The Art of Zen Living

I came across this line during a dialog earlier today:

“research consistently shows that there is at least some correlation between having money and being satisfied with life.”

Can someone point me to that research? My experience and my observation in life has been that if you have enough money to meet your basic needs (food, shelter and clothing) then happiness depends on having enough money to meet your wants and desires. You have two choices - learn to make more money, or learn to want fewer things.

The problem with the first choice is that very, very few people will be able to raise their income to a level where they’ll be able to readily afford every new thing that comes down the consumer corridor. Even fewer people will be able to reach that level of income without finding themselves in a position of wanting less stress or more time.

If you are one of those lucky few, you can stop reading now. For the rest of us, I’m going to talk a little about the second option - learning to want less.

Back in February, Over at Get Rich Slowly, J.D. explored the idea that the key to wealth is being satisfied with what you already have. That idea resonated with me, but I’m not looking to build wealth, I’m looking to build happiness.

It’s a big part of what this blog is about - I don’t consider myself an expert on happiness, but I do want to share some of the things that have worked for me, some of the things I’m exploring, and some of the things that haven’t worked for me.

That said, I’d like to suggest that the key to happiness may be in wanting what you already have. I know that sounds a little flippant, maybe even bordering on cliche, but I’ve been reflecting and meditating on this for just a few days short of 2 months now, sometimes deep thoughts, sometimes thoughts that go on and on, like this sentence, sometimes just that thought in the back of my mind.  After all that, I’ve decided that I think there may be something to the idea that the key to happiness is wanting what you already have.

So how do you do that? How do you decide what it is you want? I’m not sure. I have some ideas I’m trying out.  Over the next few days or weeks, I’ll be writing about them, and hopefully you’ll all join me to discuss them.

The first one will be the concept of “enough”.