Poor and Being Happy

There are numerous studies that show that people from poor countries are still happy even though they don’t have all the luxuries that people in the U.S. have.  Then you look at people that win the lottery and their life goes down the drain.  I do not want to say that living poor is great and we all need to be poor to live happy, I am just trying to introduce another way to look at the issue of happiness and wealth.  So the question for the day is: What makes people that are very poor and living a life of uncertainty happy?  I believe this is a two part answer.

Number one is that the human mind is great at adapting to life situations.  When you get a raise or a new item you momentarily gain satisfaction with what you have gained, but after a little time you will be back to the base level of contentment that you started at.  This is very important because that means that we can adapt to having less things.  It may be hard at first when you are used to living in the lap of luxury, but over time by forcing yourself to live with less or dealing with uncomfortable situations, over time you will learn to live with it.  Some examples of doing this are turning your heat or a/c lower to use less energy.  Riding a bike instead of taking the car.  Not buying any clothing for a few months.  The level of being uncomfortable will be different from person to person, but it will make you appreciate the life you have by giving some things up.  It will also make you a more badass human being because you will be able to live with less and be more resilient to the bad things that are bound to happen in your life.

Number two is that people that live with uncertainty (whether it is where they are going to sleep the next day to what they are going to eat) have opened up to the realization that pain is inevitable in life and that they have to live with it.  They have accepted that life is ephemeral and out of their control so they spend time creating relationships with their family and neighbors to work together towards making a living and for their well being.  They focus more on relationships than what they may be able to get in the future.  They focus on living their life at the present time then gaining more and more.  When you are constantly waiting for the next raise or the next new gadget you buy to make you happy you enter a never ending cycle of wanting more.  Uncertainty gives life more flavor and keeps you on your toes to see what will happen next.

Again, this isn’t to say that being poor and without anything is great or that you can only be happy when you are poor.  I am just pointing out that our focus is usually misguided and based on things that we think will fulfill us but actually don’t.  All of this makes sense if you think about the evolution of humans.  Scarcity was the thing that controlled human life up until recent times.  There were very few people who had the luxury of excess and many who struggled every day to stay alive.  This is true to a certain extent in some areas of the world today, but in the U.S. and many other first world countries almost everyone lives in extravagance.  We still have the urge to horde as many resources as possible because of the hardwired scarcity of the past in a time when we can get anything we went with a quick trip to the store.  Our evolution has made us go haywire where we are all consumerists instead of creative, loving human beings.

By keeping our focus on things that will actually make us happy instead of following the lies that are fed to us every day in advertisements, we will all be better off.  Everyone will have a different life ideal but here are some other proven things that will lead to happiness.  Focus on your spiritual life.  Instead of using the money we are making to buy a bunch of stuff we don’t need we should try saving it for more lofty goals in life.  We can save to the point where we don’t have to work until we are 65, or save enough that we can actually have enough money to make an impact on other people’s lives through giving.  We can use our money for experiences rather than material goods that promise an endless amount of things that will not occur with the purchase of them.  We can work less so that we have more time with our families and hobbies.  We should be striving for more time not more money in our lives as a whole.  These are just a few ideas of many.

Materialistic Holiday

Every holiday we buy each other presents.  Why do we all do this every year even though we get no joy from going to the mall, dealing with all the traffic, spending money that we don’t have, etc?  Sure we feel good when we see the looks of happiness when others are enjoying opening the presents that you bought them.  We enjoy being able to give our family gifts.  The holidays are about giving and generosity after all.  But isn’t there a better way to do this.  But this material joy is ephemeral.   We are showing our love with material objects instead of with our hearts.  We are also teaching our children habits that aren’t necessarily great.  Some of these are:  To show love you have to buy someone gifts.  You have to buy things to be giving.  Happiness is dependent on more things.  That the holidays are only about opening presents.  That consumerism and going into debt are okay.  To spend time together you have to spend lots of money and give things to each other.  Also, by giving your kids so many things you are making the things they already have seem obsolete and creating a habit in them of always wanting more.

