 |
|
How You Juggle "Money + Success = Happiness:" What's the Point?
The point is to use this story to clarify what money and success do well, and what they really don't do at all, then to figure out how you can apply that wisdom to your own life. The point is not that you should chuck what you're doing, become an entrepreneur, earn a few million dollars, then take a sabbatical. The point is to figure out how money and success play out for you, and what they have to do with your happiness. In my view, money does two really big things. First, money buys breathing room. When you have to work every waking moment to put food on the table and pay the heat and light bills, you don't have a choice about taking your hand off the hot burner. You're stuck. That's something to think about - ahead of time - if you are a young person or a person returning to the marketplace who feels drawn to a low-paying occupation. If you choose low-paying work, or if you're in low-paying work and you choose to stay there, you'll never have much breathing room. The second important insight is that money buys "containers" - things that you get to fill with your own sense of meaning. In Joan's case, the container is the sabbatical. What the sabbatical means to Joan is a chance to let her spirit rediscover its roots. Be careful to note that the container doesn't come already filled with meaning. You have to create the meaning yourself. Money doesn't buy meaning; money only buys containers. What about success? Professional success allows you to develop your capabilities in a larger world than home and hearth, and to have those capabilities affirmed by people who have no vested interest in making you feel good. That's extremely valuable information, and important to both self-esteem and having a sense of purpose Money and success do not, all alone, add up to happiness. Most of us know that by now, even if we are still in hot pursuit. The equation is useful to work with because it reflects what a lot of people start out thinking and it's highly visual. But, it's not a "real" equation because one side doesn't really add up to the other. A more honest, if less dramatic, way to write it might be this:
MONEY, SUCCESS, THEN HAPPINESS To take a crack at applying the point of Joan's story to your own life, consider a financial commitment you've recently made or are thinking of making, in the hope that something will happen for you. Then try answering these questions:
Is All of This Always So Long-Term? The CEO of a San Francisco company has just separated from her husband of nineteen years and bought a million-dollar home in the East Bay. Her house overlooks the spectacular vista of the Bay Bridge and the shimmering lights of the city. I asked her how it is to live there. "Lonely. A lot to take care of. I get home late, and the last thing I want to do is go over the contractor's punch list, or start making calls about finding a gardener, or go out and look at furniture. Having a house like this has been my dream for a long time; I really thought it would make me happier than it has. Right now it's just another burden."This 42-year-old executive is a brilliant business strategist. She literally "sees" the direction of her fast-moving industry eighteen to twenty-four months out, and gets herself and her company in the right position to benefit. She's earned a solid six-figure salary for at least ten years, and has recently made significant money on stock options. She has a net worth of several million dollars, depending on the day-to-day market valuation of her assets. The choice to leave the marriage was hers. She has no children, and no plans to have them. Gaining financial independence and being recognized professionally have long been important goals. She's achieved both. Looking at her words without judging her choices, we can see that she hoped buying the million-dollar home and living among other successful people would bring happiness. So far, happiness hasn't come. As she and I started our work together, I offered this counsel, drawn from my work with Joan and many others: "If you want money and success and happiness, there's something here that needs to be figured out. Just getting more of the same, that is, more money and professional recognition, won't do it. Even more important, the skills you need to figure out 'happiness' are almost the mirror opposites of the skills you've needed to build assets and a business reputation. Now you'll need to exercise flexibility instead of control, patience instead of speed, openness instead of secrecy. You'll do well to expect the messiness of clashing human values, not the simple elegance of brilliant business judgment. You'll also need to broaden your focus to allow different story threads to come into play, not just focus laser-like on where your industry is going, or whether your investments move up, down, or stay the same." As in Joan's situation, we can see this as another example of money buying a container - the house - to hold a certain emotional expectation. The CEO hoped the vessel would come already filled, which it did not. I can't make this point often enough. Money does a generally good job of buying containers. Money does a generally poor job of buying emotions or feelings, such as happiness, as the filling. No more than two or three months had passed when I had another business conversation with this CEO. I remembered to ask about the house. Our talk took place shortly before the Christmas holiday, and her tone was very different. "I've asked my whole extended family to come and stay with me and celebrate Christmas here. It's the first time in my life that's ever happened. Always before, I was the one without children and the one my family saw as the most rootless, so I was expected to pick up and come to them for the holidays. Now I have a place, a home, and I can expect family to come to me." What was really different? The container