dont be materialistic

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. ~George Burns

Money can’t buy you love. It can’t buy you happiness either.

Today’s materialistic world often urges us to buy the coolest gadgets, the trendiest clothes, bigger and better things, but research shows that possessions and purchases don’t buy us happiness. According to an article on CNN:

By and large, money buys happiness only for those who lack the basic needs. Once you pass an income of $50,000, more money doesn’t buy much more happiness, [according to a happiness studies].

So while we are being pushed towards materialism, it’s for monetary gain by corporations, not for our own happiness. Unfortunately, it’s hard to escape the trap of materialism, and find happiness in other ways than buying stuff online or finding joy in the mall.

But it’s possible. Here’s a guide to finding a materialism-free life and discovering true happiness.

Escaping Materialism
All around us, there are messages telling us to buy stuff. On the Internet (blogs included), we see continuous advertising trying to get us to purchase a product or service. It’s the main reason for television, and movies are continually made with products placed throughout, so that we aren’t always sure what is advertising and what was put in there by the director.

Flip on the radio or open up a newspaper or magazine, and you’re bombarded my more advertising. Go to a shopping center/mall, and the urge to buy comes from every direction.

This message to continually buy, buy, buy … and that it will somehow make us happpier … is drilled into our heads from the days of Happy Meals and cartoons until the day we die. It’s inescapable.

Well, almost. You could go and live in a cabin in the woods (and that actually sounds nice), or you could still live in our modern society, but find ways to escape materialism.

Here are some suggestions:

• Limit television. Do you really enjoy watching TV for hours? Think about which shows you really, really love, and only watch during that time. When the commercials come on, go do something else. Or use Tivo to watch TV. You can even give up cable TV entirely, if you’re brave — I have, and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.
• Eschew the news. Journalists will never tell you this, but if they’re completely honest, they’ll confess that the most important part of any news company, from TV or radio news to Internet or print new, is the advertising division. It’s the division that pays the paychecks of the rest of the company. The news is important in driving traffic to the advertising. So when you’re watching or reading news, you’re really being sucked in to advertising. Try this instead: boycott the news for a week. I’ve done it for about two years, and it hasn’t hurt me a bit. In fact, it’s helped me a lot.
• Limit Internet reading. I’m not saying you should cancel your cable Internet subscription or anything. I love reading blogs. But find just those that you truly love reading, that give you the most value, and limit your reading to those. And just do it once a day, for 30 minutes or so. If you can do that, you’ve gone a long way towards tearing yourself away from advertising.
• Give up magazines for books. Magazines are also designed with advertising in mind. And they rarely give you much value. Try reading an ad-free book instead. It’s a much better use of your time.
• Don’t go to the mall or Walmart. The only purpose of these places is for you to spend money. If you just want a place to spend your Saturday afternoon, find a place where you don’t need to spend money to have fun — a park or a beach, for example. If you need to buy something, go to a single store (not the mall) and go in and get what you need. Don’t browse and walk around looking at stuff. You’ll get sucked in.
• Monitor your urges. When you’re online, or watching TV, or at a store, keep track of the number of times you want to buy something. Keep a little notebook or index card, and just put tally marks. Once you become more aware of your urges to buy things, you can start to control them. If you could control them, limiting your consumption of media (see above tips) isn’t really necessary — although I would argue that it still gives you a better quality of life.
• Use a 30-day list. If you still really want to buy something, put it on a list, and write down the date you added the item to the list. Now tell yourself you cannot buy that item for 30 days. It might be difficult, but you can do it. When the 30 days have passed, if you still want it, then buy it. But you can’t buy anything (besides essentials like groceries) without putting it on the list for 30 days first. Many times, our urges to buy something will pass during this waiting period.
• Declutter. I find it pretty amazing to see all the crap I buy over a period of years, when I go through my closets and other possessions and start getting rid of stuff I don’t use or want anymore. It’s a gratifying process, and at the same time, it makes me realize how useless all our consumer shopping is. I don’t need any of the stuff! When you do this, you may be less likely to buy more stuff. Especially if you enjoy the decluttered look of your house as much as I do.
• Find other forms of entertainment. There are other things to do besides watch TV or movies or read magazines or newspapers or the Internet. Try playing sports or exercising, or playing board games or creating art or writing or reading a book. Try doing fun things with your kids or visiting relatives and other loved ones. Try volunteering with a charity. I’m sure you could come up with 100 free or cheap things to do.
• Buy used. When you get the urge to buy something, and you’re convinced that it’s needed, try finding it used instead of new. Look in thrift shops or garage sales or flea markets or similar places.

