What’s your “financial norm” in life?  No matter what your current “normal” lifestyle is, finding happiness always seems to be about having more.  Now imagine winning the lottery and getting all the things you ever wanted,  you would be ecstatic for months.  But how would you feel several years later when your new lifestyle became the norm?  Like everything in life, how can we appreciate the positive if we have no negatives to measure it by?  Is finding long term happiness through excessive wealth an illusion?

I can remember a time in my life when we could rarely afford to eat out.  Having the odd meal in a fast-food restaurant was something to look  forward to.   As things got better, eating fast-food more frequently became the new norm.  To achieve the same feeling we had to go to fancier, more expensive restaurants.   We assume that newfound happiness will last forever, but over time it becomes part of our normal lifestyle and we want more.  A cycle with no end.

As improvements to our norm make us happy, negative changes have a much more adverse effect.  Anyone that has had to give up air conditioning during a hot summer, or sell their car and start taking the bus would agree, negative changes to our norm have much more impact on happiness.  Even when these negative changes eventually through time become our new norm we never quite get used to it like we would if we had never had them.

Ever wonder why happiness evades some wealthy people? After getting everything they could ever want, have they come to realize the illusion.  Maybe the rest of us are the lucky ones, still with something to strive for, believing eternal happiness is just a pay increase or lottery win away.

Dave Lister

listerlogic.com