By buying all of these things we are just continuing with the endless cycle of acquiring stuff that we don’t need, and in a lot of cases receiving things that we never wanted in the first place.  Not to mention how horrible all of these products are for the environment with all the packaging, mining for the resources to make them, running the factories to build them, and then finding a landfill to throw them in.  Why can’t we give each other something that is better than the gifts none of us really want anyway?  Why can’t we just spend time with each other and enjoy the company of our family members and friends without feeding the corporate machine?

I know for my family growing up, and even still now, lists of wants are made and passed around.  I don’t know how many other families do this but I bet it is prevalent.  Isn’t telling someone exactly what you want taking away from the giving spirit and turning the holidays into a time where we feel obligated to buy gifts and go into debt?  I am not saying that gifts should not be bought or given at all.  I am just trying to get you to question your actions and the set traditions within your own lives.

Instead of giving out material goods maybe we can try to give out experiences:

• A home cooked meal or take them out to a restaurant
• Set up an event all of you can go to
• Make them a picture book to remember the times that were had during the previous year
• Make something else like a heartfelt card or note to give them
• Maybe volunteer together and help those less fortunate
• Tickets to a movie
• Bake something for them

Do something from the heart that you can give them that is meaningful – instead of stressing yourself out this year.  Let’s try to keep the holiday season from being an absurd, corporate driven activity that sucks the joy out of the time spent with family.  The best gift you can give someone is the gift of your time.  Your time with them.

The main thing that will make us all happier is building our relationships by spending time with family members.  Also by focusing just on holidays to be giving we are forgetting to recognize the majority of the year in which we can be generous as well.  Don’t just be kind and generous during the holiday season; try to stretch this out into all 365 days of the year.  If anything we will all be less stressed, have less debt, and enjoy the holiday season and the rest of the year a little more if we can try to keep all of this in mind.  I know trying to change a long standing tradition is hard and at first seems impossible, but just take a minute to reflect on your actions and how to change things for the better.

Attachment to stuff

After reading some great blogs like theminimalists.com and zenhabits.net, I am starting to realize the attachment I have to all of my things that in the grand scheme of things are meaningless.  I have started trying to clear out stuff every day that I don’t really need.  I started working on paring down my closet.  Many of the clothes in there I wear just because they are there and I feel bad about throwing them out or giving them away.  The funny thing is that I don’t even like most of the clothes that I have but I feel the need to keep them “just in case.”  I keep them because I want to have a lot of options to choose from, but really I only like about 1/3 of my clothes.  Why should I keep all of the junk I don’t even like.

As I was putting the clothes in a giving away pile there was a Western State College t-shirt that both my wife and I wear when we work out.  I got this shirt my first year of college and had an emotional attachment to it because of all the changes that happened at the time.  This shirt served as a reminder of the first day of school when I had received it.  Even my wife had an attachment to it even though she came to the school a couple years later.  She probably wanted to keep it for the same emotional attachment reasons as I did.  The sad thing is we have like 20 other shirts that we can work out in and this shirt was all stained and broken down (and smelt a little weird, I think our baby spilled something on it which is the reason I wanted to throw it away).  I went to throw it away and she really didn’t want me to.  Why do we create these attachments with our stuff.  Stuff does not define who we are.  We don’t need junk to remind us of our life experiences.   Our memories are inside of us.  This quote in fight club said it best: “You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank.  You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet.  You are not your fucking khakis.”

It is easy to see how people fall into the hoarding trap with all of their emotional attachments and also saving things “just in case” they will be of use in the future.  Most of the time you don’t even use these “just in case” items and even if you do it may only be like one time a year.  Is it worth having it take up space, gather dust, and add to your house’s clutter to keep it?

My challenge to you today is to try and get rid of just five things.  Just start there and move on to more things.  Only keep what you need.    It is refreshing to have less stuff.  It doesn’t have to be clothes.  That is just where I have started.  It can be books, electronics, decorations, anything.  There is less to clean, less to worry about, you have more space to be free, and your mind becomes de-cluttered as you de-clutter your space.  You may even find the space you are living in is too big and be able to downsize your living space.  Free yourself from your stuff.  Try it out and see if it works for you.  You are not your stuff!