How To Be Happy With What You Have

The wealthiest people aren't the ones who have the most but are most satisfied with what they have. Happiness is available to all of us, especially when we learn to accept and even love what life gives "now."

(Please note, this is a talk, not a guided meditation.)

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Who's the wealthiest person you know?

Perhaps you think it's Elon Musk or Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.

Who is the wealthiest?

I'm actually going to argue that it could be you.

You may be saying,

Dr.

Puff,

How could it be me?

I don't have any company where someday I'm going to make a lot of money.

That's impossible.

I'm a teacher.

I'm a janitor.

I work at a fast food restaurant.

I'm definitely not the wealthiest person out there.

So let me explain what I mean by you could actually be the wealthiest person you know.

Because the wealthiest person isn't the one who has the most,

But the one who is most satisfied with what he or she has.

I remember once reading somewhere about Rockefeller when he was the wealthiest man in the world.

And someone asked him,

Mr.

Rockefeller,

How much would be enough money for you?

And he answered,

One more dollar than I'll ever have.

So if satisfaction is a measure of wealth,

Then Rockefeller was a poor man.

Why is satisfaction with what we have far more important than how much money we have in the bank?

When you were younger,

Do you remember when your birthday came wishing for that really cool present?

Perhaps it was a new bicycle.

Perhaps it was a telescope.

Perhaps it was a video game.

But do you remember how excited you were?

And then when that present came,

You just savored that new toy and played with it for hours.

Perhaps days.

Perhaps weeks.

But then at some point,

That feeling faded.

And you wanted something else.

You couldn't wait until the next big event came.

Like Christmas or your next birthday.

And you started dreaming about that.

Now we may laugh at that and say kids are silly.

They always want something new.

But do we outgrow that?

When we finally move out and get our first apartment or our room to rent,

It can be so thrilling and exciting.

And we love it.

But again,

With time,

Then we want something more.

Perhaps we want something with our own name on it that we own.

Perhaps we want a backyard.

Perhaps we want something with a nice view.

Or perhaps with time.

We want something where we can entertain people and they'll be very impressed with our house.

I can go on and on with this.

Because whatever satisfactions things bring us or even events bring us,

Like a college degree or a diploma or a significant award,

We're always very quickly looking for the next thing.

The next thing that will bring us that thrill,

That excitement.

Because that's what it is.

It's never enough when we seek our wealth through either possessions or through events.

Because they have to be renewed.

They have to be bigger.

They have to be better.

And we're just always wishing for something more.

Something more that will bring satisfaction and final contentment to our hearts.

But if we go along this path,

Do you know where it ends?

Never.

It never ends because these things will not accomplish our desire for happiness.

Because truly,

If we want to be happy,

We have to be content.

We have to be satisfied with what life is giving us.

What life is presenting us right now.

Because when we're satisfied with what we have,

Then we're the wealthiest person we'll ever know.

Now what makes this difficult are a couple of things.

The first one is that we don't get the thrills anymore.

We're not going to get the high from the new award,

The new achievement,

The new thing that we purchase.

We're going to miss out on that.

We may get new things.

We may get achievements.

But we're not going to get our satisfactions from them.

We're going to get our satisfactions from living life with what we have right now.

Being satisfied with what we are given right now.

So let's say we have a car that has 150,

000 miles on it and it's 10 years old.

And we like our car.

We're satisfied with our car.

We're thankful for all the years it's taking us places.

And then we get a new car.

Yes,

There's a little bit of excitement there.

But mostly,

We're thankful for our old car and we're thankful for the new car today.

And someday this new car will be an old car.

And each day that we have it,

We will enjoy it and be thankful for that car.

Even when it breaks down because it's still our car.

It's what life has given us.

And we're satisfied with a car with 150,

000 miles on it or a car that's brand new because it's a car.

And we're thankful that we have a car.

On this first part about getting used to things and realizing they really don't bring that much besides a little thrill for a little while.

Is we need to understand deeply the concept of hedonic adaptation.

I've talked about it in a previous podcast.

And what it is,

Is that when we get something new,

It is thrilling.

But very quickly we get used to it.

And it's just something that we have now.

It's not thrilling anymore.

It's not exciting anymore.

Hedonic adaptation means we just get used to it.

A car is a car.

A home is a home.

A degree is a degree.

It's not good.

It's not bad.

It's just that.

And when we realize that,

We ask ourselves,

How much are we willing to sacrifice for this thrill?

Because we go after new things,

New experiences for the thrill.

And is it worth it?

Or wouldn't it be better to be satisfied with what I have and when new things come,

Great.

But if they don't come,

Great.

Because we have satisfaction knowing that life is beautiful right here,

Right now.

And I don't need the thrills.

I don't need the excitement.

I just need to be thankful and appreciative for each day.

Knowing that what I have is wonderful.

Whether it's a lot or whether it's very little.

And that's the second part.

What catches us is,

We care about what other people think.

We really do.

And that causes us so much suffering.

Let me use a simple example of that,

But a very prevalent one.

I think almost anyone out there would say,

Having free time to go for a walk,

To go on vacation,

To spend times with friends,

Is something that all of us value very highly.

