Some people imagine that creating happiness is an easy task. However, it is one of the most challenging and arduous tasks to accomplish due to the prevailing economic hardships consistently witnessed all over the world today. The task of creating happiness further get complicated by the fact that many people have some money but they do not know how to use it appropriately to make themselves happy. However, creating happiness by the use of money can be very simple if a person can learn the approaches to take in using the money to achieve happiness. This happiness generally comes from a number of things people ignore to buy when they have money. Spending money on enjoying various experiences and traveling to various destinations can make a person jubilant rather than concentrating on buying material stuff like food, clothing, and property which at long run shall further stress the buyer due to attention involved in their maintenance.
The hedonic treadmill theory suggests that people can get a lot of happiness with money; however, the most important thing is that they have to understand better the things which shall finally keep him/her on the hedonic treadmill. This is crucial to note because just as mentioned earlier majority of people who have a lot of money end up using it wrongly and due to their ignorance, they are unable to get the necessary happiness out of it. Due to this reason, the hedonic treadmill theory emphasizes the importance of understanding the things which if money acquires shall result in the extreme happiness of an individual. Research has found out several things that people use which cannot make them happy even if they continue using for long. Not everything that money can buy can make an individual happy and due to this people should apply the hedonic treadmill theory of happiness in their daily lives to enable them to identify which items if they buy can make them jubilant (Boyce, Brown & Moore, 2010).
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In comparing the happiness in Africa and Switzerland, some fundamental differences emerge. It is evident that in spite the common high living standards in Switzerland, there are still many suicidal ideation cases being witnessed due to the inabilities to use money to buy experiences. Conversely, in Africa where people live below the average standards of life, they are happy since they use the little money they have to gather around the campfire, sing and dance thus leading to a lot of happiness. The majority of Switzerland people have failed to apply the hedonic treadmill theory of happiness as expected and this leads to the inability to use the lots of resources they have to acquire happiness. This is evident in the case study proving that it is imperative to use money in buying beautiful experiences like visiting attractive tourist destinations of the world instead of using money just to buy material things which at long run shall not give one their happiness. The Africans are able to use little money they have to buy happiness, and this is vital since it helps in eliminating cases of suicides, murder and crime rates among Africans (Diener, Lucas & Scollon, 2006).
The majority of Switzerland people have been misled by the ever growing costs of modern ways of life and civilization. Modernity and civilization have led to cultural fraud due to the promotion of images and ideals of high living standards that only serve the economy at the expense of meeting the psychological demands of people hence denying them happiness that they deserve. According to hedonic treadmill theory of happiness, the following are the three pieces of evidence of happy living (Mancini, Bonanno & Clark, 2011)
a. The growing traditional experiences of life are found to have a lot of happiness with high correlations of happiness. The experiences include cultural dances, gathering campfire, cultural dances among others. In fact, the list is endless, so it is upon an individual to choose which ones suit him/her the most to get happiness.
b. However, hedonic treadmill theory establishes that the growing number of longitudinal studies have contributed significantly in denying people their happiness through several decades of life. These activities have completely changed people’s happiness since they spend most of their time focusing on achieving goals of life like money and status.
c. Being fully engaged in pursuing academics can make somebody completely unable to take part in fun and life experiences which can make him/her happy leading to living a miserable life as seen with the people of Switzerland in the case study above (Boyce et al, 2010).
Conclusion
These few examples mentioned above show that successful pursuit of happiness needs a departure from most engaging activities of life to enable an individual to get humble time to approach life. The hedonic treadmill theory of happiness ascertains that getting married, having kids and buying a big house are not enough to make a person happy; however, a person must understand and get involved in activities that are associated with feelings and experiences generate happiness. The theory further establishes that spending the entire life seeking fame and wealth is just a dead end to an individual. However, the theory indicates that successful pursuit of happiness needs thoughtful approaches of pursuing counter-initiative life activities. Moreover, this research proves the reasons why people who live a simple life are normally happy, unlike the ones who are engaged with job or studies that seem to be very dull.
References
Boyce, C. J., Brown, G. D., & Moore, S. C. (2010). Money and happiness: Rank of income, not income, affects life satisfaction. Psychological Science , 21(4), 471-475.
Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., & Scollon, C. N. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American psychologist , 61(4), 305.
Mancini, A. D., Bonanno, G. A., & Clark, A. E. (2011). Stepping off the hedonic treadmill: Individual Differences in Response to Major Life Events. Journal of Individual Differences . 32, (2011), 144-152.
