Happiness: Do you really need it?

Happiness: Less is More

Do you really need it?

The thing you have…the thing you think you need?

Today in our exploration of the pillar of Happiness, the invitation is to ask yourself where, in your life right now, might you be MORE happy if you had LESS?

Now this question seems to go against the grain of all modern consumer culture and conditioning. There are Joneses to keep up with, after all.

But the evidence is overwhelming…stuff doesn’t make us happier…and neither (usually other than a fleeting moment) does the big goal we thought we wanted to achieve (just ask the depressed Olympic gold medallist).

In her book, “Your Money or Your Life”? Vicki Robin explores the relationship between happiness and financial wealth. She demonstrates, that happiness and money exist on a bell curve, where once you reach a disposable income in the region of ￡100 000 (aka the point at which you can buy most of the things you might actually want or want to experience) happiness and contentment peak.

On either side of this figure, happiness trails off, either in the maelstrom of the stress and worry of making ends meet…or because we’ve acquired so much that we stress and worry about it being taken from us and over everything it takes to maintain all the stuff we’ve accumulated.

Now you may be reading this thinking ‘Well I’d love to have the problem of being at ￡100k in disposable income…and wondering whether I should push beyond’ or you may be well past the figure and sitting squarely in the camp of ‘you just need to learn how to spend your money to bring you joy’.

And the truth is those aren’t really the crux of this discussion when it comes to happiness…because while having enough to not starve is always a good thing…and bear with me while I sound trite…happiness is an internal thing. It is something you can choose to cultivate no matter your external circumstance…

And usually, it can be hugely amplified by cutting away that which doesn’t actually bring you joy. Marie Kondo may have been on to something. But I’m not a big one for saying Chuck anything that is not ‘joyous’ into landfill. I am a big proponent of knowing the core of your happiness recipe.

Case in point from my life. I was sitting with someone I love, at the foot of a majestic fir tree, overlooking a deserted stretch of the Helford River in Cornwall (my home county). And it dawned on me that if, for some reason, all foreign travel ceased overnight, I would be joyously content living where I live. And knowing that shifted something deep inside me…dissolving the fear that if I don’t make the bazillions of pounds I might need to be able to travel the world…that joy would still be my faithful companion.

By letting go of the story that I needed to travel, my happiness quotient actually increased.

So today, what physical or conceptual thing can you let go of to give your happiness a boost?

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