Being OK with Being OK

On the way to dinner last night, listening to talk radio, we heard the results of a happiness study done over 30 years. I’m just going to go and post the excerpt here (even though it’s from a Canadian website and strangely enough I trust it less than an American website – Sorry Canada).

“For instance, in the developed world, once all of life's most basic needs are satisfied, is there any sense in chasing ever greater prosperity? The modern-day stoics say no, and they marshall their own evidence. In particular, skeptics point to a groundbreaking 30-year-old study by economist Richard Easterlin, showing that between the 1950s and 1970s, Japan's national income increased by 10 times, and yet average happiness (measured through extensive polling) didn't budge. The story is the same in the United States where, in 1993, a professor of psychology named David G. Myers reported that the percentage of people who say they are "very happy" remained unchanged at about 30 per cent between 1960 and 1990, even as inflation-adjusted, after-tax incomes more than doubled.”

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0012910

Really, read the whole thing. That’s just a snippet.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about my own personal goals for wealth and riches beyond my wildest dreams. If I had it, would I be any happier? I’m just going to leave the answer open ended here because I can’t answer it for you yet. Well, actually, I’m now making about three times as much as I did even 3 years ago, and I can tell you, my mood really hasn’t changed. I would report the same level of happiness as I did back then. In fact, I might even say I was more happy back then (since the past is a happier place sometimes) but it’s mainly because I was only working part time while going to school.

But this was really interesting to me though. To have more, to have it all, is it really the answer for me? Obviously having more doesn’t change how we all feel. I’ve been thinking a lot since I heard about this study on the radio last night…and I guess it was just a “mini-epiphany”: I can’t be happy all the time. I shouldn’t strive to be happy all the time. Everything we do, everything we’ve changed over the past 30 years, what we can point to as our definition of “happy” when we look around us – maybe it’s all a sham?

I’ve always thought that a person cannot be happy 100% of the time. Even over 70% of the time is going a little bit overboard in my opinion. For awhile, my thought on how I felt was that for every pain point, for every low in my life, it made the highs that much sweeter. For all the struggle and stress I push through, the end result gets that much better for every painstaking minute I put in to a goal that I accomplish. And to avoid that pain – to avoid all the hard work and persistence would be to undercut that glorious feeling at the end.

CROX, one of the symbols I was currently invested in popped for 36% over a month. It’s the fastest I’ve ever had an investment work out for me, but I’ve only been seriously investing for over a year. Sure, it wasn’t worth millions of dollars, it wasn’t even worth thousands. But the satisfaction of doing the research and making the right pick at the right time wouldn’t be the same if I had started with a ridiculous amount of wealth. What I’m getting at is the struggle. To start small and build. Would I be happy if I was given millions of dollars to play with? Absolutely. I’d be insane not to. But I’d get bored (maybe). It wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be my hard earned money that I received for being there every day, 6:30 am to 3 pm, Monday through Friday.

I’m starting to ramble now. The main point for me is in the title. I need to learn how to just be OK with feeling “fine”. Or even a little bit down or up. I shouldn’t expect every day to be the best day ever. They couldn’t be. Because how could I decipher between which day actually was the best day ever? It all sounds a bit tiring. I want to stop myself from trying to force that “happiness” feeling. It’ll come like it always has, albeit I’m sure at different times and from different activities.

So having everything I need, I’ll be OK. And seriously, it will be OK. For me this is a kind of “acceptance” to feeling anyway about anything. From extreme sadness to jumping joy, they’re all normal, and needed.