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Many stressed-out people are attracted to eastern meditation, believing that it will give them relief from their “monkey mind” and lower their anxiety about life. Unfortunately, the monkey usually wins because people find the mental focus required for meditation devilishly hard. On a trip last year to India, I asked a Buddhist teacher why Westerners struggle so much with the practice. “You won’t get the benefit from meditation,” he said, “as long as you are meditating to get the benefit.”
You might call this the “meditation paradox,” and it seemed like the most Buddhist thing I had ever heard. But when I thought about it more, I realized that the teacher’s epigram held a deep truth about a lot of life’s rewards: You can only truly attain them when you are not seeking them.
Consider the relationship between money and happiness, about which you’ve no doubt received mixed messages your whole life. On the one hand, your grandmother probably taught you that money can’t buy happiness. On the other, today’s dominant culture insists that it can.
So who’s right: grandma or the zeitgeist? The meditation paradox provides the answer: both. Money can buy happiness—as long as you don’t try to buy happiness.
Social scientists have long studied whether money raises well-being. The conventional answer from economists is yes, at least up to a point. The most famous study supporting this came in 2010 from two Nobel laureates who calculated that various measures of life satisfaction increase with a person’s income up to about $75,000 ($112,000 in today’s dollars), at which point very little benefit is derived from extra money. Since then, this finding has been partly contested by scholars such as Matthew A. Killingsworth, who showed in an excellent study using a much larger data set that the happiness plateau generally occurs at a higher income level.
According to psychologists, the answer to the money and well-being question is a bit different: The cash-happiness quotient depends more on the type of relationship you have with money than the actual amount of money you have. Researchers writing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2014 demonstrated this mechanism by looking at materialism, defined as “values, goals, and associated beliefs that center on the importance of acquiring money and possessions that convey status.” Analyzing 259 data sets on the subject, they found that materialistic values are negatively correlated with overall life satisfaction, mood, self-appraisal, and physical health. Instead, these values were positively associated with depression, anxiety, compulsive buying, and risky behaviors. That’s what your grandma was talking about.
We can be even more precise when we look specifically at the reasons people give for why they earn their money. According to a 2001 article in the same journal, psychologists found no negative association between well-being and acquiring money for the fundamental purposes of security or supporting your family. The problem comes from wanting to earn money for four particular motives: making social comparisons, seeking power, showing off, and overcoming self-doubt. Put simply, if you are striving to get rich to feel superior to others, or because you’re trying to boost your self-worth, your efforts will lower your happiness.
These findings reinforce what I have written about in the past: that your well-being depends on how you spend your money. Buying possessions generally does not increase happiness, whereas spending money either on experiences enjoyed with loved ones or to get more free time does reliably raise well-being. This makes intuitive sense about the type of person who will get a flashy watch or a fast car to make their point, rather than rent a nice place to spend a quiet week away with their soulmate.
So the research suggests that money follows a version of the meditation paradox: It’s good for your well-being as long as you don’t seek money because you believe wealth will enhance your well-being. This in turn suggests three positive changes that you can make.
1. Interrogate your financial motives.
If this essay has alerted you to the fact that your motives for earning money matter for your happiness—and that making a lot of money is important to you—you may be asking yourself why. Take some time to consider what images enter your mind when you imagine reaching your financial goals. Do you see yourself being admired or envied by others? Do you feel as though you’ve made it, and are finally worthy of approval? These images might reflect your motivations, but they are terrible for your well-being. (Another point to bear in mind: If your financial motives are indeed social comparison and self-worth, you will never reach your financial goals, because you will never have enough money to satisfy these needs.) Simply recognizing your true motives and choosing better ones—such as “I earn money to support the people I love the most”—will start you on a better path.
2. Take a vow of poverty—or at least modesty.
Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century Italian Catholic mystic and founder of the Franciscan order of Catholic priests and monks, began his life as a wealthy nobleman. His enlightenment came in his early 20s, when he had a vision in which he was called to give away all of his riches and live in poverty. This became the basis of his order, which he claimed would bring great joy to its members. “Blessed be my brother who goes out readily, begs humbly, and returns rejoicing,” he is said to have proclaimed to a member of his order.
I won’t ask you to live in poverty and turn to begging, but one small way to detach yourself from money-based social comparison (and earn a bit of Franciscan rejoicing instead) is to renounce consumption of the most opulent items you might buy. For example, instead of choosing the priciest, most ostentatious car you can afford, purchase one that is down a few rungs in price and status. I try to practice this; I won’t claim it as a path to sainthood, but it has helped remind me that my economic success does not represent who I am.
3. Spend quietly.
And what should you do with your leftover discretionary money? Here’s a useful answer for happiness: Spend it on experiences with people you love—without being showy about it—and on meaningful activities. So, for instance, go away for the weekend with a friend or partner and make a point of not posting a single picture of your getaway on social media, because that will probably lower your enjoyment of the experience. In fact, consider not taking any pictures, and instead resolve to be fully present, because that will surely enhance the experience.
One last idea, returning to the Buddhist tradition: In Zen, the meditation paradox is commonly illustrated using koans, which are riddling statements or puzzling epigrams that monks are taught to contemplate to help them move beyond logical thinking and reach a deeper understanding of life’s meaning. Here is a koan of my own devising that might capture the broader point in this essay: A man became rich by getting rid of his gold.
The superficial message of this aligns with the research that has shown how giving away your money to worthy causes raises your happiness. That’s fine and good. But ponder this koan more deeply, and see what it tells you. Ask what you consider gold—not just money, but any asset, talent, or strength you might be tempted to display, to demonstrate your worth to yourself and others. List those things that set you apart. Then contemplate how you could use them in a way that is not self-aggrandizing but that brings blessings to the world, and watch your fortune grow.
