How to Feel Wealthy Without Money

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer, and here’s another edition of the Happiness Show. So, here I am, still in Vegas, still with this blank slate behind me, uh, an office wall that’s got nothing on it yet because I’m busy building a home here. And, you know, it’s interesting, I’ve got, of course, a home in Victoria, British Columbia, and it’s fully set up with furniture and all the things that you possibly need, and I generally don’t consume a whole lot. But now that I’m here in Vegas, relatively new, I’m setting up a whole household and that means buying a lot of stuff, which has caused me to be quite aware of my own consumerism. And juxtaposed with that is, I happen to be just reading a book. In fact, just finished a book that’s got a Buddhist perspective on wealth. Beautiful, what a great lesson, and that’s what I’m going to share with you today.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So, stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. Okay, there’s this wonderful book I’m reading, and the details are going to be below. It’s a very hardcore Buddhist perspective on well-being through an economic lens. Beautiful read, and I wanted to share with you that, you know, I came from a family that had frugality built into it.

I was the youngest of six kids, single-parent household, we didn’t have a lot of money on a relative basis to some of our friends and family. On a reality basis, all of our needs were met and then some, but we had this perspective that we were poor relative to, you know, some of my best friends and that some things that other people had, wow, that’s a nice new car, or a big fancy trailer, or whatever, we didn’t have that stuff. And I brought that frugality, this kind of way of being, into my adult life pretty readily. And of course, I wasn’t busy consuming a lot of stuff in Victoria, British Columbia, because my house was completely established. It was one of these cases like I don’t possibly need to put another thing in the house. I kind of believed in minimalism and yet struggled to keep the house free of clutter.

But here I am in a place where I’m buying stuff. Setting up the studio that you can’t see, all the gear that’s in here, but this office, this studio, has got a lot of new things in it. And there’s a new living room and a new bedroom, furniture, and all that kind of stuff that you get with a new house. And at the same time, as I’m doing all this acquiring of stuff, I’m reading this beautiful book, just finished, that offers this perspective that wealthiness is a feeling. It’s not a material fact. You know, it’s always a relative basis when we’re looking to the external world for how wealthy we are.

If you’re a standard of living that’s, you know, middle class and Middle America, you can always look across to the suburbs and say, you know, somebody’s got a better standard of living there, and I should have a newer car, whatever, newer house. And even if you’re a many times over a multi-millionaire, you can look to the person living in a private island, that’s a billionaire, and there’s always this sense that I could have more, and I could achieve more wealth. And we know from lots of research that the more we think about that stuff, the more we try to pursue the additional acquisition of material things, and that the more we’re materialistic, the less happy we are, the more depressed we become.

In addition, the science shows really clearly that once you meet your basic levels of need for survival, food, shelter, clothing, medicine, that kind of thing, we reach a certain level of happiness, and almost no additional money makes any difference to that level of happiness. Basic needs get met, we become happy, and then all the money in the world makes people infinitesimally happier still. So, what’s going on here that we have so much interest in wealth, and contemplation, and concern for it? Well, it’s because we’re busy looking at the external world, and we’re judging our well-being on what we see around us.

And yet, what we’re pursuing, when we all think about it, is some way of feeling. So, so long as we’re looking to the external world with its changing, myriad stimuli, we are always going to be able to want more and say there’s something I am missing. But if you consider for yourself any time that you’ve reflected on times when you were highly content, maybe even from an economic perspective, you got a bonus at work and you felt great. You went bought yourself a treat, or you put some money in savings or something, and it felt good, you felt in that moment a sense of wealthiness. Well, that’s the lesson, is that it’s always going to be an internal job, we will never achieve wealthiness if our standard is external to ourselves.

“So, as a Buddhist, which I’m not, but as a Buddhist, you would say the path to resolving these conflicts between what’s external and trying to satisfy a need that will never be met, and becoming still and genuinely satisfied with the internal feelings that I want. We do that through contemplative practice. We meditate. We become friends with our thoughts and become aware of our actuality of our thoughts and feelings, and what’s really true in our material world. And once we become really, really aware of it, and aware of our feelings, we can become reasonably content that I’m actually okay, no matter what the circumstances are of my external world because you’re really in touch with your internal world.”

“And so, if you’re not going to pick up a meditation practice, although I highly encourage it as a result of this video, I would like you to at least contemplate this idea: that your own sense of wealthiness will always be an internal job. So, simply think about that for a moment, and say that there have been times in my life when I felt content and well off.”

“And that may have occurred because of something you acquired, but nevertheless, it was a fleeting feeling because you continue to have the external comparisons. And if you consider for yourself that it’s entirely in truth, something that you can generate for yourself, maybe David will play a clip from that Cheryl Crowe song where it’s wanting what you have. It’s wanting what you have that matters, and it’s not especially wanting what you have externally. It’s what you’re wanting, what you have here in your heart, and you’ve got it, feeling that your basic needs are met and you’re okay. If that’s true, and you’re wealthy.”

“Hey, if you like this kind of content, click the Like button, subscribe to my channel, get a new video every Sunday morning. Thanks for watching. See you next time, I’m Paul Krismer.”