I feel old. For the second time in a month I have pulled a muscle in my back leaving me sore, stiff and walking like an old man. Yet I am truly blessed that to date, my life has been one filled with good health with the exception of injuries and concussions derived from my life of activity and the odd case of burnout. It seems that only in pain do we appreciate wellness and those who are not well will give almost anything to be restored to health. The pursuit of wellness, whether it be physical, mental or spiritual, underpins our need to feel whole. As humans it is often difficult to find balance in our lives. However, without wellness, or at least a recognition and acceptance of what we are, this balance is almost always elusive.
Balancing money is also difficult for many people. As the psychologist Maslow pointed out in his writings, as humans we are motivated to work to fulfill our basic needs. Yet each generation has a different relationship with money. My grandmother who lived through the “Dirty Thirties” felt the need to scrimp and save to ensure there was money for that rainy day. Her relationship with money was different from that of her children, my generation, and that of my children. Entrepreneurs have a different relationship with money than those working for big business or government because there is no safety net for retirement other than savings. As a result, business owners and often their employees, realize that they need savings to ensure a livelihood after retirement, if retirement is to be a reality. In many western countries the retirement age has been moved from 65 to 68 to ensure that there are benefits for retirees. However, compound the thought of retirement with staggering personal and corporate debt loads and one can understand the lack of balance.
So how does all this affect any pursuit of happiness? Simply by the fact that true happiness shouldn’t be derived from a healthy body or a healthy bank account. In 2008, I had the opportunity to travel to remote parts of Uganda which had been ravaged by years of warfare and atrocities. There was little money, many health issues as a result of an insufficient access to clean water, and absolutely no safety nets to cover retirement. In fact, as I realized, if you could find a good income with work beyond your plot of land you were often counted as one of the lucky ones. Yet everywhere I travelled the people seemed happy. Their happiness as I discovered seemed rooted in their relationships rather than their worldly possessions. They experienced a different concept than the one put forward by a corporate and government mentality that is driven by consumption of expendable goods and the promotion of the conceptualization that relationships promote disease and that human interaction at work and in public should be banned and shamed.
Perhaps the lesson we need to learn today, in the wake of recent economic difficulties is that while the pursuit of money doesn’t lead to happiness the lack of money is admittedly very stressful; that the cost of isolation and fear might be much higher and even more deadly to the population than the physical illness caused by this current pandemic and that the economic crisis forced by lockdowns is having an impact on health and happiness as well as money. The sooner that we recognize we need common sense in a pandemic response and not more restrictions, the sooner our population can resume its pursuit of happiness.
- Dave Fuller, MBA is an award-winning business coach and the author of the book Profit Yourself Healthy. Feel this article isn’t balanced? Email dave@pivotleader.com
