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From time to time, I post short interviews with interesting people about their insights on happiness. During my research, I’ve noticed that I often learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies.
My friend Marci Alboher is a massive connector. She seems to know everyone, and she loves making introductions. She introduced Manisha Thakor and me (virtually) because we have a major interest in common – the relationship between money and happiness.
Manisha is a former financial analyst/portfolio manager (among other things) who writes and speaks a lot about personal money management. She wrote On My Own Two Feet and her next book, Get Financially Naked: How To Talk Money With Your Honey, is coming out in a few months. She also has a blog and often appears on TV to talk about money.
The relationship between money and happiness is one of the most fascinating subtopics within the large subject of happiness, so I was very interested to see how she would answer these questions.
Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Manisha: Sitting in a cafe sipping a cappuccino and contemplating life - ideally with jazz playing in the background and sunlight streaming through the windows.
What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
More is often...just more. In other words, some of my happiest moments have come from small, simple, daily joys (chatting with my husband, a good workout, hearing an uplifting song, helping someone else solve a problem). The more complex your professional and personal life gets, the harder it can be to savor these kinds of consistently uplifting "small" things.
Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
YES!!! Checking emails first thing in the morning.
As a self-employed author / speaker / financial literacy advocate trying to "break out" and build my brand...the internet is both my lifeline and the plastic bag over my head. I work from home - so social networks like Twitter [@ManishaThakor], Facebook, Linked-In, YouTube, and old-fashioned email are often my primary means of communication with the outside world. I have yet to balance that fine line between using new media to stay abreast of trends and meet new people - and having it suck me into a downward swirl of self-imposed 24/7/365 connectivity. I have a horrible habit of reaching for my iPhone first thing in the morning while I'm still in bed to start checking my emails...and more often than I care to admit I find myself wandering off on some electronic tangent, which in turn depletes my energy and keeps me from focusing on the things that bring me real joy.
Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful?
"Only you can make yourself happy." From a young age, my parents have taught me that happiness is an inside job. As a consummate "people-pleaser,” I can't say I've mastered the lesson yet...but I'm sure trying!
If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost? Or, like a “comfort food,” do you have a comfort activity?
I have long struggled with the toxic cocktail of depression, perfectionism, and workaholism. These less-than-pleasant companions on this journey of life tend to pull at my coattails with varying intensity - but without a doubt a good sweaty workout (anything from swimming to a power walk) invariably works miracles when I'm wobbling along the mental edge.
Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?
Add: Random acts of kindness.
Subtract: Clinging to the past.
Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy – if so, why? If you were unhappy, how did you become happier?
My happiness levels whip around as fast as a pair of legs doing the tango. My happiest moments in life have been when I am so fully engage in work I love that I land in that blissful state of flow (for me that's anything related to women's issues & personal finance, especially when I am able to give a woman financial advice that can help propel her life forward). However, those feeling of bliss can easily plummet if I feel stretched in too many directions - through professional or personal overcommitments. Feeling pressured (professionally, personally, financially) makes me miserable.
Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
Given what I call my "straw that breaks the camel's back" personality, I am now working hard to streamline and pare down my life to the things that really bring me joy. If an activity or a person depletes me, I'm trying to learn the tough skill of just saying no.
Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn’t – or vice versa?
As a lifelong nerdy introvert - I've always found social situations nerve-wracking. As such, I'm always surprised when I go out with a group of people and have a good time. Had just such an event last night: my husband and I went to a dinner party and by listening to other people's stories and current life issues, it transported me out of my shyness and into this state of real happiness and connectedness.
I believe passionately that having your personal finances under control can be a big contributor to your happiness. I've seen time and again how even simple steps, like actually adding up how much debt a person has on their credit cards or getting the funds in their IRA or 401k properly invested, can relieve huge amounts of stress and hope up space for happiness. To me the whole reason to get on top of your personal finances is precisely so you can live the life that makes your heart sing So I see a tight linkage between money & happiness - just not in the traditional way!
* Appropriately, I found this post on Ten Signs You’re Not as Rich as You Could Be on Manisha’s website. It’s a great list, both funny and perceptive. My favorites: #2 You have a key to a public storage unit and #4 You have no idea what your tap water tastes like.
* Join the lively happiness discussions over on the Facebook Page.
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One thing I hear quite often is “It’s awful, people are so materialistic. They think that buying things can make them happy, but it can’t.”
Well, that statement contains more than one idea. The first is “Money can’t buy happiness.” True, money can’t buy happiness, but spent wisely, it can contribute mightily to a happy life.
