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.
