Many people dream of getting rich. Meanwhile, only a few manage to do so.

Maybe because we are at the mercy of common myths? Recently scientists and psychologists have tried to debunk them.

From time to time on my blog about Affiliate programs and CPA networks I will publish such posts.

MYTH ONE. HAPPINESS IN MONEY

Most of us are skeptical of the common saying: “It’s not the money that makes the difference. Ironically, this postulate not so long ago was confirmed by scientific research. Daniel Cainman and Angus Deaton from Princeton University tried to figure out if financial income can affect emotional well-being and overall life satisfaction.

The scientists analyzed more than 450,000 survey results related to the calculation of the Gallup-Healthways wealth index, which was conducted by the Gallup Institute (USA).

Princeton University. Here, an experiment was conducted on the relationship between income and a person’s emotional state Survey participants were asked to rate their emotions and life satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10 on a daily basis. About 85% of respondents indicated that they experienced feelings of happiness, pleasure, and joy, while 24% admitted to feeling sad and anxious.

The average score came out at 6.76. Factors such as physical ailment and loneliness, as well as a difficult or demanding job, were found to have contributed to the lower score. The influence of the level of income on happiness was not so evident.

For example, 38% of those whose monthly income was at least $3,000 complained of headaches, as well as constant sadness and anxiety. Of those earning less than $1,000, only 7% suffered from migraines and discouragement.

In turn, Eugenia Proto of the Center for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (University of Warwick, England) and Aldo Rusticini of the University of Minnesota (USA), studying the results of surveys of participants in the British Household Panel Survey and the German Economic Group, found that people with high incomes often have a high degree of neuroticism. They easily succumb to negative emotions and depressive moods.

It is interesting that such a pleasant, it would seem, event as increase of salary can be subconsciously perceived by such person as his unsuccessful career: if he has still room to grow, then he has not reached the career heights, as he thought before…

Examples of rich people for whom money has not brought them happiness are often found in fiction. Let us at least think of Balzac’s Gobsek, whose name has become a proverbial name.

Thus, big money does not make people happy at all. Of course, a significant increase in income makes a person feel somewhat better. But to have a stable feeling of happiness you also need other things, such as health, friends, love, and, finally, the opportunity to have fun and entertainment, which rich people engaged in increasing their wealth do not always have.

MYTH TWO. THE RICHER A PERSON IS, THE MORE FERTILE HE IS

Paradoxically, the rich usually have fewer children than the poor.

Anna Goodman and her colleagues at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine pointed this out. It would seem that the better the living conditions, the more abundant it is, the more offspring individuals should have. At any rate, this is the case in the animal kingdom.

The group, led by Goodman turned to the project Uppsala Birth Cohort, the authors of which have followed the fate of 14 thousand residents of Sweden, born from 1915 to 1929 in Uppsala University Hospital, as well as their offspring.

The British researchers analyzed the life history of the project participants, their level of education and social status, income, as well as the number of children and grandchildren. Scientists assumed that people have two reproductive strategies. The first, which ecologists conventionally call R-selection, implies the birth of a large number of children, and each child is given minimal attention by the parents.

This strategy is often used in conditions of high infant mortality.

The second strategy, K-selection, implies the birth of a small number of offspring, but each child receives maximum care and attention from parents. This attitude makes the child more prepared for adulthood and the struggle for resources and partners, which contributes to an increase in fertility in subsequent generations.

Scientists now believe that society is shifting from R-selection to K-selection. On average, each new generation gets higher social status, education and financial status than the previous one. However, the birth rate is not increasing for some reason. Wealthy people with high status do not aspire to have many children at all.

Perhaps K-selection may have been justified in the past, in the process of evolution, but it is completely unacceptable in modern conditions, according to the researchers. The modern man has a different psychology, let’s recall, for example, the childfree people who do not want to have offspring at all… Rich people, on the other hand, probably seek to raise more “high-quality” and competitive offspring, not to increase their number.

MYTH THREE. WEALTH DEPENDS ON LUCK OR ENTEPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

Popular American business coach Steve Siebold believes that the whole difference between the rich and people living from paycheck to paycheck is in the way of thinking.

“The average person is proscribed by the thesis that rich people are either lucky or dishonest characters,” Siebold writes in his book How the Rich Think. – The well-to-do know that wealth, though it does not guarantee happiness, makes life much easier and more pleasant.

Thus, the poor think that self-confidence is a disadvantage, while the rich consider it an advantage.

“The rich are different in that they always strive to make themselves personally happy, do not suffer from false modesty and do not pretend to want to save the world,” Siebold believes.

UNCLE SCROOGE, THE CARTOON MILLIONAIRE, HA A DISGUSTING PERSONALITY

In addition, poor people tend to work for money, and the rich man becomes, as a rule, doing things he loves. Besides a person with psychology of poor person usually sets for himself a lower bar of expected income, and a potential millionaire is always aimed at more.

Poor people are sure that in order to get rich, they need to do something special. Rich people become rich because they themselves are special: for example, they are not fixated on getting a systematic education, but seek specific knowledge they need to achieve their goals.

The poor are focused on survival; they tend to set aside money to spare, save to stay within a budget, and deny themselves everything to buy an expensive item. The rich, on the other hand, aim to earn more and more rather than shrink.

According to Steve Siebold, if we can “instill” in ourselves the mindset of rich people, we have a real chance of succeeding. It is true that many people dream of wealth without doing anything to get it, and they are more comfortable with a steady but low income than they are with ventures of all kinds.

