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I think I'm happy and I agree with this paper. I've been struggling with my relationship with money for months and I wish I had read this sooner. After coverin

I think I'm happy and I agree with this paper. I've been struggling with my relationship with money for months and I wish I had read this sooner. After covering your basic needs, money gives you the freedom to pursue your greater needs, and in that sense it can buy happiness. Whether those needs are good relationships, health, or fulfilling work, money in a sense, can buy or help you buy that, at least the time to build relationships or work. However, something I have been struggling with is the hedonic treadmill. I feel like expectations are consistently being raised. I worry that it will never end and I also worry about what will happen if it does end. Has anyone ever felt this way? I think that's the point of enjoying the journey... Does anyone have tips on how to enjoy the journey?

pdimitar 8y ago
This is long. You have been warned. > Does anyone have tips on how to enjoy the journey? Every time in my life I got subdued by my hedonism during my rich perioids I was struck by severely awful series of events that ended up humbling me and making me thankful even if I can only cover bills and food afterwards. EVERY DAMN TIME. So I guess the answer is: you need contrast, for all your life. Which means a lot of pain and stress, periodically, until you learn to universally appreciate what you have and not eternally moving your own personal goalpost. The danger of being rich for a long time is that you lose perspective and have no other extremity to compare with. This leads to many mental problems. Observing myself and others, I noticed that the longer your basic needs are not in danger, the more you lean to doing pretty useless crap: mostly tooting political views of which you know nothing about, or my personal favorite -- looking down on people in ever more and creative ways. I legit heard a former friend of mine say the famous Marie-Antoinette phrase: "No bread? Let them eat cake" when we dicussed the gypsy population of my country. Everybody on the table was baffled even more when we realized that he didn't know about that historical quote at all. He reinvented it right there and then on the spot. Really makes you think what is the common trend that makes people lose touch with reality so severely. What I am trying to say is: when you are rich for a long time, you either become Lara Croft / Batman, or you become a very plain hedonist (like the rich guys who outbid each other on a rare bottle of wine in Vegas and end up paying $6000 for a glass of it... WTF?). Our brains always need to solve problems. So if one lacks ambition to solve hard problems still existing out there then they end up inventing their own problems and focus on them, usually until the day of their death. It's no coincidence that many rich people end up taking a lot of drugs. They have no struggle in their lives at all and end up feeling empty and directionless. Giving example of myself: I am currently in an absolutely horrible period of my life. Lost 3 pretty lucrative jobs / gigs that I managed to juggle for years... basically in 2-3 weeks space (5 months ago), and still cannot recover because I refuse bad jobs and don't want to invite stress and burn out back in my life. (I say I lost them and that's not obscuring reality: I only refused to renew contract on one of them because it was really toxic and stale, and political decisions took the other 2 jobs under my feet basically days later). Long story short, if I manage to stabilize and get to a middle-high-class level again as before, I definitely will be buying myself a few years of break and will just work on trying to invent General Artifical Intelligence. I don't care if I will succeed. It makes me happy and fulfilled to combine workout, walks and movies with my wife, and several hobbies (of which inventing AGI is one). I know I'll never be a hedonist; I would buy myself a beach house and two good bikes but would never ever reach for a private jet even if I can afford a fleet of them. The poor periods of my life have taught me that many kinds of money come with stress and tons of maintenance attached to them. And that other kinds of money you just spend so you can impress other rich people. I don't want any of that crap in my life. Finally, I work really hard to maintain a balance between being rich and having to do minimal housekeeping. That I believe is a very good balancing factor to help you stop and appreciate life as well.
- Regardsyjc 8y ago
  Pdimitar, thank you for sharing. I really appreciate it. I'm sorry that you are going through a terrible period right now. I feel like I'm a little in a similar boat in that I am turning down lucrative opportunities that don't resonate with me... and still trying to navigate that but I am confident that you'll be able to succeed your way out of this slump! You've gotten this far, I think you're just having a small road bump. I totally agree with you. I hope to find balance. For me when I said hedonic treadmill and raising expectations, I wasn't talking about material objects. The number one thing I'm afraid of is always reaching for another personal growth bar. I find success painful. I think I might have success ptsd haha. I've already lost "friends" multiple times, every time I grow. Every time I've grown, I can no longer be happy with where I was or what I achieved. I thought it was good enough to help build businesses that do $100k/mo and then 2-3x that but I just met someone who takes $100k/mo businesses and 5x that. Now the bar has raised and I can't be happy with the success I have achieved so far. And I hate the treadmill of consistently achieving because in my experience it brings pain emotionally and socially as you leave people behind. Unfortunately I know that's the way it is - but I wish I can get better at managing the highs and lows.
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    Oh gods. Seems I made a wrong assumption and just wrote an essay about it. Please accept my apologies, if possible! Looking at it from the side -- I think you are quite okay but still compare to the others. That can be a good motivator but you should stop at some point because it can get very exhausting for your soul. And it can make you pursue outcomes that you will eventually find out you never wanted in the first place. > Now the bar has raised and I can't be happy with the success I have achieved so far. ...But why? Are you aiming at having a network of luxury real estate in Europe and renting that until the end of days? Do you like the idea of a fleet ot private jets or yachts? If not, you should not have any PTSD in my eyes. If your basic needs are met and if you can afford to travel and work on whatever tickles your fancy then you are already in the top 10% rich people in the world. Why is that not good enough? > I find success painful. I can sympathize with that. As mentioned in my previous post, some money come to you attached with a lot of stress and maintenance baggage. Is that the case with your money? I hope not... But if so and if you have enough of them accumulated then you can always hire somebody to manage those for you. Less stress is always worth investing into! > And I hate the treadmill of consistently achieving because in my experience it brings pain emotionally and socially as you leave people behind. Unfortunately I know that's the way it is - but I wish I can get better at managing the highs and lows. That many people are envious and spiteful and drift away from you if you are a better achiever than them is a part of life, an inevitable one at that. I am sorry that you haven't found true friends yet. But they do exist, trust me! There are a lot of pretty cool people out there. You will find them if you get out of your zone. And I am pretty sure you will manage your highs and lows better with time. Just don't second-guess yourself; life is one huge and constant lesson and you never really "complete" it. You just decide one day that enough is enough and you can stop there. Nothing shameful in that, we don't live to only achieve. Wanna chat? My email is in my profile (although a bit obscured to stop spam bots). I feel we both can offer the other side an interesting perspective. If not, apologies for offering it! No disrespect intended. Don't give in to doubts. Reflect on what you have (and others don't) and don't only compare to more successful people than you. Life is not a race. I think you are doing quite well.