A True Path to Happiness
So, if you’re able to escape materialism, how can you find true happiness? There are many ways, and each of us is different, but here are some things I suggest trying:

• Grateful list. Make a list of things about which you’re grateful in your life. Give thanks for them daily.
• Think positive. Try eliminating negative thinking from your life, and thinking positive instead.
• Small pleasures. Make a list of small things that give you great pleasure. Sprinkle them throughout your day. Notice other small pleasures as you go through your day.
• Kindness. Practice random acts of kindness and compassion. Do it anonymously. Help those in need. Volunteer. Make someone smile.
• Love. Make an intimate connection with your loved ones. Develop your friendships. Spend time with them, converse, understand them, make them happy.
• Health. Exercise and eat healthy — it sounds trite, but it can bring great happiness to your life.
• Meaning. It’s often useful to find meaning, either through a church or spiritual way, or through those we love in life or through the things we’re passionate about. Give yourself a purpose.
• Flow. Eliminate distractions, and really pour yourself into whatever you’re doing. If it’s writing an article, like this one, really put yourself into it, until you forget the outside world.
• Know yourself. Become attuned to what brings you happiness. Study yourself. Learn about what you love, and about your ability to love. Increase your capacity for compassion.

You know that social scientists are concerned about something when they create a scale to measure it. In the early 1990s, researchers Marsha Richins and Scott Dawson developed the first scale to measure materialism rigorously. According to this scale, people are materialistic to the extent that they place acquiring possessions at the center of their lives, judge success by the number and quality of one’s possessions, and see these possessions as vital to happiness (for instance, they agree with statements like “My life would be better if I owned certain things I don’t have”).

For more than two decades, studies have consistently found that people who score high on Drs. Richins and Dawson’s scale score lower on just about every major scale that scientists use to measure happiness.

For instance, a 1992 study by Drs. Richins and Dawson themselves, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, found that more materialistic people feel less satisfied both with their lives as a whole and with the amount of fun and enjoyment they get out of day-to-day life. More recently, a study by Todd Kashdan and William Breen, published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, found that materialistic people experience more negative emotion (such as fear and sadness), less positive emotion, and less meaning in their lives.

In trying to understand why materialism undermines our pursuit of happiness, scientists have zeroed in on the fact that more materialistic people report particularly low levels of gratitude.

Earlier this year, Jo-Ann Tsang of Baylor University and her colleagues surveyed 246 undergraduate students to measure their levels of materialism, life satisfaction and gratitude. Their results, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, show that as materialism increased, feelings of gratitude and life satisfaction decreased. Further analysis revealed that materialists felt less satisfied with their lives mainly because they were experiencing less gratitude.

Why are gratitude and materialism opposing forces in the mind? According to Robert Emmons, a pioneer in the study of gratitude and a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, gratitude involves acknowledging the good things in our lives—from the beauty of autumn leaves to the generosity of friends to the taste of a good meal—and recognizing the other people or forces that made them possible. Gratitude helps us savor the good in our lives rather than taking it for granted and yearning for what’s next.

One of the traps of materialism, by contrast, is that it locates the sources of happiness in shiny new things—indeed, research suggests that materialistic people have unrealistically high expectations for the amount of happiness material goods will bring them. When those expectations inevitably go unmet, they invest their hopes for happiness in the next thing, and the thing after that, on and on in a fruitless pursuit.

“A relationship-strengthening emotion”

Practicing gratitude means appreciating the good that other people bring to our daily lives—which is why Dr. Emmons refers to gratitude as “a relationship-strengthening emotion.” And strong relationships, research suggests, are one of the most important ingredients to a happy life.

A leading expert on the social benefits of gratitude is Sara Algoe, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In one study, Dr. Algoe and her colleagues tracked men and women in long-term romantic relationships for two weeks, asking them to report each day whether their partners had done anything nice for them and how much gratitude they felt toward them as a result. When participants felt grateful for their partner’s kindness on one day, they felt significantly more satisfied with their relationship on the next. And the partners of these newly grateful men and women felt more connected to them and more satisfied with their relationship than they had on the previous day.

The social effects of gratitude extend well beyond those closest to us. Philosopher Adam Smith knew this long ago, arguing in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments” that gratitude is the glue that holds communities together. Roughly 250 years later, a clever experiment by Monica Bartlett and David DeSteno backed him up. Drs. Bartlett and DeSteno induced gratitude in some of their study participants by having someone help them with a sudden computer problem (which the researchers actually caused). Soon afterward, the participants encountered someone who needed a hand. Those who had received help themselves devoted significantly more time to helping others than did the non-grateful people. When we receive a gift, gratitude motivates us to pay it forward.

Findings like these suggest that gratitude might have deep evolutionary roots. After all, the bonding and reciprocity promoted by gratitude are exactly the kinds of behaviors that evolutionary biologists see as essential to the survival of the more social, mammalian species. Indeed, in his thorough analysis of what he calls the “food-for-grooming service economy” among chimpanzees, primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University has found that chimps remember the specific individuals who have groomed them in the past and later return the favor by sharing more food with them. Dr. De Waal sees these grooming-for-food trades as elementary forms of primate gratitude.

