Stop Spending Money to Avoid Uncomfortable Emotions

While money can’t buy lasting happiness, it can buy you a whole lot of pleasure. The problem is, pleasurable feelings only last till the newness wears off—when the final episode plays, or the bottle of wine runs dry, the happiness you might have briefly felt also disappears.
Material items and bought experiences can make us feel good. But by only focusing on what makes us feel good, we bypass real, sustainable happiness and settle for fleeting pleasure that needs constant replenishing. That puts us into a vicious cycle of always trying to feed an insatiable need. And that is nowhere near happiness.
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Happiness is often misunderstood and misrepresented by what shows up in our feeds or what we see in the media. We tend to think it can only exist in the absence of “bad stuff,” so we spend money to avoid the unfavorable and uncomfortable. But in reality, happiness can be found when we confront (and in some cases even embrace) the discomfort, so we experience the depths of our lows and heights of our highs with a lens of self-awareness of what it means to truly be alive. This is the most important form of work in our lives: the work we do on ourselves, and it has little to do with the pursuit of pleasure.
Having more money might bring pleasure, but it does not bring intrinsic happiness that’s sticky to the soul. Personal growth, meaningful relationships, and states of our physical and mental health contribute...

Source: TIME: Health - January 17, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Jenn Lim Tags: Uncategorized health Mental Health Source Type: news