pdimitar 8y ago

This is long. You have been warned. > Does anyone have tips on how to enjoy the journey? Every time in my life I got subdued by my hedonism during my rich perioids I was struck by severely awful series of events that ended up humbling me and making me thankful even if I can only cover bills and food afterwards. EVERY DAMN TIME. So I guess the answer is: you need contrast, for all your life. Which means a lot of pain and stress, periodically, until you learn to universally appreciate what you have and not eternally moving your own personal goalpost. The danger of being rich for a long time is that you lose perspective and have no other extremity to compare with. This leads to many mental problems. Observing myself and others, I noticed that the longer your basic needs are not in danger, the more you lean to doing pretty useless crap: mostly tooting political views of which you know nothing about, or my personal favorite -- looking down on people in ever more and creative ways. I legit heard a former friend of mine say the famous Marie-Antoinette phrase: "No bread? Let them eat cake" when we dicussed the gypsy population of my country. Everybody on the table was baffled even more when we realized that he didn't know about that historical quote at all. He reinvented it right there and then on the spot. Really makes you think what is the common trend that makes people lose touch with reality so severely. What I am trying to say is: when you are rich for a long time, you either become Lara Croft / Batman, or you become a very plain hedonist (like the rich guys who outbid each other on a rare bottle of wine in Vegas and end up paying $6000 for a glass of it... WTF?). Our brains always need to solve problems. So if one lacks ambition to solve hard problems still existing out there then they end up inventing their own problems and focus on them, usually until the day of their death. It's no coincidence that many rich people end up taking a lot of drugs. They have no struggle in their lives at all and end up feeling empty and directionless. Giving example of myself: I am currently in an absolutely horrible period of my life. Lost 3 pretty lucrative jobs / gigs that I managed to juggle for years... basically in 2-3 weeks space (5 months ago), and still cannot recover because I refuse bad jobs and don't want to invite stress and burn out back in my life. (I say I lost them and that's not obscuring reality: I only refused to renew contract on one of them because it was really toxic and stale, and political decisions took the other 2 jobs under my feet basically days later). Long story short, if I manage to stabilize and get to a middle-high-class level again as before, I definitely will be buying myself a few years of break and will just work on trying to invent General Artifical Intelligence. I don't care if I will succeed. It makes me happy and fulfilled to combine workout, walks and movies with my wife, and several hobbies (of which inventing AGI is one). I know I'll never be a hedonist; I would buy myself a beach house and two good bikes but would never ever reach for a private jet even if I can afford a fleet of them. The poor periods of my life have taught me that many kinds of money come with stress and tons of maintenance attached to them. And that other kinds of money you just spend so you can impress other rich people. I don't want any of that crap in my life. Finally, I work really hard to maintain a balance between being rich and having to do minimal housekeeping. That I believe is a very good balancing factor to help you stop and appreciate life as well.

