Become Who You Were Born to Be: We All Have a Gift. . . . Have You Discovered Yours? by Brian Souza

Author:Brian Souza
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony
Published: 2007-04-09T14:00:00+00:00

Diagnosing the problem

As Maslow showed and Monaghan discovered, satisfying a need whets our appetite for more. Thus, we’re continually trying to fill a need that has already been filled. We’re like a dog chasing its tail, trying to satisfy ourselves with “bigger, better, more” of the basic needs instead of taking that next step to fulfill our highest need: to become who we were born to be.

Our culture tells us we’ll be happier and feel better if we surround ourselves with flashy symbols and things others can admire. But David Myers and Ed Diener—two esteemed psychologists specializing in “subjective well-being” (the study of happiness) found out in a recent study that in truth, “people have not become happier over time as their cultures have become more affluent. Even though Americans earn twice as much in today’s dollars as they did in 1957, the proportion of those telling the surveyors of the National Opinion Research Center that they are ‘very happy’ had declined from 35 to 29 percent since that time. Even very rich people—those surveyed among Forbes magazine’s hundred wealthiest Americans—are only slightly happier than the average American.”

According to the Economist magazine, “Surveys suggest that, on average, people in America, Europe, and Japan are no more pleased with their lot than in the 1950s.” The article continues, “An individual who becomes richer becomes happier; but when society as a whole grows richer, nobody seems any more content.”

People work harder in an attempt to earn more money and become happier. However, while they may be earning more money, so is everyone else. Thus, they’re not any happier than they were before. Further evidence of this phenomenon comes from a study conducted by a group of Harvard students in which they asked respondents if they would prefer:

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