Newsflash: Money Doesn't Buy Happiness. Film At 11.
What are the most important things in life? Career? Family? Faith? Leisure? While many give lip-service to the need for a balanced life, a recent study indicates that not only do most topple towards the side of career and money, the dividends returned are rarely satisfying.
Certainly, I am not talking about being content with where we are in our development. We should always be pursuing improvement in our lives. The question is what constitutes improvement? Is it simply monetarily or in relation to status? If so, why are those who are the most successful and rich often seem to be the biggest failures at parenting and family life? Not that it is always the case, but the point is that our definition of success if often painfully narrow, limited only to what we can achieve in our chosen occupation. Yet, as this article points out, those are not the most important indicators when it comes to real living.
Paul told us this nearly two centuries ago: ...Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
The science article goes on to demonstrate that what Paul was talking about is true:
"Your next raise might buy you a more lavish vacation, a better car, or a few extra bedrooms, but it's not likely to buy you much happiness.This is no real surprise and is nothing new. With more comes less contentment. We get a taste for what we could have and decide that is what we need. Contentment is a hot commodity in the U.S. and I suspect in many other countries as well.
Measuring the quality of people's daily lives via surveys, the results of a study published in the June 30 issue of journal Science reveals that income plays a rather insignificant role in day-to-day happiness.
Although most people imagine that if they had more money they could do more fun things and perhaps be happier, the reality seems to be that those with higher incomes tend to be tenser, and spend less time on simple leisurely activities."
Certainly, I am not talking about being content with where we are in our development. We should always be pursuing improvement in our lives. The question is what constitutes improvement? Is it simply monetarily or in relation to status? If so, why are those who are the most successful and rich often seem to be the biggest failures at parenting and family life? Not that it is always the case, but the point is that our definition of success if often painfully narrow, limited only to what we can achieve in our chosen occupation. Yet, as this article points out, those are not the most important indicators when it comes to real living.
Paul told us this nearly two centuries ago: ...Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
The science article goes on to demonstrate that what Paul was talking about is true:
and colleagues also looked at data from a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey to see how people in different income brackets spent their time.[Alan Krueger, an economist from Princeton University]
What they found was that those with higher incomes had more chores and less fun.
They devoted more time to working, commuting, childcare, and shopping and were under more stress and tension than those in lower income brackets.
According to government statistics, men who make more than $100,000 a year spend 19.9 percent of their time on passive leisure activities such as watching television and socializing. Meanwhile, men whose annual income were less than $20,000 spent more than 34 percent of their time dedicated to passive leisure.
Although the correlation between income and life satisfaction is weak, people are highly motivated to increase their income. This illusion may lead to more time spent on activities like commuting while sacrificing time spent on socializing, something that people consider amongst the best moments of their daily life, the researchers said in the study.