in personal money June issue and found out this article that may help us. So, I documenting in my blog as a reference.09 October 2007 : Smart Investor - How Much Is Enough - Are You Sabotaging Your Own Happiness With Your Money Mindset?
1) Why else would we only be able to enjoy fleeting happiness when we get a pay raise, buy a new car, or move into a bigger apartment?
2) Why aren’t we able to sustain the euphoria we feel when we acquire new material possessions?
3) Why do we struggle to keep up with the Joneses, even though the stress we experience in trying to keep up, and measure up, does more to make us unhappy than happy?
a) Why “enough” is never enough
The simple answer, in a nutshell, is that we don’t know what truly makes us happy. When we have yet to negotiate the experiences, values, and goals in life that directly contribute to our happiness, and how money relates them, we misguidedly pursue the wrong things. For instance, when we no longer derive the same sense of euphoria we once felt with a spanking new car, we don’t arrive at the conclusion that trying to seek happiness from a car is an exercise in futility. Instead we think the problem is that the car we have is simply not good enough and contemplate trading up and buying a bigger, flashier one.
In his new book How Much Is Enough Arun Abey*
writes that peer pressure and the need for group acceptance leads our behaviour to be shaped by other people’s expectations. Rather than deciding for ourselves, we allow other people determine what is ‘enough’ for us, resulting in an endless pursuit to keep up with the Joneses’.
The results of worrying excessively about the Joneses, instead of making us happier, can have the opposite effect. “The decisions that are made to satisfy the expectations of others may be those least likely to satisfy ourselves,” writes Abey.
Answering what satisfies us, then, can help define what role money should play in our lives.
b) How much is enough
The first step to happiness is to look within and determine what experiences we value the most. Chances are, these values and sources of enduring happiness have little to do with tangible material possessions and everything to do with the intrinsic – the satisfaction and gratification we get when we engage in activities that make the most of our personal strengths.
Dancing, painting, acting, writing, sports – these are some such activities that we may find ourselves pouring heart and soul into; engaging in them invokes a deep sense of involvement that causes us to lose ourselves in the moment and leaves us feeling in control and invigorated. More than the promise of a good life (which we associate with the ability to afford expensive, luxurious consumer goods), filling our time with these activities or values encourage a meaningful life.
Conversely, there also exist tasks and activities that have the opposite effect on you. Instead of leaving you fulfilled, they tend to drain you.
The good life vs the meaningful life
The right path to leading a meaningful life becomes clear then: once we understand what drives us, we can build a strategic framework to happiness by building these activities into the fabric of our lives.
Doing this also releases us from our dead end relationship with money.
Instead of carrying around the money mindset of “Enough is never enough”, we would have arrived at the answer to “How much is enough?”
Money becomes a means to an end, a contributor to the achievement of goals that are consistent with your personal values, rather than an end in itself.
In this context, investments become but a vehicle to help us realise our lifestyle aspirations. Pursuing high returns for the sake of high returns, and exposing ourselves to an unnecessary level of risk while at it is a pointless pursuit. Instead, building a long-term financial and investment plan to help ensure that that we have the resources to fund our goals and aspirations for the rest of our lives makes all the difference.
*Arun Abey is the executive chairman of the ipac group and co-author of How Much is Enough, which is now available in leading bookstores.
More articles:http://www.ipac.com.sg/article.php?mode=archive&c=&y=2008