Can Money Buy Happiness?

Does your current work satisfy you? Really? On what levels? When you examine your long-term priorities, do you feel that happiness is more important than money? Many of us fall into a particular line of work by accident. We learn of a job opening through a friend or we accept a new job that offers higher pay. We stay with a job because of the benefits or because we believe we don't have any options for anything better.

Staying with a job merely because we've found a level of comfort there through familiar faces, routine tasks or a level of salary that we can survive on doesn't mean we've found what can ensure a lifetime of happiness. Many with a college degree who restricted their vision to openings only within their field of expertise have discovered that. Yet, you might be surprised to learn that the percentage of people who are actually working in the field they specifically received a degree in is quite small. In most cases, we major in that which we believe offers the greatest opportunity for success at the time. Newspapers report a severe shortage of engineers and suddenly many of those intent on success major in engineering. Or teaching. Or law. It becomes the 'soup of the day' syndrome.

We spend four or more years studying a field and, with the cost involved, we assure ourselves we truly love this avocation. Five or ten years down the road, we discover it's lost its allure. But we allow whatever perks and salary we've achieved to convince us we are locked into this life. Our field of vision shrinks to only that which we currently do. It doesn't make us happy. It doesn't fulfill the dream of what we could be. We accept it because we believe that's the way life is.

What we need to do is evaluate what we get out of work versus what we would like to get. Where does money rate on your scale? How about happiness? Work relationships? The work performed? By looking at what we expect to get out of work and rating them in order of importance, we can begin to determine what we most value and find ways to increase satisfaction of those factors we deem most important. The bottom line is, if you’re like most people, you’ll discover that happiness is more important than money.