The other idea is that people are too materialistic—meaning, I think, that people place too much value on owning things and showing them off to others in order to make an impression.
I’ve been mulling over that proposition. One of the subjects that has fascinated me for a very long time is the relationship of people to objects. I went through a long obsession with potlatch. I wrote a book, Profane Waste
, examining why people would destroy their own possessions. I’ve read a lot of books about subjects like conspicuous consumption and self-identity through brands. I’m interested in anything to do with the symbolic meaning of particular objects (the Greek herm, for example), which is one reason I love Jung’s work.
So I’ve always been interested in this topic. But it seems to me that a lot of behavior that people consider “materialistic” is actually motivated not by a wish to boost self-esteem through stuff or to show off possessions to other people—in a “Keep up with the Joneses” kind of way—but by other reasons.
For example, take the guy who always buys the latest tech gadget – not from a desire to show that he can afford the most expensive new device but to feed his fascination with technology and perhaps also to maintain his reputation as a maven, the person to whom everyone can go for advice.
Take the couple who constantly renovate their house by adding a deck, adding a garden, putting in a new kitchen—not to show off to the neighbors, but as a way to get an atmosphere of growth in their lives. They see their house getting nicer, and that gives them satisfaction.
Take the person who buys beautiful furniture. My mother, who has a tremendous appreciation for objects and a huge amount of expertise on what gives objects quality, would appreciate and acquire beautiful furniture even if she were the last person on earth.
Clothes are a puzzle. Some people appreciate beautiful clothes for their own sake; it’s not all about making a display for other people, though that’s part of it, too. Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary
: “I must remember to write about my clothes next time I have an impulse to write. My love of clothes interests me profoundly; only it is not love; and what it is I must discover.” Is this materialistic?
For better or worse, buying things is a way to engage with them and with the world. If you’re interested in a certain kind of object, you often express that interest by researching, shopping, and buying it. People who can’t afford art go to museums. But when people who like art can afford it, they usually want to buy art, too. People who love to cook want to buy elaborate tools and ingredients. People who love music want to buy music.
For some reason, we like to own the things we love, even when it’s not necessary. I’m interested in reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
only every so often, and the neighborhood library has three copies on its shelves—yet I want my own copy. Is that “materialistic?” (It will be interesting to see if the Internet will change this impulse, at least for books, movies, and music.)
It’s also true that when we have these things, we want to show them to other people. Is that always conspicuous consumption?
And objects can be necessary apparatus for other things we want to build into our lives, like exploration, acquisition of knowledge, and sense of security.
The word materialistic can be defined in various ways, of course, and some behavior is truly “materialistic” in the negative sense and not very admirable. But I think it’s a term that is thrown around a lot, to cover behavior that isn’t as deplorable as often assumed.
But I’m still thinking through this and not sure of my conclusions so far. The relationship between people and objects—an inexhaustibly fascinating topic. What angles am I overlooking?
* I love Lisa Belkin's New York Times blog Motherlode, and I particularly appreciated this guest post by Laura Vanderkam, Are You Being Too Efficient? It struck a chord; my resolutions include Take time for projects and Force myself to wander.
* Check out the Happiness Project Toolbox! If you want to get started with your own happiness project, you'll find eight free tools that will help you. And it's a lot of fun.
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During my study of happiness, I’ve noticed that I often learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies. There’s something peculiarly compelling and instructive about hearing other people’s happiness stories.
Laura Rowley has written extensively on one of the most fascinating, complex issues within the large subject of happiness: the relationship between money and happiness. Her book, Money and Happiness
, examines the relationship between the two and how to spend money to reflect your values. On her popular, engaging Yahoo Finance column, Money and Happiness, she writes frequently about money and how you can use it to build a happier life—or not. Not only that, she has a Masters of Divinity from New York Theological Seminary and teaches a class on Contemporary Moral Values at Seton Hall University.
When a friend offered to introduce us, I couldn’t wait to meet Laura. I also asked her to do a happiness interview, because I was very curious to learn even more about her views.
Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Laura: Eavesdropping on my kids in the back of the car. You can’t be unhappy listening to a debate about how Santa actually circumnavigates the planet in 24 hours; whether, if you had a superpower, it would be better to be able to fly or turn invisible, or who has kissed who in the kindergarten class. Also, hitting the “send” key when I e-mail a column to my editor before the deadline does wonders for my well-being.
