Haven't we all wondered whether or not money buys happiness? In other words, if you have more money, will you be happier? If only it were as easy to answer that question as it is to ask it. Much research has been done on the subject and the answer seems to be that, yes, money is important to well being, but it depends.

What the Experts Tells Us

It is clear that wealthy nations have higher average levels of happiness than poorer nations (If you're reading this, you've got this one covered). Within countries, wealthier people tend to be happier than poorer people. There are interesting details and exceptions, however. In a famous measure of life satisfaction of people all over the world, not surprisingly, homeless people (in Fresno, CA and Calcutta) were the least happy. However, people on Forbes Magazine's "richest Americans" list reported the same level of happiness as did the Pennsylvania Amish, the Inuit people in Greenland and the African Maasai tribe who have no electricity or running water.

Although income levels in the United States have increased dramatically since World War II, happiness levels have not.

It has been found that beyond a relatively low level of income (in 2002, that level was estimated to be about $10,000 a year), happiness does not increase significantly with increase in income. 

So while there is a link between money and happiness, money's effect on happiness in not as big as we may think. Beyond a certain point, lots more money may mean little or no more happiness. 

Money Mindsets

A more powerful influence on your happiness seems to be how you think about money. More important than the actual figures on your paycheck or in your bank account are your thoughts about what that means.

There are some habits of thought that can cancel money's positive effect on happiness.

Say you make $50,000 and year and your neighbor makes $100,000 a year. Those figures do not predict happiness. If your desires fit within your income you will be happier than your neighbor if he wants more than he can afford. Your neighbor may feel poorer if he wants and needs so much beyond his means. But say,however, you compare your income or material goods with that of your neighbor. You may be the one feeling unhappy (such is the danger of comparing). What's interesting is that this "social comparison" may explain why, within countries, richer people are happier than poorer people. It's not the actual money that makes them happier; it's the feeling that comes with having more money than the reference group (This happens when we compare ourselves to the "norm" in other areas such as intelligence and beauty). As long as we see ourselves as "worse off" than whoever we compare ourselves to, we will feel worse.

And then there is materialism: thinking money is the most important thing and wanting money more than you want relationships and experiences. Materialistic people tend to be less happy than others. They also tend to earn more money than others, but their mindset cancels out some of the benefits of having more money. They may replace one materialistic goal with another and never feel successful. They may always want more money than they have and take time away from family, friends, and hobbies in order to earn more.

Researchers took some college graduates and asked about their life goals. Some students had "purpose goals" - aspirations to help others, to learn, to grow. Others had "profit goals" - to achieve wealth or fame. The graduates were tracked down a couple years later and asked how they were doing. Those with the "purpose goals" who felt they were attaining their goals reported higher levels of well being than when they were in college. Those with "profit goals" who were also achieving their goals were no happier than when they were students and they actually reported increases in anxiety and depression. 

So if mindsets like some above don't work for us, how is it helpful to think about money (so that we have more and feel happy about what we have)? I am cooking up some practical suggestions for improving your relationship with money and how to spend it more happily too. All of this in the March Newsletter: Simple Green Edition. It goes out this week! If you've been missing it, sign up on my website.

I put together some quotes on love. Enjoy...

http://www.blueprintlifedesign.com/thoughts-on-love/

To share on Facebook, click on the title "Love Quotes" above, go below to "Share Article," select Facebook and post to profile or send as message to friends. 

With Valentine's Day approaching, the obvious topic for a post is something to do with love or relationships. Right?

Right.

So here I am, still trying to decide what exactly to write about those topics. I could talk about how the opposite of love is fear and recommend you always choose love; I could explain how loving yourself is the only way to love others, how having kind thoughts is the way to start loving yourself and how we don't realize how unkind we are to ourselves in our thinking. It's also interesting to consider that all of our problems (with relationships, weight, money, work) are just one problem: a denial of love. Or I could blame Jerry Maguire for screwing everybody up with the "you complete me" line and remind you that you are complete and people who love you simply give you back to yourself. 

But here I go with what I hope is the most useful coaching advice on relationships. And, who knows, it may end up including pieces from above. 

1. Let go of control. For fun, let's start with what doesn't work. From my experience with clients and in my own life, the biggest obstacle to forming deep connections is our desire to control the people we care about. Why do we do this? Out of fear, of course. Fear that they may hurt, leave, embarrass, disagree with or reject us. We try to control what they feel and what they think. We want them to be happy, we want them to accept us and like us and make this whole relationship thing less risky. Well, here's the thing: It is risky but that's o.k. and it's worth it.  People we love will leave, some will do foolish things, and some will even die before us. 

How to choose love and stay sane with so much risk? Martha Beck recommends we love unconditionally and unilaterally. I love how she follows this recommendation in The Joy Diet:

"But doesn't this strategy virtually guarantee that you'll get hurt? No, silly. It absolutely guarantees it...But as long as you never react by cutting off your willingness to love, you will always - always -emerge from these situations with more capacity for joy than you took into them." 

This does not mean that you don't honestly express your feelings, acknowledge uncomfortable truth, or never end a relationship. This is where I find it helpful to think about what love is and consider that we can do all of these and still love...

2. Define love. What does love mean to you? I know, it's too big, too amazing to describe in words. However, I recently re-discovered this definition by M. Scott Peck, M.D. (psychiatrist) in The Road Less Traveled: Love is "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." This definition packs lots of implications. First of all, it implies that love is effortful and willful (a choice, and perhaps not always easy) and not merely a feeling but an action. Also, self love and love of others are the same, because we cannot be a source of strength without nurturing our own strength. To love myself is to love you and visa versa. I have clients who are making difficult decisions in their relationships. In the context of this definition, asking themselves "How can I choose love?" may be the same as asking "Which option best supports growth?" 

