Teaching Materials
11 Insights of Highly Successful Individuals
Teaching MaterialsInsight #5: The Secret of Happiness
Would a million dollars make you happy?
1. Can you define happiness? People often say you can't define an emotion. Judaism actually gives a definition for happiness. Let me explain.
2. If I offered you a thousand dollars for your eyes - is it a deal? How's about 10K? 100K? 1M?... As much money as I offer you, you'll turn me down - right? Your eyes are worth more to you than all the money in the world
3. So, now, imagine that I'm very wealthy, and after speaking to you for half an hour, I take a liking to you - so much so, that I say to you: let me give you this brief case as a gift. You take the brief case and open it up and look inside. You see wads of $100 bills. There's a million dollars in there for you from me - no strings attached.
So let me ask you - how would you feel - if it were really true? Would you feel like a million dollars?! Wouldn't you be doing a jig down the street?
Now, let me ask you. You have eyes - how do you feel? Most people say - I feel like the same miserable person I was before you asked me! But, if our eyes are worth more to us than any money, and we'd feel ecstatic for the million, shouldn't we feel even more ecstatic that we have eyes? Shouldn't we be doing that jig all the more?
4. So what's the problem? The problem is that we get used to things - we take things for granted. Someone gets a beautiful Porsche for his birthday. He feels grand. Come back in a month - he's miserable again!
If we don't appreciate what we have - there's no point getting any more - we'll just get used to that too. If you can get used to your eyes you can get used to anything. You'll get used to the new car, the new home, the new wife, the kids...
The trick of happiness not to take things for granted. If you learn how to appreciate your eyes, you can learn how to appreciate all the gifts of life. That's why every morning in Judaism we get up and say, thank you G-d, for giving me life. We appreciate that we can think, see, walk, and that we have all our needs both physical and spiritual. We say blessings on food - to appreciate the food that we eat - not to take it for granted.
Happiness is the emotion of pleasure that we feel when we appreciate what we have. Misery is the reverse. To be thoroughly miserable - just take all your blessings for granted, and focus on what you don't have - a bad day at work, I'm not making as much money as I'd like, I'm not as popular as Joe, I don't have the perfect job, girl friend or just that I lost my parker pen.
The fact is that it's much easier to focus on what you don't have than what you do - we just slide right into it. It's easier to get up in the morning and think: oh no - another work day at that miserable job... and I can't believe it's raining again (good for English audiences especially!)...and I hate that train ride - especially all those weird & miserable people on the subway... and I wish my work-mates wouldn't be so irritating...and my boss is so controlling.... etc
A blind person who can see for the first time is ecstatic. So what's the difference between him and us? Just that we've had the miracle of sight for a whole lot longer! And we got used to it!
We should be all the more ecstatic.
To appreciate all the beautiful things we do have - so many of which are worth more than any money, we have to exert the effort to appreciate what we do have and not take it for granted. Each one of us has eyes, ears, a heart that pumps, hands and legs, friends and family - gifts worth more than any money. Each one of us is a walking multi-millionaire, even if we don't have a penny to our names. We just have to learn how to appreciate what we already have - how rich we truly are. That's happiness.
Addendum:
- Imagine a person who's a millionaire. There's just one catch. The money is hidden under the floorboards of his home and he doesn't know it. So he goes around as a pauper looking for food in trashcans and begging on the streets. Is that a crying shame?
- We're the same: we are truly rich - we have so much, we just don't "know it." When we take the time to appreciate what we truly have, we become aware of the true wealth that is our inheritance. If we really did that, we'd be doing that jig down the street each and every day.
See 48 Ways: no 27. Foundations classes: Happiness
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