This is the second article in a series on how to increase your happiness with how you spend your money. These concepts come from the book, Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton.
The second concept is, Make it a Treat.
I am one of seven children. We very rarely went out to eat growing up, with one exception. Every year, the whole family went out to dinner on Christmas Eve. This was a super special, unusual and wonderful part of our holiday traditions (except for the part where I over ate and then threw up many years in a row due to the excitement and over eating…) To me, this is the perfect example of “Making it a Treat.”
The general gist of this concept is that as humans for both good and bad, we adjust and accept our “normal” situation. An example of this, in the negative sense, is when you first walk into the monkey house at the zoo. It always smells SO overwhelmingly bad at first but then once you are in there for a little while, you get used to and don’t notice the smell any more.
The opposite is true too. Studies show that if you have a piece of chocolate every day, you don’t enjoy it as much as if you only do it occasionally. A great example of this is in Roald Dahl’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Charlie only gets one chocolate bar a year and he looks forward to it for 11 months and then nibbles it and savors every tiny bite so that he makes the chocolate last for a month.
The Happy Money book gives example after example of how “the more we’re exposed to something, the more its impact on our joy and happiness diminishes.”
Companies take advantage of this and have “seasonal” special food or drink items only available at certain times. I never understood why they did this but now I do. This is actually beneficial because when items are for a “limited time” people make a special effort to go get something that is not always available.
Most people understand that the longer we have or do something it will decrease in pleasure provided. Think about how much you enjoy driving your new car and then two years later it is not as fun or exciting. It isn’t “special” any more. Yet we don’t use this information to help us use our money more wisely with regards to our happiness. Our default is to assume that more is better.
The Happy Money book talks about this concept with bigger ticket items like a car. Most people that buy an expensive car enjoy it, especially at first, but when you use it all the time it is not adding much to your happiness. After all, most of its use is for commuting and spent in traffic. This is where the authors recommend that you drive a dependable economical vehicle for everyday use, but splurge and spend the extra money when you rent one or for rare occasions. (This also overlaps with the first Happy Money concept – Buy Experiences.) Then you appreciate and REALLY enjoy the expensive car as a treat rather than having the cost and expense of a high end car and its insurance that you are paying for every day.
I know some people, who LOVE and look forward and say they “need” their fancy coffee or a chocolate every day. I’m not saying that they don’t enjoy it. The Happy Money book says that they would enjoy it MORE when they don’t have it or do it as often. There are affects on your happiness and your bank account with both big and smaller ticket items.
Only you know what will help you enjoy certain things in your life more by making them “treats.” Only you know when you reach that point of something being an expectation or the norm and you don’t derive as much happiness from it. Although, I think most of us live on autopilot so we don’t even notice that we are not deriving as much happiness and joy from something that we like and do regularly.
Part of this concept is just disrupting the pattern. If you still look forward to it, then is it still a treat? Experiment and see what changes can lead you to enjoying things MORE in your life so you appreciate them MORE.
“Abundance is the enemy of appreciation.”
Think about what enough is. Spending less money and doing things less consistently may increase the joy and happiness to your life because it is no longer the “norm” or the usual.
Keep the special treats “special.”
Part of this is an attitude of gratitude and appreciation and noticing the joy the things we love give us. We don’t want to take things for granted but our human nature is that we adjust and take things for granted which can affect our happiness. Making an effort not to take things for granted can affect our happiness.
There really is too much of a good thing, at least for our happiness and appreciation.
I would love to hear your thoughts about this. Do you agree or disagree?
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