were able to make. With these researches, we have proof that adopting a positive attitude helps a lot in reaching a constant state of happiness, since as we have saw, the happiest groups of students were the ones that were following this psychological process. They were happy because of their will to accomplish something, not because of the fact that they were going to get a grade out of it. Like Seligman (2004) explains, if we decided to be grateful for the small things we could obtain in life, we would probably be much happier. As a conclusion, when we state that â€Å"Money is the key to happiness†, we can answer that this sentence is not true in itself. We can indeed be happy on a short-term period after spending some but we can also become depressed for a long-period of time if we think too much about it. Also, with or belief system that money is the key to happiness, we actually are not focusing clearly on what really matters to us: security, relationships, time to simply enjoy life and feel grateful about positive little events that occur every day.