DAILY HAPPINESS TIP #34- Cut Down on Wants

Every human being requires the same basic stuff to live successfully.  These are food, water, shelter, clothing, security, social interactions, family, love, appreciation, meaning and other emotional needs that enhance our well-being.  The rest can be summed up as extras…our wants. 

However, the modern man has expanded the list of wants to include items meant to make life more comfortable and beyond.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with this except when their relative importance somehow shifts to the detriment of securing the basic needs, particularly the intangibles.  Often, the solution is to buy substitutes in an attempt to satisfy the emotional needs not met because of the unrelenting pursuit of the wants, in the general form of money, fame and power.

Now the backlash is felt.  Many have recognized that happiness and successful living do not depend on many of the wants being satisfied, but on the fulfillment of our needs and the needs of others.  Happy people are those who have the basics covered and limited wants satisfied; and this can be summed up in a word -- contentment.

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!  I say let your affairs be as one, two, three and to a hundred or a thousand… We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.” - Henry David Thoreau

Related tip: DAILY HAPPINESS TIP #16- Always Love What You Got and Remember What You Had

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