Be Happy – Gain Knowledge From Every Source.

Every one of us may need sufficient resources of earning to meet the basic needs like food, clothing and house to live in. After meeting basic needs, we take one step further and try to meet our social needs like maintaining our social network including contacts with our relatives, friends, clients etc through regular communications and exchanges. Thereafter, we come back to ourselves and organize for leading some luxurious life. In all these stages, finance works a lot. For that, we need expertise and resources. Nothing else, we just need to restore the memory of what we already know and how we can organize them in appropriate way.

We know that money cannot buy happiness, but we forget it easily in a consumer society when we see an attractive advertisement of a car, a computer and something else on our television screen or somewhere else exciting us for more spending and getting new and newer things for our enjoyments. As soon as it happens, we take up every step to gather affluence whether it is genuine or not.

We know that satisfaction simply is not for sale. The people, for whom money is a priority in life, tend to experience an unusual degree of anxiety and depression as well as a lower overall level of well-being. Why so? With good accumulation of money, we can ensure better medical treatment, better nutrients to keep ourselves healthy.

The demand of designer clothes, cell phones, SUVs, mutual funds-modern materialism seems the enemy of all. Advertising screams out insatiable consumption. Movies and television blast us with images of runaway wealth, instilling the notion that too much is never enough. The cycle of work and spend is sapping away all that matters in life. And prosperity continues to increase: we have more stuff each passing year.

People today find that the things they're buying and turning to are not fulfilling. Each person needs to be materially secure, of course. The cycle of consumption leaves us with an unlaced craving for transcendence. For some, consumerism is the new opiate. We are becoming so frantically time-stressed as to be close to losing our minds, while cell phones and laptops and similar devices are cited to represent the assumption that today there is never a moment away from the demands of job, kids, and stuff.

To the extent people are stressed for time, often it is the pursuit of the material that causes the condition. Wanting a 4,000-square-foot house with a three-car garage and two SUVs forces you to take on a huge mortgage and accept long commutes.

Then you find that you're rarely in the house because you are working to pay off the monthly note, or stuck on the freeway trying to get home. It would not be difficult to trade back some of this material superfluity for time and a less stressful day. In pursuit of materialism, some people still value "extrinsic goals" like money, fame and beauty.

Such people are not only more depressed, but also indicate more behavioral problems and physical discomfort, as well as scoring lower on measures of vitality and self-actualization. While not every study has investigated the full list of effects, the pattern that emerges from the research project as a whole is remarkably consistent. They encourage to try to strike it rich, but the more we seek satisfactions in material goods, the less we find them there.The satisfaction has a short half-life; it's very fleeting.

Moreover, the detrimental effect of extrinsic goals seems to hold regardless of age or even level of income: A preoccupation with money bodes ill regardless of how much money one already has. The effects also appear not to be limited to any one culture. The fact that pursuing wealth is psychologically unhelpful and often destructive comes through very strongly in every culture.

Money or affluence, per se, does not necessarily result in an unsatisfying life. Problems are primarily associated with living a life where that's your focus. Nevertheless, the negative psychological picture does seem to be associated with the extent to which people believe they are already on the way to attaining extrinsic goals. A study surveyed about 300 youths, some in the United States and some in Russia. In both countries, lower levels of mental health were found not only in people who wanted to make a lot of money but also in those who thought they were likely to succeed at it.

Another study found that college students who were already relatively high in the attainment of appearance, financial success and popularity were nevertheless lower in well-being and self-esteem. Those who aspired to affluence also had more transient relationships, watched more television and were more likely to use cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs than were those who placed less emphasis on extrinsic goals. They do not have self confidence to accomplish any target. They wish to achieve success through unethical means.

Apart from its obvious implications for a culture that thrives on material gain, this whole line of research raises questions about the proclivity of some psychologists to analyze the dynamics of what is often called goal-directed behavior while, in effect, ignoring the nature of the goal. It reiterates homespun advice to follow one's dream, whatever it may be.

It is also known that neither income nor attraction is strongly correlated with a sense of well-being.  The sense of well-being correlates with our mental status. But what about our mental status? If that does not stand well, the physical health may not go on intact. A good emotional life maintains better health overall. For upkeep of your emotional health, pursuing goals that reflect genuine human needs, like wanting to feel connected to others, turns out to be more psychologically beneficial than spending one's life trying to impress others or to accumulate trendy clothes, fancy gizmos and the money to keep buying them.

Some parents provide excessive money to their children as a token of their love but do not attend them psychologically because of lack of time due to their professional/commercial/social and/or other engagements. When parents are cold and controlling, their children apparently focus on attaining security and a sense of worth through external sources.

This seems consistent with anecdotal accounts of very wealthy men who grew up in troubled homes. Such stories are sometimes cited as evidence that they made the best of a bad thing, turning out well despite or because of their unhappy childhoods. The problem with this interpretation is that they may not have turned out so well after all. They just turned out wealthy.

It is not entirely clear why a poor psychological profile would go hand-in-hand with a quest for extrinsic goals. It may be that unhappy people are more likely than others to chase after money and fame. Conversely, the very act of chasing after money and fame may reduce one's sense of well-being, perhaps because it makes you ignore the goals that could lead you to have more satisfying experiences. Yet another possibility is that extrinsic goals and poorer psychological health are symptoms of something else that is amiss.

We may need more thoughts tease apart cause and effect between mental peace and affluence. Young adults whose parents were divorced or separated demonstrated higher levels of both material values and compulsive buying. This suggests that such people use material objects as surrogates for absent parents. But it has also been experienced that the people who are more materialistic tend to be unhappy with their lives. This effect may be moderated or even eliminated for those who have close caring relationships.

Now, we may see how we can gain a balance between our emotional life and materialism. Undoubtedly, money, or we say affluence, plays an important role in organizing ourselves to meet our basic, social and other needs, including our emotional attainments too. But it is required to be handled carefully. There is one story narrated by Mr.Deepak Chopra, which tells us the importance of knowledge. I quote it in his words to spread his message.

Once upon a time in a faraway land, a young man went to the forest and said to his spiritual master, “I want to have unlimited wealth, and with that unlimited wealth, I want to help and heal the world. Will you please tell me the secret to creating affluence?”

And the spiritual master replied, “There are two Goddesses that reside in the heart of every human being. Everybody is deeply in love with these supreme beings. But there is a certain secret that you need to know, and I will tell you what it is.

“Although you love both Goddesses, you must pay more attention to one of them. She is the Goddess of Knowledge, and her name is Sarasvati. Pursue her, love her, and give her your attention. The other Goddess, whose name is Lakshmi, is the Goddess of Wealth. When you pay more attention to Sarasvati, Lakshmi will become extremely jealous and pay more attention to you. The more you seek the Goddess of Knowledge, the more the Goddess of Wealth will seek you. She will follow you wherever you go and never leave you. And the wealth you desire will be yours forever”.

There is power in knowledge, thinking, desire and spirit. And this power is within you and that is the key to creating affluence to make happy

Be Happy – Gain Knowledge From Every Source.