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The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

theguardian.com

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Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#111

Post by nazgulnarsil »

assblaster wrote: post #103
docker_up wrote: post #84

Our combined income is about $600k USD, but funny enough we don't consider ourselves "rich". We consider ourselves "upper middle class" at least for the Bay Area, because we both work very hard, probably 10+ hours a day. Our mortgage on our house is less than 1 year's income so it's relatively low compared to others in the Bay Area. If one of us lost our jobs, we could still comfortably afford our mortgage but we wou…

If your mortgage is $600k, you should work towards paying that off more quickly, depending on the interest rate, so that you can be free from that burden. Once your house is paid for, then your daily work can decrease if you want, or have extra savings available for earlier retirement or maybe doing more fun things. I won't be "happy" until I'm debt free with $10mil in savings/investments, but I am definitely happy r…

paying off a debt under 4% faster at the expense of putting that money into a portfolio that is expected to earn 6%+ is making your overall assets less diversified. You're trading down on both variance and return expectation.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#112

Post by simonh »

nkozyra wrote: post #100
simonh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what is it? Jordan Peterson, who for a long time I wrote off as a crackpot until I actually paid attention to some of his interviews and lectures, talks a lot about this. Happiness is a pretty crappy goal to have. It's a side effect of pursuing actual, worthwhile goals. People need to take some responsibility for their own state of mind and the things they are choosing to do that affect it.

> Then what is it? It's a response. Internal responses, sure, but also - and more dramatically - to external ones. > Jordan Peterson, who for a long time I wrote off as a crackpot Trust your initial instincts ;)

Some of what he says is a bit disturbing, but he has a lot of statistics and cites a lot of sources that seem very credible, and I've yet to come across any counter-arguments that are anything more than incredulity and ideology. I'd love to see a plausible and knowledgeable counter argument.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#113

Post by thedaemon »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #87
thedaemon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is suffering. Life is not happiness. Best you figure that out now. We have birthday parties and celebrations all the time. Why? Because life is miserable and we should take every opportunity to celebrate when we can.

> Life is suffering. Life is not happiness. Best you figure that out now. Well, that's wonderfully patronizing. >We have birthday parties and celebrations all the time. Why? Because life is miserable and we should take every opportunity to celebrate when we can. So finding reasons and opportunities to be happy is the goal?

I didn't mean to sound patronizing. "The pursuit of happiness." There is a reason it doesn't say happiness. Choosing your own happiness, yes that sounds like a pretty good goal to me. One of the original replies here does talk about choosing to be happy. Which is of course how you become happy when you have no outside influences to make you happy.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#114

Post by thedaemon »

watwut wrote: post #86
thedaemon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contentment = happiness in this context?

How do you know they are content? They are literally not allowed to talk about own unhappiness when it happens to them. Monk rules are pretty strict, they have to deal with own crises without raising voice and are often not allowed to talk to outside world in privacy or in public.

There are many religions with monks, they do not share the same rules. To which one are you specifying?

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#116

Post by irrational »

afpx wrote: post #99

As an outlier poor kid who made money, I can really relate to this. This is a thought-provoking piece, and hits on a lot of things I think about often. But, I think some of us aren’t necessarily in the hedonic treadmill game. Some of us keep working to gain more wealth not be of higher social status but because we fear being relegated back to poor-guy status. Now, I often do want to be the non-rich guy again. I see m…

> as the police are mostly paid to watch you

Just yesterday I was talking to someone who's father contributed $10,000 to the reelection campaign for the local sheriff. I asked him why he did that and the response was so that the sheriff would feel obligated to the guy's father.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#117

Post by fenwick67 »

simonh wrote: post #66
untilHellbanned wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a choice.

Then what is it? Jordan Peterson, who for a long time I wrote off as a crackpot until I actually paid attention to some of his interviews and lectures, talks a lot about this. Happiness is a pretty crappy goal to have. It's a side effect of pursuing actual, worthwhile goals. People need to take some responsibility for their own state of mind and the things they are choosing to do that affect it.

This makes perfect sense, it explains why successful people are never sad!

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#118

Post by sethammons »

Two points jumped out at me: 1) > Contrary to what most of us might predict, those earning over $100K are no happier than those with incomes of less than $25K

And 2) > ... happiness and sense of purpose are both at their highest among people working between 21 and 30 hours a week, and misery increases in tandem with the number of hours worked thereafter. The results are consistent across genders.

I can't say I agree with the first. I've gone from quite poor to upper middle class. Money does not make one more happy per se, but your ability to reduce stressors is much higher (and that can tip the balance to being more happy). Food running out? Unexpected bills/repairs? Water heater broke? Several years ago, that would mean I have cold water for the next few months (true story, our on-demand water heater required manual lighting from outdoors for about 7 years - couldn't afford a new one. Wind, rain, snow, day, night, go outside to light the pilot). With more income, that means I go out that evening and pick up a water heater (which I did when I could afford it!). My ability to now remove nearly all debts has made me feel so much better than I have for _years_. This only happened because I was firmly on the higher end of the middle class.

For the second part, I agree fully. All I want to do is work my property and spend time with my kids. I do want to work too, but I want that to take up much, much less of my time. If I could do 21 hours of work a week and maintain a similar ability to fix a water heater at the drop of a hat (or car issue, or whatever), that would be an easy sell.

As for happiness, you choose to be happy. And that is an easier choice when stressors are less present.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#119

Post by chongli »

Liquix wrote: post #97
beat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happiness is not a choice. If you think it is, try learning more about clinical depression.

Some people's brain chemistry makes feeling happiness much more difficult. Some people with clinical depression will physically never experience happiness the same way others do. That's true and valid. But does that really mean that being happy is not a choice? A paraplegic is unable to choose to move their legs due to a medical condition - would they assert that 'moving your legs is not a choice'?

I'm extremely skeptical of the brain chemistry narrative. It doesn't explain why depression is growing rapidly in the Western world. It doesn't explain why antidepressants vary so widely in their efficacy between persons.

I'm far more apt to believe that people's lives are getting worse and that they're depressed as a result. People are lonelier than ever and society's problems are bigger and more abstract than ever.

We're no longer even cogs in a machine, we're atoms in a cog. Meaning in life has become extremely elusive.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#120

Post by Baeocystin »

snarf21 wrote: post #83
vorpalhex wrote: post #3

There is nothing which will make you happy. You must choose to be happy. There is no job, no amount of money, no relationship, which will make you feel whole and happy and content and done. The opposite doesn't hold - there are jobs and relationships and financial strains which will certainly keep you from being happy. The goal isn't for a job or a relationship to make you happy. It's to enable other things which are…

This reminds me of a quote from Stewart Brand during an interview with Tim Ferris. ".... and being proud is the most reliable source of happiness that I know."[ https://tim.blog/2018/02/03/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts... ] Teach yourself how to cook, get in shape, draw a picture, write a story, help someone less fortunate, teach someone something you know, learn how to juggle... In the end it doesn't really matte…

Speaking strictly for myself, I have not found this to be true. I do enjoy collecting skills, and learning is fun. But no matter what the skill, eventually you hit the wall of diminishing returns, and I find that pride in that last 1-2% of performance is not worth the cost in time; I would rather improve a weaker skill another 10-20% with the same amount of training. And fundamentally, I find pride a bit too solipsistic to be truly satisfying no matter what the skill.

What I have found permanently effective is practicing gratefulness. Every day I make it a point to think of things that I am genuinely grateful to have, or to have experienced. This (for me), more than anything else, helps put my mind at ease, and allow me to enjoy the life that I have.

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