It's not the gold at the end of the rainbow; it's the journey - with someone you love.
With job losses, foreclosures, stock depreciation, and business failures filling the news, it’s a good time to ask that classic question:
Does money buy happiness?
When you’re out of work, and the money you’ve saved is not enough to pay your bills, it certainly seems that a full bank account will solve all your problems.
But just as it would appear that the sun moves across the sky every day, the truth is very different. The sun is not moving; we are, as our planet turns one full revolution every 24 hours. Other things in our world can also appear to be hard and fast realities when they are nothing more than an illusion.
But in truth, it’s not money that makes us happy, but our inner beliefs, feelings, and desires. Here’s why.
When we get more money – a pay raise for example – we are briefly happy because we believe that we are now able to be our true selves. We think: “Now I have the power to be me, and to do what I want.” We truly believe that money makes us happy because we believe that money allows us to be, do, have, or experience what we really want.
At least, that’s what we tell ourselves.
In a materialistic society, symbols of monetary wealth become those things that are most easily identifiable as the rewards of success. The more we can accumulate – the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the homes we reside in – the more successful we must be, right? But when you stop spinning this world of make-believe and take a step back, you realize that just like that sun moving through the sky, you have bought into an illusion.
Real and lasting happiness, true personal success, comes from within. The process of individual growth - reading or attending personal growth seminars, and certainly through the many experiences that occur in life itself – is its catalyst.
Like the rolling scenery of peaks and valleys that we see on a long drive, the money that comes into our lives is a passing relationship. Lasting happiness can only come from within. The people who are essentially happy in their lives may experience a keener sense of happiness during times of financial success. If you are essentially unhappy, however, money will do nothing to relieve that unhappiness.
Personal success comes from within, and is achieved not only when you are able to be yourself, but when you are also able to love yourself. Personal success involves not just achieving goals, but feeling grateful and satisfied with what you have after you get it.
It is feeling confident, happy, and powerful while doing what you want to do.
Happiness is not defined by a pot of gold that we’re hoping to find after that long journey to the end of the rainbow. Happiness is the love and laughter that we shared along the way.
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Other MarsVenusLiving.com Health & Happiness Articles
A Healthy Relationship – with Food
Why Committed Relationships Are Good for Your Health
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Tick tock...tick tock...
MVL’s Valentine’s Day Countdown Tip #27:
Baby Love
Take your beloved’s baby picture and write a love letter to the child there. Tell him or her what you know to be the love you’ll share and the memories you’ll make together. You’ll go back to the future together.