3. Do nothing & truly listen. Here are a couple things that will deepen and enrich your relationships so much, that you won't even believe it. The first is to "do nothing," meaning: go to the place of stillness/your core of peace when with another person. Again, in The Joy Diet, Martha Beck describes its effect like this:

"I found that it is impossible to truly do nothing while interacting with another person and not fall in love with them...I see in each of them a being of such breathtaking beauty and value that I can hardly stand it." 

When you do nothing, you detach from all of those judgments and personal agendas and "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts." You see every person as someone who is looking to find and show the best parts of himself. Misbehaving kids are just that. People who are unloving have simply forgotten who they are. You'll find yourself caring less about control and feeling more present, which will lend itself to true listening:

"...the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, stepping inside his or her own shoes" (The Road Less Traveled, p. 127).

What also happens when you do nothing and truly listen is that the other people feel loved & valued. Then they go on to love & value you and others. And there goes this beautiful upward spiral of love & growth.

Happy Valentine's Day!

"To the ego a good relationship is one in which another person basically behaves the way we want them to and never presses our buttons, never violates our comfort zones. But if a relationship exists to support our growth, then in many ways it exists to do just those things; force us out of our limited tolerance and inability to love unconditionally." -Marianne Williamson in A Return To Love

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"...you have to do something you never did." -Unknown

Doing something you never did starts with thinking something you never thought.

Clients often ask me how our thoughts create our reality. If that concept sounds...oh what's the word..."woo woo,"  I understand. I like to see grounded proof too. And now I am going to share it with you.

If you look for it (which I do), you find that the idea that our thoughts shape our world pops up in writings across time, culture, and subjects. Come to think of it, that sentence proves my point.

Weight Loss Coach Brooke Castillo maps this out clearly and elegantly in a model she calls
"Self Coaching 101."

A basic assumption for the model (and for coaching in general) is that your thoughts about your circumstances (not your circumstances) create your feelings.

So here it goes:

Circumstances can trigger...Thoughts which cause...Feelings which cause...Actions which cause...Results. Interestingly, the results end up providing evidence to prove the thoughts true.

Here is my "Coaching Yourself Out of Stress" handout I created to explain this model to groups.

Now, let me show you the thought pattern of Nicole, whose family owns and operates a local Italian restaurant:

Circumstance: Our family business is losing money.
Thought: I will run out of money.
Feeling: Panic, anxiety, doubt, fear, exhaustion
Action: Question my financial decisions, lash out at family, cry, do nothing, have difficulty concentrating
Result: Family members who don't talk to each other, time & energy wasted, isolation

As you can see, Nicole's thought leads to action that hinders making money. And the pattern is likely repeated over and over.

In order to create a new pattern, you replace the old thought with a new thought that feels just as true but is useful. We played with the words of the old thought to uncover a new thought (that Nicole never had before).

Circumstance: Our family business is losing money.
Thought: Money will run to me.
Feeling: Relief, freedom, lightness, love
Action: Start lively conversations with patrons, talk about restaurant at soccer games, wear t-shirts with business logo, donate gift certificate to school fundraiser.
Result: Booked two rehearsal dinners in the same week, more business and more money running in.

This new thought leads Nicole to take action that is more likely to increase business. Again, the results provide evidence for the thought.

If you keep creating the same unwanted results over and over again in your life, try thinking a new thought and see where it takes you. We live our lives proving our thoughts true. A new thought may take you to a feeling, an adventure, a career, a relationship, a finish line, a body you never experienced. That thought alone excites me.

Click here to download a free Self Coaching 101 class & worksheets.

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Consider the title of this post.

Do you ever have that thought?

Yeah, my clients and I do too.

Jen thinks her husband should clean up after himself because he knows a clean house is important to her. Erin needs her kids to stop fighting so she can feel calm. Kate thinks that if her boss would just give her meaningful feedback and more autonomy, Kate can feel appreciated, purposeful, and productive. 

There's nothing wrong with asking significant others, family members, and bosses to do things, but they don't always comply. Then what do we do?

We get to take responsibility for our own happiness. If I need my kids to keep quiet so that I can be calm, I am making them responsible for my emotional state. It's now their responsibility to keep me calm. I have handed over the management of my own emotions. It's not their job and if I leave it up to them, I will be riding an emotional roller coaster. 

Not to mention that it is exhausting making sure everyone behaves so that I can feel good.

What really needs to change? Our thinking. I know, it may not sound fair. Maybe it isn't. Perhaps everyone really should follow the rules in our mental manuals. But they don't.

Changing our thinking is the way to feel better. It's also empowering. Instead of thinking, "You need to change so I can feel better," try "I need to change so I can feel better."

What do you need to think to feel the way you want?

Jen may consider that her husband's lack of cleanliness has nothing to do with how much he loves her. She might think "I choose to clean because it's important to me" (Or she can hire a cleaning lady). Erin reminds herself that her kids are being kids perfectly. She is going to try this thought: "I can be calm so my kids can stop fighting." Kate may not be able to choose her projects, but she can choose her thoughts. Her boss's thoughts are his business, but Kate can be kind to herself by thinking, "I am capable, valuable, and meeting my own goals."

When we take over as CEO of our own thinking, a funny little thing happens.  The people around us start behaving so much better...even though we don't need them to.

"When you think that someone or something other than yourself needs to change, you're mentally out of your business." -Byron Katie

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In case you missed it...the January Newsletter.