Time management and happiness

I want to take you back to thirteen years ago when I moved to Switzerland to study for my BA. In the first semester, I had a course in critical thinking, and the lecturer asked us to write an assignment where we needed to compare two variables.

At that point, I asked myself the main subjects I am interested in. The first thought that came into my mind was a comparison between wealth and happiness, and the main reason was that I asked myself:

“Why did I move to Switzerland?”

The answer was, “To improve my financial situation.”

And then, I asked myself again, “Why do I want to improve my financial situation?”

The answer was, “To become a happier person.”

Below you can see the main conclusion for this assignment.

“The increase of material resources has a good influence on the happiness rate in the short term; however, after longer periods, people get used to the new situation and the level of happiness returns to its former state.”

(Abramowitz 1953) (Easterlin, 1974) (Dorn, Fisher, Kirchgassner, Souza-Poza, 2005)

According to this quotation, the correlation between financial situation and happiness is quite weak for the long term. This is especially true if your income is above $75,000 per year?(according to Matthew Killingsworth, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School).

Now, maybe you ask yourself, “What is the best variable that predicts happiness?”

According to Prof. Robert Waldinger, the director of the?Harvard Study of Adult Development, “Our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned into relationships, with family, with friends, with community.”

I can demonstrate with one private example. My grandmother got ill about thirteen years ago, and her MD told my father that she would live for another seven months. In the end, she lived for eleven years. According to my opinion, one of the main reasons for her long living was that my father and my aunt (both lived abroad) decided that once a month, one of her children or grandchildren would visit her for a couple of days. In such a way, she knew that she could look forward to the next family visit at every time.

Here is a question for you, “How many hours do you dedicate per week to empower your strong relationships?”

Click?HERE?to download the Guide Book in order to see how the model works.