REAL MONEY, REAL FAMILIES Warm connections equal happiness

By Luke Erickson

I’m a bit of a sun-worshipper. I love summer, the heat that envelops your body when you come out of an overly A/C’d building. I love it when it’s so hot that you can’t help but jump in the nearest pool or lake. And it gives you a good excuse to get a snow cone.

I even like humidity, I spent a few years in the tropics, and even loved the few summers I spent back east where the humidity is like a wet, warm blanket that won’t let you go. Idaho is home, but I definitely have my favorite season.

But as much as I like the sun, I only enjoy it in certain ways. First, you won’t find me staring directly at it, right? All of us who still enjoy our eyesight live by this rule, and it’s a wise one. Next, you won’t find me baking in the sun very long without some sunscreen or some shade or water nearby.

Love the sun too much and too closely and you’ll wind up with heat stroke, a sunburn, or skin cancer. But the sunlight reflecting off of the clouds at sunset, warming you up after a dip in the lake, making the trees glow on an early morning hike, that’s amazing.

Turns out happiness is similar. According to research out of Harvard, the more we focus directly on happiness, the less likely we are to truly benefit from it. We will actually find a lot more benefits by enjoying it indirectly. That’s where the wide, beautiful colors and hues of happiness are found.

According to the research, there are such things as direct happiness. But just like we can’t stare at the sun long, little pleasures don’t last either. Things like going to a movie, enjoying an ice cream cone, riding a roller coaster, all good, and all temporary. Too many temporary pleasures, without purpose, are like too much sunshine – it can actually end up harming you. For example, the first few days of nothing but ice cream and roller coasters are nice and all, but when this stretches into a few weeks or months, the feeling of happiness disappears, and you would be willing to pay someone to STOP doing those things at some point.

We’ve also heard that money can’t buy happiness, but the truth is, none of us truly believe that. What we really believe is that money spent exclusively on temporary pleasures can’t buy us happiness, but we all know that money used in the right way will help us thrive. The key is to use our money to support long-term fulfillment, NOT by spending excessively on temporary pleasures.

The SPIRE model of happiness comes from researchers at Harvard associated with an 80-year study on happiness. SPIRE stands for Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Relational, and Emotional well-being. This is how we find long-term fulfillment. This is where we enjoy the indirect, beautiful hues of happiness, like those we see at sunset.

Spiritual well-being is about your core purpose and identity. It’s how you spend your time, not only in work, but also in other areas of your life. It’s honoring your own inner voice, the thing that tells you what you like and dislike, what’s okay and not okay, what helps and what hurts. Honoring your inner voice in spite of messages to the contrary that you may hear from other people can be a difficult skill to learn, but it’s a valuable one. As an example, let’s say you’re a software engineer, but you have a real passion for singing. You can quit your job and join a traveling theater company. OR, you can keep your job and volunteer to sing in local theatrical productions here and there. Either way you’re honoring a core part of your identify. But there are financial decisions to be made here. Give up a high-paying job for a dream? Or, keep the job and find other less risky ways to honor this core value of yours. There’s not right or wrong here, except to completely ignore it.

Physical well-being is simple. Eat better, exercise more, get more sleep, and make sure you have enough downtime for recovery from things like stress and work. All the things we already know we should be doing. Here’s the thing, our bodies are inescapably connected to any sense of happiness that we may experience. If we don’t take care of them, happiness has a less welcoming place to dwell. It may come to visit but it won’t want to stay in such a shabby abode.

The point is, give yourself permission to invest in healthy habits. Many of us struggle to do this on our own. Hire professionals if you need help with nutrition or join a gym that has good accountability. It’s worth the investment. Everything we feel, including happiness, starts in our bodies. Intellectual well-being is mostly about growth through learning, curiosity, and deep engagement with the world around us. Invest time and money into reading more. Use audio books, podcasts, instructional and motivational videos like Ted Talks, or online master classes. It’s so easy to learn amazing things that can help us grow if we simply devote a little bit of our time. And most are free or very low cost. Astronomer and writer Esko Valtaoja said, “You are what you read.” What would you be reading if this were 100% true?

Relational well-being, although the fourth part of the SPIRE model, is actually loudly touted by the researchers as being the most very important thing for fulfillment and lasting happiness. The quantity of your relationships is helpful, but more important is the quality of your warm connections.

Warm connections are those relationships where, if you woke up in the middle of the night scared or ill, you could reach out to this person for help, no questions asked. This often requires relationships where you both completely and authentically accept each other even with your quirks and flaws. It’s an understanding that through thick and thin, agreements and disagreements, you still have each other’s backs, and care for each other’s well-being.

The more warm connections you have in life, the higher your chances of feeling fulfilled and experiencing lasting happiness. Investing time and money in other people, especially experiences together, can go a long way to improving your warm connections.

And finally, emotional well-being, which is mostly about exercising gratitude for the things we have in life, and believing in abundance of happiness for everyone, so that you’re not driven by scarcity or competitiveness. Journaling or meditating over the abundant things in your life goes a long way to resetting your emotions to a positive outlook.

So, in the end, money spent on a few occasional pleasures is reasonable, but for real happiness you’d do well to invest a larger portion of your time and money into lasting fulfillment and the resulting happiness by living the SPIRE model. Oh… and don’t forget the sunshine!