Money can buy happiness

Whoever said “money can’t buy happiness”, must have either misunderstood or didn’t know about the causal relationship. Whether money buys happiness or not it doesn’t buy unhappiness for sure! We must have heard various prejudices since childhood such as “Money isn’t everything or Many poor people are happy and rich are not.” Let’s not be myopic and take a look at the other side of the coin; there are as many rich people who are happy as there are poor and vice-versa. Having said this, it can be safely concluded that happiness doesn’t have to do only with riches otherwise we could find a pattern among so-called happy people of the world.

I hear people say that they don’t want money rather they are looking for happiness. Awww… what’s wrong with the preceding statement? (any GMAT guy around?) It assumes that people can choose either money or happiness but not both which is unlike the way it works in real life. Now if we have 2 options and we are free to choose either 1 or both of them then what we choose depends upon our mindset and various other social influences; Sheena Iyengar would definitely agree to this.

The fact that we can choose both money and happiness is, more often than not, ignored; I believe this is mostly because of the lack of understanding that money is just a symbol of exchange that tends to make life easier. If Joseph Murphy were to comment on this, he’d say there is no virtue in poverty and it’s a disease like any other mental disease. Choose money as a part of balanced life which includes happiness and peace of mind.

Linus Torvalds’ fans might say, “Talk is cheap, show us the proof.” Well a worldwide survey of more than 136,000 people in 132 countries that included questions about happiness and income revealed that life satisfaction certainly does rise with income; also a recent research by National Academy of Sciences says people’s emotional well-being — happiness — increases along with their income up to about $75,000!

There is little wisdom in the old saying cut your coat according to your clothes. The new world would like to get more cloth to have a bigger coat!!

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