had been filled - not by things money can buy, but by an inner sense of meaning placed there by this thoughtful woman. An exquisite house can mean many things for a fast-track CEO: a place to entertain business associates, a setting for glitzy political fund-raisers, a choice focus for a spread in Architectural Digest. Instead, this CEO chose to make her home a statement of her completeness as a person, with or without husband and children, and a symbol of her being rooted, not footloose. That statement came from inside, not outside. "Inside" means that she looked more deeply into her own motivations for buying the house, and took responsibility for saying what she wanted this action to mean. "Not outside" means she wasn't looking for someone else to validate her decision. Her statement of meaning was significant in itself, regardless of how her family or anyone else invited to her home might respond. Some of you might be shaking your heads, protesting, "Then this story really isn't about money. It's about something else, such as a woman coming into her own." Yes, it is about money. The money bought the container. It's also about success. This CEO is not the recipient of family wealth, or a lottery winner, or a skillful white-collar crook. She made the decision years ago to take great professional risks, work enormously long hours, and sacrifice time that might have been spent on relationships in order to meet certain high standards in the business world. To the degree that she has been able to reach inside and discover a sense of meaning in what she now finds possible, the story is also about happiness. Might she have reached happiness without the success, the money, and the house? I don't know. Perhaps. Perhaps not. We live in a country, in an economic system, where most of us get to choose a life path. This CEO got to choose hers, and make what meaning she could of it. I suspect you have that freedom too. Having felt a sense of happiness, is this woman done, her breakthrough complete? The answer is "not yet." Leaving her long-term marriage had an enormous emotional impact. After her family dispersed and she was once again alone, she had this to say: "It took so much emotional energy for me to leave my husband. I wonder now if I have enough life force on my own to fill up all this space. I now understand that you have to bring your own life force. It doesn't just come with buying the house." Money stories have a long reach. They cycle back in time to pull in our families of origin. They go forward in time to test the quality of hope we are able to sustain for the future. They remind us, often in jarring ways, of the cost of continuing to grow. They evolve throughout our lifetime, picking up depth and complexity as they move through the years. Only after a person's death can we listen to his or her money story and call that part of a family money saga "done."
Taking Stock Think about money in a new way, as formative of who you are and as influential in your search for happiness. Learn to work with the money + success = happiness equation. Understand that the equation is deeply affected by social and cultural trends that have changed all of our lives over the past thirty years. Now, the predominant anchor for exploring the money + success = happiness equation is work, not religion or family or local community. Remember that money buys containers. You create meaning. As you progress through the book, I'm going to ask two things. If by chance you bought this book because you're concerned about the way someone else uses money, will you set aside that concern for the moment and focus on yourself? Quite simply, you have to work on your own experience of money before you can have integrity broaching money issues with another person. If you're in the position of depending on someone to provide for you financially, you may feel the book doesn't apply to you. It does. Each of the questions I raise is as important for people without their own direct source of income as for those who are feeling financially flush and professionally challenged. If you've never acted as if money mattered to you, you need to change that. You also need to know how you'd manage if the person now providing for you were no longer available. If you've never asked yourself how power relationships are wielded through money, you need to start. If you don't currently have the leverage you want because you know you don't have the money to walk away, how will you begin to change things? If you've been telling yourself that despite your high-pressure life you really do keep all the balls in the air and cover all the bases, this book may challenge that belief. Becoming clear about your experience of money is absolutely fundamental to your achieving happiness. That means you need to be as honest and as non-judgmental as you can. If you grew up with a critical tape running in your head - something along the lines of "nothing I do is ever good enough" - mentally press the "pause" button and put that tape on hold. Hypercritical perfectionism will really get in your way. Also, keep in mind that taking an honest look at where you are doesn't mean instant change. If you decide later that you need to shift your behavior in some way, you get to establish the timeline and make changes when you're ready. Remembering that will help you manage any unsettled feelings that may arise. Money is very good at buying containers in which we get to try out certain expectations. Money isn't very good at buying meaning to fill the containers - meaning has to come from inside. Learn to use money to do the things it does well, and look elsewhere for the things money does poorly or not at all. • Buy "How Much is Enough? Harness the Power of Your Money Story--And Change Your Life" by Pamela York Klainer Reprinted with Permission by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group -- Copyright © 2002
|
|
|
An excerpt from "