Money Can Buy Happiness
Money can buy happiness, but those feelings are often highly compartmentalized and temporary.
Imagine you are an artist and painting is your hobby, maybe you routinely paint 4 hours a week. You’ve had your eye on a paint set that is larger and of higher quality than the one you currently own. You decide to buy it and you feel feelings of happiness and pleasure when you take the paint set home and use it for the first time.
Over time however, maybe a week, a few months, or even a year your feelings of happiness begin to wain. The Law of Familiarity begins to kick in. Instead of owning ”my special paints”, you know own just “my paints”.
Also notice that you feel those happy feelings about your special paints only when you are actually thinking about your paints. If during the week you paint 4 hours out of 168 hours, you may feel those feelings for 4 hours, but when you think of other things those happy feelings are not necessarily present. The happy feelings about paints are compartmentalized; your feelings about your wife, your body, or your work don’t change.
Money is a very effective way to get happier feelings. It works, nearly every time. That is why we do it so often. It gives us a nice boost of happy feelings. Though one can easily see how buying happiness may not be the best long term solution.
-What if you run out of money?
-Buying new things sometimes creates new problems. Where will you store it? How will you maintain it?
The best long term solution is to change your attitudes and beliefs. Changing your beliefs is free. It does, however, take attention and mental discipline.
