• Blog
• What I can do for you
• About Helene D.
• Introverts & Success
• Dealing With Fear
• Contact Me

We Could Be Happy If We Didn’t Have to Work

The freedom to get up when we want, do what we want. Not to have to worry about getting ahead, or even keeping our jobs or our clients. Not having to solve problems all the time.

Can’t you feel the relief? No wonder the hammock swimming from the tree is such a frequent setting for ads.

But is it really true that people who don’t have to work are happier? To make it a fair comparison, you can’t look only at retired people but also at people in their 30s, 40s and 50s who are, as they say, independently wealthy because of inheritance, marriage, or prior lucrative businesses (or even lottery winners, but that’s a story in its own).

And guess what: once a basic lifestyle has been secure, there is little correlation between wealth and happiness.

Isn’t that counter intuitive? We’ve all said “money doesn’t create happiness” but the vast majority of us deep down really thought: “But I’d be different. Give me the money to free me from my rat race and I’ll have it made.”

We want the freedom to play, create, and have flexibility. The trouble is, many of us forget what we wanted to have money do for us in the first place. We might travel, buy nice things and entertain ourselves, but when we take time to reflect on it, our life feels rather aimless.

In his best seller book, “The 4-Hour Workweek” Tim Ferris says that when he goes on one of his extended stays in a foreign country, he always creates for himself both a physical and an intellectual project. His life purpose seems to be to challenge himself and to learn.

That sums up rather well the psyche of the human spirit.

And you know, we can do that even if we still have to work.

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.

Bad Behavior has blocked 89 access attempts in the last 7 days.