Further evidence for the evolutionary roots of gratitude comes from the study of human touch, one of the earliest modes of human communication. In a collaboration between one of us (Dacher Keltner) and Matthew Hertenstein, who is now on the faculty at DePauw University, two participants sat on opposite sides of a large barrier; when one of them stuck her or his arm through a hole in the barrier, the other person attempted to communicate emotions by briefly touching the stranger’s forearm. After each touch, the touchee guessed what emotion the toucher was trying to convey. People were remarkably accurate in identifying touches of gratitude, suggesting that we have strong instincts to communicate and understand that emotion. The language of gratitude is pre-verbal.

Given these deep roots of gratitude, it should perhaps come as no surprise that it is associated with striking health benefits. In many studies, by Dr. Emmons and others, grateful people report fewer symptoms of illness, are less bothered by aches and pains, enjoy better sleep quality, and have stronger immune systems. This was true not only among people who were naturally grateful but among those whom the researchers prompted to feel more gratitude over time. As they became more grateful, their health seemed to improve.

And new research by Wendy Berry Mendes, an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, has found that people who have high levels of gratitude show lower resting blood pressure and are less reactive to stressful events; when Dr. Mendes analyzed their blood samples, she found that they showed fewer risk factors for cardiovascular disease—they had higher levels of good cholesterol, lower levels of bad cholesterol—and lower levels of creatinine, indicating strong kidney function.

Inducing gratitude

Our evolved capacity for gratitude by no means guarantees that we’ll reliably practice gratitude—sometimes culture gets in the way. Jo-Ann Tsang’s work suggests this is exactly what happens when people develop more materialistic values: Their feelings of gratitude get edged out.

The good news, though, is that the relationship between materialism and gratitude can run in the opposite direction. A 2009 study led by Nathaniel Lambert, now of Brigham Young University, found that inducing gratitude in people caused a decrease in materialism. Dr. Lambert and his colleagues were able to increase gratitude in their participants by instructing them to focus on appreciating the good things they had been given in life, then write about what came to mind. But is it possible to cultivate gratitude outside of the controlled setting of a university laboratory?

The answer is yes. In fact, identifying effective gratitude practices is one of the most exciting areas of inquiry in this new science.

Perhaps the most widely tested of these is the “gratitude journal,” in which people write down five things for which they’re grateful. In some studies, they journal on their own every day for two weeks; in others, they write only once a week for six weeks or longer.

It’s a simple exercise, requiring as little as a minute or two each week. Yet this basic practice significantly increases levels of gratitude, makes people happier (25% happier than people who don’t keep a gratitude journal, according to one study by Dr. Emmons), improves their health and even encourages them to exercise (1.5 hours more per week than non-journalers, Dr. Emmons has found). These benefits have been observed even among people in trying circumstances, including people with neuromuscular disorders.

Another research-tested way to cultivate gratitude is to write a “gratitude letter.” This involves writing a letter to someone whom you have never properly thanked, in which you identify precisely what he or she did for you, how his or her actions shaped your life, and why you are grateful to him or her. Research suggests that you enjoy an extra boost of gratitude—and happiness—if you actually go and deliver your letter in person, reading it aloud to your benefactor.

The gratitude journal and letter have both proved effective among children. But psychologists Jeffrey Froh, of Hofstra University, and Giacomo Bono, of California State University, Dominguez Hills, have recently gone one step further, developing an entire curriculum for teaching gratitude to elementary school students. Through the curriculum, children reflect on a nice thing someone else did for them, the cost that person incurred through his or her kindness, and the good intentions that motivated the gift.

When Drs. Froh and Bono taught the curriculum to students for just half an hour a week for five weeks, they found that it increased gratitude and other positive emotions for at least five months afterward.

A final suggestion for building gratitude comes from new research by Thomas Gilovich, a professor of psychology at Cornell University. For years, Dr. Gilovich’s work has shown that people are happier when they spend their money on experiences, like a vacation or a dinner out, than when they spend on material things, like a new TV. Now he has found that the same goes for gratitude: People report feeling more grateful for experiential purchases than for material purchases.

What’s more, when Dr. Gilovich and his team analyzed the reviews that people leave on various consumer websites, they found that people generally indicate more gratitude when writing about an experience (e.g., on Yelp or TripAdvisor) than when writing about a material good (e.g., on Amazon).

This offers an important lesson about gratitude, and an important lesson for how we spend our money year-round. It suggests that spending money isn’t necessarily antithetical to gratitude and happiness. What matters is how you spend it—and that you take a moment to give thanks for what you have.

This essay originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in the Wall Street Journal.