Once your basic human needs are met, a lot more money doesn't equate to a lot more happiness. People tend to overestimate how much pleasure they will receive from having "more".. People are adaptable creatures (which can be a great thing in bad times or hard times,) but it is also a drawback when a wave of good fortune comes your way.
Going from poor to rich can create a quick thrill, but you will soon adjust to your new wealth and everything it buys you. If you want to know how to use the new money you have to make you happier, you have to understand just what it is that brings you happiness in the first place.
More money can help you find more happiness, as long as you know just exactly what you can and you can't expect from it.
Health, healthy relationships, hobbies, friends and family might be a good place to start.
Exactly...
Gordiano, we live in a capitalist society. So keeping up with the Jones' is habit, no we start to realize that we are not just keeping with the Jones' material possessions (house, car, etc), but the Jones' debt as well. And this is the crux of what we are talking about. If the standard is 20 inch arms, and one doesn't achieve that, but focuses on that instead of school, relationships, money...but yet doesn't achieve that after 20 yrs, were they focused on the right things? Now what if he achieved the 20 inch arms, yet still non of the other things, what really has he achieved?
Once time I saw a really fat lady who had like 23-24 inch arms, and i thought, "why is it so easy for a fat person to have 23 inch arms, yet for a muscular person that i hard as hell/" Yes, of course I recognized it was fat, but soon realized, among other things, that it is hard work that one gets those gifts. Throughout nature the same is said. It is un-natural to obtain things so easily, and when one does, one doesn't appreciate what one has, and abuses it, often losing it in the process.