Money stress triggers real health problems, but wealth doesn't guarantee happiness. One host spent years chasing status through cars and houses before realizing the dopamine hit from new purchases fades fast. Bhutan switched from measuring GDP to Gross National Happiness, prioritizing community and health over stuff.
You mentioned disease, and a lot of times disease is spawned by stress, and stress is spawned by our financial struggles a lot of the time.
Yeah, it may even reduce some of that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's unbelievable. The mind has such power over the body. And I think a lot of that would go away.
Something a little off topic, a little just— I'm curious, what do you think about our need to maybe take the heat down on our wants in general? I mean, is there any point in practicing I don't know, meditation or anything that would bring down, 'cause we are a consumerist society and it drives us in ways that sometimes is really bad for us, spending money we don't have to spend. Do you think it's worth addressing those impulses in us that make us want and make us want to consume?
In all my travel so far, and it hasn't been that extensive, but I've traveled most of the modern world. US is the biggest consumer society by far.
Oh God, we want it all, all the time. It's impulse better here.
It's the want, it's the bigger. That is a cultural shift. That needs to happen. I think what we can do is have a self-awareness that no one cares about what you got or have ever as much as you do. I had early financial gains when I was very young, became a self-made millionaire in my early 30s and thought, "Oh, look at how great I am." No one gives a crap. And then what I tried to do is express how important I was by showing my stuff. Look, I got like cars. I got lots of cars and they're fast and cool. Look at the house. I'm going to Hawaii on a sabbatical. Everyone pay attention. Everyone's like, "Whatever." That comparative, I think removing ourself from comparison, I think is the first step to healing. I know an article about the happiest society. I think it was Nepal or Bhutan, maybe it was Bhutan. And the prime minister or president, or I don't know, emperor, I don't even know what their title is, said, "We're going to stop measuring gross domestic product. We're going to start measuring gross national happiness." First country ever to do that. And they've actively done things that have brought about happiness. Happiness is about, surprisingly, not surprisingly, community, health, activity, togetherness.
Connection.
Not about bigger house, faster car. The problem I think in the US, again, is the drug addiction to dopamine and serotonin and all these different things. When I do get the new car, there's excitement for a couple hours. I'm going out there, I flip through the manual, and the first time I take it for the drive and the new car smell, But at a certain point it becomes rote. So there's this addiction that I have to the new. And so it's trying to get to a more sophisticated awareness that that stuff, that's a quick dopamine, that's a drug addiction. What it is is togetherness and presence and contribution. That's where real joy comes from.
The lasting stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you. And hopefully then the need for money is maybe for some essential living components, but not for this excess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
