Why insecure people buy more things

a post by Matthew Davis for the Big Think blog

Money may not buy you love, but it won't break your heart either.

• The link between a poor interpersonal life and materialism has been known for decades, but the exact reason for this connection hasn't been clear.
• New research shows that two problematic attachment styles can push people towards seeking the love and affection they crave in material wealth.
• The study shows both how broken-hearted people use materialism as a crutch and how this dependency can be reversed.

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Why I'm Choosing Happiness Before Success

a post by Will Aylward for the Tiny Buddha blog


“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” ~Alan Watts

I love how instant modern life has become.

When I’m hungry, without really moving, I can instantly get food delivered to me. Pizza, of course. When I’m hungry for knowledge, at the touch of a button on my mobile, I can discover answers to the questions I’m pondering. No need to head to the library to search for and flick through books.

Some would argue that this instantaneousness is making us lazy. Regardless, I find it astonishing the speed we can get what we want.

Why, then, have I found myself delaying the one thing I want most—happiness?

Like many of us, I’m driven. I love to challenge myself, set goals, and do my best to achieve them.

There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious. It’s only a problem when I tell myself “I won’t be happy until… happens” or “I won’t be happy until I have…”

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We All Need to Define “Success” for Ourselves

a post by Pam Bauer for the Tiny Buddha blog


“There’s no such thing as what you ‘should’ be doing with your life.” –Lori Deschene

How often have you thought about what success means to you?

If you’re anything like my younger self, that would be almost never. It’s not that I didn’t want to be successful. It’s just that it wasn’t something I’d given much thought to. No one ever asked me about it or even encouraged me to think about success. I’d just absorbed it from the people and culture around me, watching how they lived and what was important to them.

From what I saw around me, I internalized a vague idea of success as looking like a decent job and a house with a dining room and a tidy green lawn. So that’s what I was going to do. I was going to follow that plan for success and live happily ever after. How could there be anything wrong with this plan? Who wouldn’t want these things?

I was going to make this dream happen. I went to college, got a good corporate job, and waited for happiness to rain down on me. It didn’t. I was miserable in that job and left it to try a different position. And then another different position.

Along the way, I became a homeowner with a dining room and a tidy green lawn. Okay, happiness – I’m ready for you! But it turned out that I hated the upkeep of a lawn, and the dining room gathered dust because it was hardly used.

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What Really Makes Us Feel Successful

a post by Eugene Choi for the Tiny Buddha blog


“Congratulations on becoming successful and best wishes on becoming happy.” ~John Mayer

I was living the life of my dreams.

Or so I thought.

I’ve been very fortunate to have had some very awesome opportunities all over the world.

I’ve worked to help victims of human trafficking in the shady streets of Thailand, I’ve helped build a positive community with drug traffickers in the extremely violent favelas of Brazil, and I’ve cared for terminally ill patients who were picked up from the streets die with dignity at Mother Theresa’s famous House of the Dying in India.

I also got involved with the non-profit filmmaking group the Jubilee Project, where I had the opportunity to create films for a good cause. We’ve made films with various celebrities and professional actors, and our work together has received millions of views on YouTube.

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It is quite a long read but well worth ploughing through to the end. IMO.

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Does Happiness Promote Career Success? Revisiting the Evidence

an article by Lisa C. Walsh and Sonja Lyubomirsky (University of California, Riverside, USA) and Julia K. Boehm (Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA) published in Journal of Career Assessment Volume 26 Issue 2 (May 2018)

Abstract

Empirical research demonstrates a relationship between happiness and career success.

For example, happy people receive higher earnings, exhibit better performance, and obtain more favorable supervisor evaluations than their less happy peers.

Researchers have posited that success leads to happiness, but Boehm and Lyubomirsky reviewed the relevant research in 2008 and argued that the alternative hypothesis – that happiness causes success – may be equally plausible.

A decade later, we return to the literature to supplement studies we previously cited with new research and to determine whether the results of cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental investigations provide additional support for this hypothesis.

We conclude that the evidence continues to persuasively suggest that happiness is correlated with and often precedes career success and that experimentally enhancing positive emotions leads to improved outcomes in the workplace.

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We Each Get to Decide What Success Means for Ourselves

a post by Orit Wittenberg for the Tiny Buddha blog


“In this world, an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life.” ~Brené Brown 

As I see it, there are two types of people out there.

There are those who read goal attainment books and feel inspired, and me.

The former will read the anecdotes about all those underdogs who beat the odds and managed to achieve wealth and prestige beyond their wildest dreams, and will say to themselves, “Wow! That could be me!” They’ll feel enlightened, invigorated, and revved up to make a change.

And then there’s me.

While I may initially pick up such a book with genuine interest, my desire to whip my life into shape will invariably do an about-face leaving me anything but inspired. If I say anything to myself as I read, it’s more likely to be a string of ego-deflating curses than a yearning-filled “one day that’ll be me”.

I actually discovered my aversion for success books by accident. Charged for work with the task of developing an online course on the topic of goal attainment, I began to do some research.

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Do not read the books with the idea of following every suggestion as though it was an instruction.
Take what you like and leave the rest.
Or leave the success books alone.
My success is not your success.
Annie succeeds every time she manages to make a telephone call.
Bernie manages to get out of the front door and close it behind him. Success.
I succeed when I can hear a certain voice and not become a quivering heap on the floor.

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Why We Need to Stop Chasing Success and Start Enjoying the Little Things in Life

a post by Mercy Torres for the Tiny Buddha blog



The philosopher Alan Watts always said that life is like a song, and the sole purpose of the song is to dance.

He said that when we listen to a song, we don’t dance with the goal of getting to the end of the music. We dance to enjoy it.

This isn’t always how we live our lives. Instead, we rush through our moments, thinking there’s always something better, there’s always some goal we need to achieve. This is my journey through a song without the dance and the lessons I’ve learned, from Alan Watts, along the way.

“Existence is meant to be fun. It doesn't go anywhere it just is.”

I sat in my car, fixated on my hands. Hot tears welled in my eyes and slowly streamed down my cheeks. I lost focus of the very thing that held the answer to my problem.

I remember thinking about how my nails grow on their own, how my hair grows and my heart beats, and the tears fall. All without effort or pain, these things happen. They’re effortless. Why was life so difficult?

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