Regardsyjc 8y ago
Pdimitar, thank you for sharing. I really appreciate it. I'm sorry that you are going through a terrible period right now. I feel like I'm a little in a similar boat in that I am turning down lucrative opportunities that don't resonate with me... and still trying to navigate that but I am confident that you'll be able to succeed your way out of this slump! You've gotten this far, I think you're just having a small road bump. I totally agree with you. I hope to find balance. For me when I said hedonic treadmill and raising expectations, I wasn't talking about material objects. The number one thing I'm afraid of is always reaching for another personal growth bar. I find success painful. I think I might have success ptsd haha. I've already lost "friends" multiple times, every time I grow. Every time I've grown, I can no longer be happy with where I was or what I achieved. I thought it was good enough to help build businesses that do $100k/mo and then 2-3x that but I just met someone who takes $100k/mo businesses and 5x that. Now the bar has raised and I can't be happy with the success I have achieved so far. And I hate the treadmill of consistently achieving because in my experience it brings pain emotionally and socially as you leave people behind. Unfortunately I know that's the way it is - but I wish I can get better at managing the highs and lows.
- pdimitar 8y ago
  Oh gods. Seems I made a wrong assumption and just wrote an essay about it. Please accept my apologies, if possible! Looking at it from the side -- I think you are quite okay but still compare to the others. That can be a good motivator but you should stop at some point because it can get very exhausting for your soul. And it can make you pursue outcomes that you will eventually find out you never wanted in the first place. > Now the bar has raised and I can't be happy with the success I have achieved so far. ...But why? Are you aiming at having a network of luxury real estate in Europe and renting that until the end of days? Do you like the idea of a fleet ot private jets or yachts? If not, you should not have any PTSD in my eyes. If your basic needs are met and if you can afford to travel and work on whatever tickles your fancy then you are already in the top 10% rich people in the world. Why is that not good enough? > I find success painful. I can sympathize with that. As mentioned in my previous post, some money come to you attached with a lot of stress and maintenance baggage. Is that the case with your money? I hope not... But if so and if you have enough of them accumulated then you can always hire somebody to manage those for you. Less stress is always worth investing into! > And I hate the treadmill of consistently achieving because in my experience it brings pain emotionally and socially as you leave people behind. Unfortunately I know that's the way it is - but I wish I can get better at managing the highs and lows. That many people are envious and spiteful and drift away from you if you are a better achiever than them is a part of life, an inevitable one at that. I am sorry that you haven't found true friends yet. But they do exist, trust me! There are a lot of pretty cool people out there. You will find them if you get out of your zone. And I am pretty sure you will manage your highs and lows better with time. Just don't second-guess yourself; life is one huge and constant lesson and you never really "complete" it. You just decide one day that enough is enough and you can stop there. Nothing shameful in that, we don't live to only achieve. Wanna chat? My email is in my profile (although a bit obscured to stop spam bots). I feel we both can offer the other side an interesting perspective. If not, apologies for offering it! No disrespect intended. Don't give in to doubts. Reflect on what you have (and others don't) and don't only compare to more successful people than you. Life is not a race. I think you are doing quite well.