“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” — Abraham Maslow

smiley faces

Nate Nickerson, the former managing editor of FastCompany, wrote an article on priorities and how it impacts happiness. He writes, “A few years ago, a colleague in his fifties mentioned a TV program in which old people were asked to reflect on their lives. Many expressed regret that they had not taken more risks. My friend muttered that it was too late for him to do anything wild. I tucked this weird, sad moment away: Reverse-engineer your life, I told myself. Try to imagine that you’ll be interviewed in 50 years and asked, ‘Any regrets?’ The real risk, I came to realize, was that I wasn’t taking enough risk.”

The topic of: risk, reward, happiness often presents itself when people consider retirement. What have you retired for? But isn’t the better question: What are we doing today? And is this making us happy?

Daniel Gilbert at Time Magazine posed this question, “When something makes us happy we are willing to pay a lot for it, which is why the worst Belgian chocolate is more expensive than the best Belgian tofu. But that process can work in reverse: when we pay a lot for something, we assume it makes us happy, which is why we swear to the wonders of bottled water and Armani socks.”

Here is a cheat sheet that lists a few other posts on money and happiness:

Frustrated with your career? Take a time-out.
Does money makes you feel better and more important than you really are? Explore your relationship with money.
Need to breathe and reassess? Schedule some stolen time. Get off the hedonic treadmill.
Tired of keeping up with the Joneses? You can’t buy self-esteem and keeping up appearances will cost you a fortune.
Love to shop? Is the shopping hangover worth it?
In a partnership? Talk about money.
Does money buy happiness? See what others are saying.

As one author put it, “In the end, happiness is about wanting and managing what you already have.”