Should I buy experiences or things?

Hi, it’s Paul Krismer, your happiness expert, and so good to be with you again this week. You know, the last couple of weeks, I’ve been giving you updates from the refugee center in Poland where we’ve been working. We went there obviously because we wanted to do a good deed, but also because we wanted the experience of doing that good deed too. Today, David and I are flying on to Las Vegas and Paul Jr., he’s going back to France. So, we all flew to Amsterdam together. Paul’s at the airport waiting to get a plane straight to Montpellier, and Dave and I have a long layover, so we’re popping into Amsterdam Central, which is where I am now. We’re about to go on a canal cruise. David’s never been, so we’ll go to the red light district and show him that kind of weird part of this part of the world. This kind of goes to the point of the whole trip. I mean, it seems kind of weird, and selfish, but we took on this journey into Europe for the experiences. That goes directly to the science of the benefit of buying experiences over buying things, and so that’s what this video is very briefly going to be about.

As international public speakers and best-selling authors, stay tuned to hear Paul and Jackson teach the practical science behind happiness and success. You can see just how incredibly beautiful this part of the world is. Amsterdam’s one of my favorite European cities, just so lovely with the amazing architecture and the canals, of course, which is a World Heritage dedicated site because it’s just so unique. This city is prosperous and doing so well. It stands on some contrast to the people we were working with in Ukraine who were poor and finding refuge wherever they can in Europe and elsewhere. This rich experience that we’ve had, it makes sense that this correlates really well with increased happiness. I’ve done it with my sons. It’s going to be the trip that we’ll remember together for many, many years to come, and we will be able to talk about the different experiences we had while we were there, working with the kids from Ukraine.

Paul Jr. got ridiculously sick. We were all sick for a while, working in the refugee center, but at the end, Paul got bronchitis and had multiple viral infections. Thank goodness he was safe to travel today after a big blast of antibiotics. And oddly, David asked Paul, he said, “How are you going to look at this trip?” He says, “Well, I’m not feeling so great about it right at this moment, but I know that in time, I’m going to look back at it fondly.” Isn’t that the interesting thing about experiences that we share with people? It’s the memories it creates. It’s the opportunity to bond over both the wonderful experiences and also the hardships that we go through together. It’s the novelty of it. We’ve talked about how novelty is an important source of happiness as well in a previous video. Maybe David will create the link to that one because it’s a unique aspect of growing happier.

Anyway, the point is generally that we know from lots of research, buying things makes us happy, and it fades very quickly. But buying experiences, by contrast, is richer and it leaves a memory, especially when you do it in a social way. So, that’s it for this week. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time. Bye for now.