The other end of the hedonic treadmill is a hungry ghost (borrowed this analogy from Buddhism). Without caring about your overall wellbeing and happiness levels, you keep feeding the hunger of saving and hoarding more. This hunger doesn’t get satiated whatsoever. The insatiable desire of the hungry ghost makes you run around. You will never feel it is enough. That is the nature of the ghost .When you apply this to finance, you will constantly worry about making and saving money for no purpose at all. The dissatisfied ghosts in you (read as behaviours) will drift and drain all your energy.
A number of people have too much money and no life whatsoever. If you could bring awareness to this behaviour (of feeding the hungry ghost) you can take some action towards your wellbeing. From outside it all sounds great as the person is making money and saving money and is generating wealth.
Pause for a second and ask, so what? do i/he/she/they have a meaningful life? Do we need to keep satisfying the clamouring ghosts?
Here are some tips on how to combat this behaviour:
Make a listicle around UNDESIRABLE to DESIRABLE. The list typically is well rounded because it is human nature to seek fulfilment in all parts of life. This clearly will show you life is more than just money and that awareness takes you to action.
Every day, before hitting the bed, put down all the things you are grateful for. Not top 3 or top 10, write everything in your mind. This practice clearly show that the list has other things and it is not about lot of money but enough money.
When you are stressed or discontented about something, write down at-least 300 words of all the good, bad and ugly things of your life. The stress fades away and so does your ghost.
Remind yourself everyday, at your best you have only 36500 days to live on this earth. You as an individual. Keep marking it day by day. Your skew towards one or other parts of life stops.
🥂to life!
