The happiness transaction
Whoever said money can’t buy you happiness, they’re right. However, money does buy you the ability to get access to things which you’d feel good about. It’s then up to you to decide how you spend your resources. You can go for the quick hits of dopamine, or the sense of have done something good.
I was listening to a talk by Simon Sinek where he placed emphasis that we do most of the things for ourselves. I’m clearly inspired… but if you’re interested, listen to it here. The moment we do something for someone else, without expecting anything back, that’s when we get pure happiness. So basically:
- We know we’ve got the resources (which we should always be grateful for)
- We also know that we’d like to help others
- We (also,) also know that we’d like to feel good and accomplished at the end of the day
I figured why not bridge the gap by what is probably second nature within the creative community: Prompts. These are basically quick actions you can execute without a lot of thinking just to get you in the mood to work on the actual task at hand. You can read more about it’s history here.
Intro — Happiness transactions. These are prompts which would quickly set you off with the mindset of being selfishly selfless. The easiest way to begin is with a purchase, hence the word transaction.
Stuff you can start right away
- Buy some fruit from a local peddler and give it to anyone who wouldn’t react strangely to it. Personal experience so far suggests gate-keepers, maid/ janitors, the people you see around daily asking for some money etc.
- Buy someone lunch.
- Buy a needy person some lunch without them asking you.
- Buy anything from a local vendor and gift it away etc.
You get the idea…
Happiness investments
If you’re up for it, the following are a bit advanced and ironically don’t require you to spend (money) on it.
- Give away your favorite piece of clothing to someone who’d use it.
- Dont stop at wearables, do it with electronics, tools, furniture etc.
- Start giving away things you don’t use.
- Volunteer: be it events/ helping people or non-profits.
Some pro-tips to keep things a bit more consistent:
- Fix a day/ time of the week when you’d do this
- Alternatively, you can have a trigger when you’d have to do it (every time you use online banking etc.)
- Ideally, mix it up with both of the above
- Motivate others to do this. (May use social media to do this.)
- Keep it extremely secretive. (No need for social media to know of that transaction.)
Start today
I hope you found this quick read useful. I’d strongly suggest you to begin right away, or the next time you get head out.
You’d feel better, that’s a guarantee.