What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
That it’s both a marathon and a sprint—a long-term investment in your values and a daily discipline. That you may not have control over what happens to you, but you have complete control over your attitude about what happens to you and that can make or break your happiness.
Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Surfing realtor.com. Real estate voyeurism is the fast track to envy and misery.
Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”) Or a happiness quotation that has struck you as particularly insightful? Or a particular book that has stayed with you?
I read and reread a textbook called Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology
by Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener, and Norbert Schwarz. But then I am a total science geek. I also keep a couple mantras taped to my office wall:
"Nothing can stop a man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal. Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude."—Thomas Jefferson
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."—Viktor Frankl
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind."—Dr. Seuss
If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost? Or, like a “comfort food,” do you have a comfort activity?
I try to create a diversion: Call my sisters, go running, read, go to Carvel with my husband and the kids and order a sundae (followed by more running). Or I’ll dive into a simple chore with a quick payoff—preparing for an interview, cleaning off my desk or even folding a basket of laundry gives me a minor sense of accomplishment, (I may not feel happy, but at least I feel productive.)
Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness or detracts a lot from their happiness?
I recommend not watching the money porn channels when the Dow is plummeting, although many people do the opposite. Ditto on selling stocks low and buying high.
Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy—if so, why? If you were unhappy, how did you become happier?
My junior year in college my doctor prescribed Accutane, the powerful medication for acne, which had just come on the market. I tumbled into a severe depression that finally lifted after I stopped taking the drug; years later the research came out linking Accutane to depression. In his book The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
, the monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “When I have a toothache, I discover that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. I had to have a toothache in order to be enlightened, to know that not having one is wonderful. My nontoothache is peace, is joy. But when I do not have a toothache, I do not seem to be happy. Therefore, I look deeply in the present moment and see that I have a nontoothache; that can make me very happy already.” That experience gave me a lot of empathy for people experiencing depression and helps realize how lucky I am—it’s my “nontoothache.”
Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
All the time; I’m lucky to have a job where I get to interview psychologists, behavioral economists, and authors about well-being (mainly in relation to money and work). I always experiment with what I learn. I am currently employing strategies from Winifred Gallagher’s new book, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
. Choosing what to pay attention to really can have a powerful effect on your well-being.
Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn’t—or vice versa?
When my oldest daughter, Anne, was 5, I promised she could have a dog when she turned 11 (assuming that pledge would be forgotten and float away in the parental-promise ether). She reminded me every year on her birthday. Having never owned a dog, I envisioned an onerous responsibility, an extra expense, a nuisance, a mess. When Anne turned 11, we adopted a year-old spaniel named Sammy from a family who had to give her up. I have never been more wrong about anything in my life. I am absolutely crazy about that dog. She makes us all better people.
* I'm on Twitter.
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As I’ve studied happiness over the past few years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for two weeks, I’m debunking one “happiness myth” that I believed before I started my happiness project. On Friday, I wrote about Myth No 5: A "Treat" Will Cheer You Up.
Myth No. 6: Money can't buy happiness.
Well, money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy lots of things that contribute mightily to happiness.
As the current financial downturn is making vividly clear, money contributes to happiness mostly in the negative; the lack of it brings much more unhappiness than possessing it brings happiness. (Good health is the same way—it’s easy to take money or health for granted until you don’t have it anymore.) People’s biggest worries include financial anxiety, health concerns, job insecurity, and having to do tiring and boring chores. Spent right, money can go a long way toward relieving these problems.
Also, if spent wisely, money can help you boost your happiness. For example, philosophers and scientists agree that having strong ties to other people is the key to happiness, and money can pay for a plane ticket to visit your sister, a babysitter for a date night with your sweetheart, or pizza and beer for a Super Bowl party with friends. Novelty and challenge will make you happier, and money can pay for a trip to France, for a drawing class, for a mountain bike.
Is money essential for developing strong ties to other people or finding ways to challenge yourself? Of course not. But money can make it easier. Some of the best things in life aren’t free.
Whether rich or poor, people make choices about how they spend money, and those choices can boost happiness or undermine happiness. It’s a mistake to assume that money will affect everyone the same way. No statistical average can say how a particular individual would be affected by money—depending on that individual’s circumstances and temperament. Three factors shape the significance of money for you:
* It depends on what kind of person you are. You might want to own a horse, or you might want to own a turtle. You might have six children and ailing, dependent parents, or you might have no children and robust parents. You might love to travel or you might prefer to putter around the house.
