Positive Psychology Column for 4-6-03 By Tom Muha, Ph.D. Money Really Doesn’t Buy Happiness Have you ever played the lottery? Me too. Especially when it gets big. I start to think of all the things I could do if I had millions and millions of dollars. I’ll bet that you too have had the fantasy of what it be like to have lots of money, and not once did your daydream have an unhappy ending. Researchers recently looked at what happens to lottery winners and discovered that winning all of that money did not make them one bit happier in the long run. But, you’re probably saying, you’d like to find out for yourself. If you had more money and could buy nicer things, then you’re bound to be happier, right? That’s what nearly every television commercial tells us. If we just buy a certain type of car, the ads say, we’ll have the opposite sex all over us, we’ll have more friends, and we’ll have piece of mind as we’re sitting on a mountaintop somewhere. This is, after all, the reason so many people are working so hard to get ahead. The American Dream is to have the nicer car, the larger house, the better clothes, the bigger boat, and the list goes on and on. We believe that if we just work a little harder and make more money, then we’ll be happier. Not true. People responding to a recent Gallup Poll said that they thought that 21% of Americans were rich. But less that 1% of people surveyed thought they had enough money to qualify as being rich. Those making $10,000 a year thought that people making $50,000 were the rich folks, but those making $50,000 thought that you needed to make at least $200,000 to have enough. The real kicker is that those who were making $200,000 were still scared that they didn’t have enough money to cover their bills. So how much money does a person need to make every year in order to be happy? The new science of happiness found that after you make $7,000 a year, money is no longer associated with how happy you are. Yes, you read it right. After you’ve made enough money to rise out of abject poverty, money will do very little to provide you with more happiness. There is an important message here: you will never think that you have enough money. For millions of years your ancestors survived because their primordial urge to hunt and gather that was forged by a constant threat of scarcity. Since the Stone Age, human beings have been haunted by the two basic fears of not having enough and not being a good enough provider. Sound vaguely familiar? Of course it does. We are still driven by those same fears because we are hardwired the same way as our forefathers were. Face it: The fear of not having enough or being enough is burned into your brain. However, your drive to acquire material goods in this day and age is not making you happy. In fact, it’s making you miserable because it is a never ending battle. Once you accept this, you can rise above it. When the desire to spend money starts to burn inside of you, you can recognize it as your primitive urge to find satisfaction by hunting and gathering. Because you have the power to control your thinking, however, you can redirect your thoughts into other areas of life that will actually allow you to achieve happiness in the long run. The most important ingredients of the authentically happy life involve: 1) Choosing to make your commitment to create loving relationships your first priority, 2) Cultivating your ability to appreciate the pleasures of having a healthy lifestyle, and 3) Discovering and honoring your purpose so that you can make meaningful contributions to the world. Love is the primary emotion that helps you to counter your fears of not having enough or being good enough. Knowing that you are loved provides a level of satisfaction that far surpasses the fleeting glee of acquiring material possessions. Exercising, especially when you do it outdoors, is the lifestyle for which your body was designed over the past several million years. Only in the past 100 years have humans developed a lifestyle dominated by riding in cars and sitting in front of a TV or computer screen. Your purpose in life involves helping others. The deepest feelings of happiness come when you contribute to helping people to become independent. Just ask any parent who has successfully launched a child into adulthood.   Tom Muha is a psychologist in Annapolis. He welcomes your comments and questions. To contact him call (443) 454-7274 or email him at tom@achievinghappiness.com.