Bad case of the affluenza going around

It's official. Too much money can indeed be detrimental to you mental and emotional health. It doesn't take Motley Fool to understand, though this respected source of financial related advice recently reviewed the book Affluenza: how to be successful and stay sane.



According to MF:

In his travels around the world, which took up most of 2004, Oliver James discovered that a worldwide surge in material affluence, coupled with the demands of 21st Century living, appears to increase our vulnerability to emotional distress. Thus, in societies where people place a high value on acquiring money and 'designer' brands, looking good in the eyes of others, and wanting to be famous, the incidence of anxiety, depression, personality disorder and substance abuse is high.

It is not surprising that this chase serves to place happiness further out of our reach. The deep irony is not lost on us here at OFD. That when the search for happiness is an outer-directed one, in can take one to the furthest corners of the globe but one is destined not to find it, because it is an inner-directed journey. The capacity lies within us, latent, waiting to be unlocked when we are ready.

Perhaps this calls for a new play for these troubled and typically unsatisfying times. In the spirit of Godot maybe its Waiting for Happiness?.

Life, liberty...but the other pursuit continues to elude us

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his highly engaging book Flow comes to a powerful conclusion. While it is a part of human nature to seek happiness, the reason why we are no closer to attaining it than Aristotle was in his day is that we are looking for it in the wrong place.

His basic thesis is that happiness is an inner-engineered not externally dependent experience. Success depends on the control of consciousness - not the variety of circumstances in the external, physical world.

It is precisely why people are able to reach the state of happiness despite being in situations in which outer conditions are - objectively speaking - difficult or threatening. He gives accounts from interviews with people from third world countries as well as incarcerated in concentration camps, in which remarkably some individuals described moments of serenity and deep inner calm, peace and more than well-being, profound happiness.

A casual stroll through that list of adjectives brings to OFD's mind one activity in particular: yoga. It is the act of yoking mind and body, but most importantly its intrinsic value is in bringing control and order to consciousness, to clear and focus the mind, the inner reality.

It leads us to a hypothesis which we shall venture out to explore. Whether people who participate in yoga regularly are any closer to happiness than other people.

That sound was the tent being unzipped. We're stepped forth into the wilderness, clip boards and interviewing questions at hand and ready to explore the realm of happiness amidst the populous.

We shall report back.