* It depends on how you spend your money. Some purchases are more likely to contribute to your happiness than others. You might buy cocaine, or you might buy fresh produce. You might splurge on a big-screen TV, or you might splurge by going to a more convenient gym.
* It depends on how much money you have relative to the people around you and relative to your own experience. One person’s fortune is another person’s misfortune.
The current economic climate underscores that third aspect of the money/happiness relationship: Our happiness is affected by whether we have more or less than we used to have.
My First Splendid Truth holds that “to think about happiness, think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.” We’re made happier by the feeling that we are learning, growing, seeing change for the better. This applies to the intellectual, spiritual, and emotional parts of our lives—and also, for most people, the financial part.
Feeling like we have less than we did—unless that’s the result of a conscious decision—can be a happiness challenge. In one striking study, people were asked whether they’d rather have a job that paid $30,000 the first year, $40,000 in the second year, and $50,000 in the third year or a job that paid $60,000, then $50,000, then $40,000. In general, people preferred the first option, with its raises—despite the fact that at the end of the three years, they would have earned only $120,000 total instead of $150,000.
Their decision might seem irrational, but in fact, the people who chose the first option understood the importance of growth to happiness. People are very sensitive to relative changes in their condition, for better or worse. (Side note: Some people feel like they have more with less, so they get a feeling of growth by simplifying their lives.)
If you feel like you’re worse off now than you were two years ago, that’s an unhappy feeling. Some quick ways to make yourself feel better: Count your blessings; distract yourself with something fun or interesting; find ways to assert control over your situation (even to do something as small as clean out a closet); spend time with friends; or do something to help someone else—you can sign up to be an organ donor right this minute.
What do you think? How do you think of the relationship between money and happiness? Important, unimportant? I think this is one of the most complex and fascinating subtopics within the subject of happiness.
* I love a good manifesto, and here's a great one on Scobleizer.
* If you haven't seen my one-minute movie, The Years Are Short, you might enjoy it.
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Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Nine tips to avoid overspending.
One source of unhappiness for people is feeling out of control of their spending—and this is a problem that’s far more widespread now than it was a year ago. Feeling regret about having bought something is a very unpleasant sort of unhappiness. Being an underbuyer, as opposed to an overbuyer, I don’t generally have much trouble avoiding overspending. I have more trouble prodding myself to buy things I actually need.
Nevertheless, even with my underbuying ways, I sometimes come home with something I didn’t really need. Stores use extremely clever strategies to hoodwink customers into making purchases. Here are some strategies to make sure you don’t make purchases you regret:
1. Be wary of the checkout areas. There are lots of enticing little items here; ask yourself if you really need something before you add it to your pile. How many times have I picked up a jar of Balmex?
2. Get in and get out. The more time you spend in a store, the more you’re likely to buy. Even better: Don’t even go in the store. Then you definitely won’t buy.
3. Question the need for an upgrade. You might want that device with a slick new function or an improved version of what you have now, but do you really need it?
4. Be polite to salespeople but don’t feel like they’re your new best friends. Don’t buy something because you worry about hurting their feelings or feel guilty that you made them do a lot of work helping you or explaining products to you. (At the same time, be respectful of clerks’ efforts. The other day, I was in Gap Kids, and I saw someone rifle through a pile of beautifully stacked shirts in a way that would require them to be refolded. Was he malicious or just oblivious? I couldn’t tell.)
5. Don’t shop when you’re in a hurry or when you’re hungry.
6. Stick to a list. I’ve found that after I’ve decided to buy one thing, I’m far more likely to throw in other impulse items because I know that I’ve committed to going through the hassle of paying.
7. Beware of sale items, which make you feel like you can’t afford not to buy, or limited-time offers, which make you feel like you have to take advantage of a special deal. If you don’t need or want something, it’s not a good deal, not matter how cheap it is. A friend of mine told her husband, “I got this 50 percent off!,” and he answered, “That means it was 50 percent ON.” Along the same lines …
8. Don’t buy anything that you don’t know you need. This is especially important with clothes. If you’re not careful, you can buy a pair of pants marked down 75 percent, then realize that you can’t really wear them unless you buy the right shoes to go with them.
9. Pay with cash or credit card, whichever is least comfortable. Some people find it far harder to spend physical cash; other people find that paying with cash makes a purchase seem trivial, even when the dollar amount is high. Know whether you’re more inclined to overspend with cash or credit cards—and leave that payment method at home.
Have you found any great strategies to prevent overspending?
* I discovered a terrific new site for working mothers, The Mama Bee. Great material, helpful information, and beautifully written.
* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.