Why You Should Spend Your Money On Experiences, Not Things

Aug 17, 2016 by apost team

Fill your life with experiences, not things because you need more stories to share than stuff to show.

You toil and you sweat and wait for the big fat check. But once you’ve paid the bills, you realize that there isn’t much left of it! Now how does one buy true happiness with limited funds? Science has the answer!

Less is More

Psychology professor Dr. Thomas Gilovich from the Cornell University conducted a 20-year long study and came to a compelling conclusion: Spending money on things does not buy you happiness! It buys you pleasure but the trouble with pleasure is that it is very short-lived. Why? Science shows that there are reasons for this.

1. Even diamonds lose their shimmer. The once exciting worldly possessions quickly become a part of our everyday life and at some point we get so used to them that they seem mundane.

2. We always want bigger and better. There is no end to human desires and we always want a bigger car, a bigger house or that latest gadget.

3. Jealous much? Do you sometimes catch yourself envying your neighbor’s car or that fancy necklace that your friend recently bought? To envy is human but to be trapped in a vicious loop of consumerism is a sure shot way to remain unhappy for the rest of your life.

Gilovich’s research shows that one of the enemies of happiness is adaptation. He says “We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them.”

The paradox of time is that it is free, but it's priceless. And it is certainly more valuable than money. Money can buy you things but it cannot buy you more time. At one point, it may feel right to invest in something that fills your house and makes it look beautiful and complete. But if we take the bigger picture, we need to fill our life with experiences, not things because we need more stories to share than stuff to show.

The Power Of New Beginnings

When was the last time you did something for the first time? New experiences and adventures may sound as momentary as they are but can give long-lasting joy. Let us tell you why:

Each time we experience something new, it broadens our mind and our ability to understand things better and clearer. No matter how much we wish we could just download intelligence or wisdom into our brains, the only way to grow and learn in life is through experience.Decorating your house with fancy furniture won’t change who you are but decorating your passport with stamps certainly will.

As Gilovich says “What we experience in life forms a bigger part of who we are than the worldly possessions we have”. You might relate large investments to large doses of happiness. The thrill of buying a Ferrari, of course, sounds more exciting than the thrill of hiking a mountain but this thrill of having a fancy car will soon fade away. On the other hand, that little spat you had with your inner voices that convinced you to give up and the adrenaline rush you achieved when you completed the hike, is a lesson you learned about yourself and will draw inspiration from for a long long time.

Material things vs experiences.

We cannot really compare the happiness we get from material things vs the experiences. Does size really matter when it comes to true happiness? You need to ask yourself! It's counterintuitive that a non-living thing object you can always own for as long as you live does not keep you happy as long as compared to that one time trip with your school friends does and might do. The best things in life aren’t things.  

The stimulation created by the unknown.

Once in a while, planning to take detours to foreign lands, both literally and metaphorically always stimulates anticipation in us that causes excitement and enjoyment even before we experience it and continues to do so in the form of memories. On the contrary, the anticipation of acquiring a possession causes anxiety, found Gilovich in his study about anticipation.

There is no guarantee about how satisfied you will be and for how long when you buy something material. Chances are, if it’s not, it is always there in your face, laughing at your bad choice. Neither there is any guarantee for how good or bad an experience can be. You might return from your epic trip to a music festival on a cruise with a bruise on your leg from the time you jumped into the middle of the sea, shit happens ! But it makes one hell of a tale to share every time. A good experience is a good experience and a bad experience is a good story. And the best things in life, well, are not things.

A house full of things will only grow to have no more space left but a mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

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