This was posted by Deepak Chopra in LinkedIn which I thought ‘links in’ well with our current theme of  Money as well as last month theme of  True Happiness. Here is an excerpt:

‘This is where a very bad idea enters the picture. It holds that money buys happiness, and the more money you have, the happier you will be. … The real problem with “money buys happiness” is twofold. First, it’s not true beyond a very limited point. Having enough money to be comfortable produces more happiness than living with the stress of poverty and want. Beyond this fairly modest state of financial security (not so modest if you were born into a poor country or have an impoverished background in a rich one) money brings more stress than it’s worth.

Positive psychologists seem pretty sure about this finding, looking at a broad range of subjects, although of course there are exceptions – rich people who seem exceedingly happy and poor people who seem the same. Even so, if you really care about your happiness more than your bank account, you shouldn’t devote your life to the pursuit of wealth, no matter how much our society glorifies being rich and mythologizes the wealthy as if they live in a paradise on earth.

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The second reason that “money buys happiness” is such a bad idea is subtler. The pursuit of money prevents you from finding happiness another way. I hold the minority position about happiness, the one that says lasting happiness depends on our state of awareness, and to find the highest state of happiness, you must reach a higher state of consciousness. The same view has been held for centuries by all the world’s wisdom traditions, and ironically, now is the best time to test it out.”

You can read it in full here:

A Very Bad Idea That Millions of People Believe

Cartoon Copyright Shannon Burns