We get used to a new level of affluence all too quickly. Moreover, according to her observations, people with high incomes spend less and less time on pleasures, devoting themselves to the multiplication of capital.

One of the main reasons why money does not bring happiness, experts also see the increase in wealth as accompanied by an increase in ambition. Sanderson calls it the “wealthy neighbor paradox”: After working hard and saving money, you move into the fancy neighborhood you’ve dreamed of, but feel disappointed.

Triggers of envy can be cars, vacations, private schools. The problem with money is that there is never enough. There is no finite amount.” As Roosevelt said, “comparison is the thief of joy.”

MONEY ISN’T EVREYTHING; TIPS TO BE A LITTLE HAPPIER

Buy rewarding experiences, not things themselves

Many studies have found that using profits to buy more experiences has more to do with personal gain than using them to buy material goods. A survey was conducted on “What Makes You Happier.”

Fifty-seven percent of the participants surveyed said they found themselves happy after acquiring a rewarding experience, compared to 37% of those who preferred a material product.

There are various explanations for this fact. First, we have a rapid growth rate to everything. Therefore, the euphoric effect of the gained application will last until we get used to it. How is this different from an acquired experience?

The car itself will be the same in two weeks as it was on the day of purchase. But the experience and enjoyment will vary depending on its tastes. Also, the experience makes us profitable not only when we use the purchase, but also when we remember, when we think about it. Whereas the object itself, makes us happy only when we use it.

Invest money in others

One of the golden rules of Buddhists is, “We should seek for others the happiness we desire for ourselves.”

One study showed that people who spent more money on others (gifts for loved ones or donations to charity) were happier than those who got more money for themselves (bills and gifts). This even applies across cultures, such as Canada and Uganda.

So why do people from all over the world become happy when they spend money on others? The main reason for the pattern is that social relationships are important to humanity.

They have helped us survive for millions of years. And we are programmed to improve them in every way we can. And one of the factors that affects social relationships is our contribution to them, including material contributions.

Appreciate small joys

Research that feeling happy has more to do with frequency than with the feeling with which we experience it. For example, people who are in a relationship with a partner usually have multiple partners in the same year. this happens?

The reason is that unstable relationships don’t produce a systematic relationship. Whereas a permanent partner gives us a positive experience throughout the time we have spent together.

A person’s quick adjustment also encourages us to choose to use frequency rather than frequency. Small joys include elements of novelty, surprise, uncertainty, and variability, that is, constantly changing.

Thus, when thinking about money, we must keep in mind that it is limited, so it is better to buy small and inexpensive things than just one big and expensive one.

Don’t get hung up on “warranties”

Consumers appreciate the guarantees and security offered by bags. For example, we can always expect in that we will exchange or return purchased items, as they say “just in case”. This is because we think, as if a bad purchase could be used for us more unpleasantly than it usually is.

Nevertheless, people are urged to avoid feelings of guilt and remorse, which can be called a psychological “immune system.” Have you ever happened to jump on a bus at the nearest minute and think, “Thank God, I made it….” However, if the bus leaves from under our noses, we think, “I would have made it if the driver had moved on schedule.”

Forget “Enjoy it now, pay later.”

Systems such as credit cards with immediate use with payment. However, this strategy requires in itself the risk that users take into account only the short-term effects and do not think about the consequences of the consequences (debt or lack of savings). It also eliminates one of the answers to what happiness is: anticipation.

Eating a brownie right after you buy it will only help you marginally. While the very process of buying, waiting to go back and eat it later, taking your time and not enjoying it, especially in relation to consumption, will give you the joy of anticipation.

But not every time has happened with a delicious brownie in the bag, has it? We tend to think that growth in the future won’t be what it is now, so why wait?

This waiting also gives us other benefits, like being able to review our choices. In one case, people who had to make a choice between a banana and a candy bar made their choice based on when they were going to eat it.

So, if they wanted to eat it at that moment, they chose the chocolate bar; if they had to eat it for good luck, they thought it would no longer be the bar they would use in the future, so they chose the banana (also with health benefits in mind).

Think about what you didn’t take into account

We tend to think about future plans in less concrete terms than we do about present events. For example, 89% of participants in a Canadian study think that renting a country house is a good idea to spend this summer with family.

But they don’t take into account details such as a snoring aunt or the problem of choosing groceries for lunch given the different preferences of family members. In other words, they didn’t take into account the small details that create the microcosms that should have benefited this experience.

So don’t idealize plans for the future, because it’s a long way off. But try to think about how to take them better.

Compare than before you buy

Fancy sites for comparing products, prices, analysis, etc. But what happens when we compare parts to find the best option: the easiest, the most beautiful, the most comfortable?

In cases, money can’t buy happiness. Comparisons applications on us from paying special attention from the technical details we are really looking for, and seeing the features that are missing, or considering other options.

A study of Harvard students when choosing where to live in their first year revealed an interesting fact. They pay more attention to individual characteristics, such as the location of the apartment, what’s required, like relationships with roommates. However, when questioned prior to the experiment, they claimed that a good roommate atmosphere would be more important to them than things like the size of the apartment.

So reevaluations of details arise, and people get hung up on those happiness things that are less properties on feeling, on gaining what really matters.

To be satisfied with the simplest things, to live in the moment here and now, is the very Happiness of Man.