And yet,

Don't we know so many people that work really long hours,

Perhaps give up their vacation,

So that they can earn that extra money,

So they can have that car that impresses their neighbors,

Or that home that people walk into and think,

Wow,

This is gorgeous.

You must be really successful.

Whatever it may be,

We spend our money so that we can have things so we can impress others,

Thinking that will make us happy.

Where if we just enjoyed what we had and didn't really care what people think,

Then guess what?

We could do things and enjoy life far more intensely.

Because we're satisfied with what we have and that satisfaction doesn't drive us to work,

Work,

Work,

Work,

Work and exhaust ourselves so we have lots of things.

Instead we say,

I just want to enjoy life.

I may even take extra time off from work so I have more time to enjoy life.

I mean,

Do you know how many people wait and wait and wait to travel because they have all these things that just weigh them down,

All these expenses?

Where if they just got back,

Got a smaller place,

Maybe moved into an apartment,

Or even sold their home and moved into a mobile home park,

Could you imagine?

We wouldn't do that because it would be shameful.

Here in the United States,

Mobile home parks are seen as trailer trash and who would want to live there?

But do you see the catch?

By labeling that,

By critiquing that,

That forces us to spend more money.

And thus we struggle because now we have to work more to impress people because we don't want people to look down on us and we're caught in this vicious cycle of,

I don't want people to think badly of me and I want people to think highly of me so I'm going to sacrifice my life so that they'll think highly of me and then I'll be happy.

Does that ever work?

When we impress others,

Does it make us happy?

I mean,

Again,

Don't we know really famous people that almost everyone in the world was impressed by and their lives turned out putrid?

I think there are a lot of examples of that.

So we have to be really careful about seeking the approval of others because that will never lead to happiness.

It may bring us a thrill like buying something new and having someone be impressed by what we have or what we've done,

But it's not going to bring happiness.

Happiness comes from being satisfied with what we have.

I remember when I was at Princeton,

One of my best friends,

She had a car,

A Volvo,

And it had hundreds of thousands of miles on it and it was very old and run down.

But she loved that car and got great enjoyment and many memories from it.

Or don't we know people?

I do.

Many who live in mobile home parks.

Their lives are going well and they love where they live.

When I went off to college,

My parents had some financial difficulties that were very challenging for them and it took many years for my dad to come out of that financial hole.

So they moved to Arizona and they moved into a mobile home park and they loved it very much.

They weren't embarrassed by it,

They were saddened by it,

They were thankful they had a roof over their heads.

And they were living in Arizona which my mom loved because she hated the cold and she preferred it there.

And when my dad started doing better again,

He didn't move out and get something bigger and better,

He stayed there and started traveling more because he really enjoyed traveling and visiting family around the United States.

I never once saw my parents embarrassed by what they had and I'm proud of them for that because they were satisfied with what life had given them and they lived a good life.

So in life,

If we truly want to be the wealthiest person that we know,

We have to learn to be satisfied with what we have today.

It doesn't mean that we can't work towards things.

But we also have to ask ourselves once we start doing better,

How we're going to allot our money and our time.

Because if we allot too much towards things,

We may have to work a lot and then have a lot less time to enjoy life.

I do believe that time is an incredible,

Beautiful commodity that's very precious.

We want to make sure we have a lot of free time.

To spend time reading a book,

To enjoy our friends,

To go on walks,

To be in nature,

Just to stop and watch the sunsets of life.

And I know sometimes life throws us some really hard things.

But if we hold up our head and say,

Thank you life for giving me this,

We will find that in many ways we are the wealthiest person we know.

If I can share one more story about my father.

Again,

Growing up in Iowa,

For Iowa standards,

He was a fairly successful businessman.

We had a nice home and he got new cars often and we traveled a lot.

And then when he lost his job and they moved to Arizona,

No one would hire him because he had a college degree and he had too much work experience at high level positions.

And he just couldn't get a job.

So finally,

You know what he did?

He got a job helping people move.

He was a mover working at a moving company.

And they only had one car and my mom used it for her job.

She was working in a nursing home.

Well,

He needed another vehicle to get around.

And I was off at university and my moped was there at the house.

So for a year,

He drove back and forth on a moped to his job,

Moving furniture and equipment and boxes all day long.

And that's what he did.

This person who had much,

Much more in the past and a good college degree was driving a moped,

Working at a moving company,

Living in a mobile home park.

And I was so proud of him because I've never heard him complain.

And he just did what he needed to do to support my mom.

And he was satisfied and he had a good life.

And he was one of the wealthiest people that I knew because he was satisfied and happy with what he had.

We can all have beautiful lives if we can just remember this one thing.

The wealthiest person isn't the one who has the most,

But the one who is most satisfied with what he or she has.

May you discover how wealthy you are.

Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

I see to think being content was boring. I realize it is what brings happiness…not wanting more, just loving what I have. Thank you. I really enjoyed this.

Another wonderful talk with so much good advice! Love all your recorded talks! Thank you for sharing. 💖

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Beautiful! Thank you 🙏

A beautiful theme for a great talk

Thanks for the reminder Dr Puff!