The 4 Reasons Why Rich, Successful, and Good-Looking People Are Not Happier Than You
Know what you want.
We watch them in a trance, as they parade by, sporting dazzling white designer smiles. They get out of golden cars right onto red carpets, as the crowd rains cheers on them and the flashlights go wild.
They buy and sell million-dollar Malibu homes, while we can’t even make rent this month.
They wine, dine, and 69 others like themselves: people who look like they belong in the perfection museum.
They have perfectly voluminous shiny hair and matching 6-pack abs, their wallets are made from the skin of an entire whale, and if the Internet had a cover, they’d be on it.
They have everything that we superficial mortals deem worthy of having: the looks, the money, and the success.
And yet… they’re lonely, miserable, insecure, and usually addicted to something expensive and deadly.
Why? They have everything! Why aren’t they happier than us?
1. Wealth, success, and looks have little to do with happiness.
If you’re poor, you imagine that money is the answer to all your problems. But it’s only the answer to your financial ones.
If you’re ugly, you think it’s the flab that’s keeping you away from fab. But once it’s gone, you realize the road to fab is more than a few extra pounds and a smile away.
While some amount of money is indeed key to living a safe life, without worrying about what you’re going to eat tomorrow, and indulging in some of your heart’s desires, a lot more money won’t bring a lot more happiness.
The 2 are not directly proportional.
And while good-looking people do get a lot more attention and everyday perks, it’s not enough to make them truly happy.
It can be quite the contrary: very wealthy people run into financial problems most of us don’t even dream of. Gorgeous people are incredibly insecure, especially when their looks start to fade, and massive success and fame are something that few people can tolerate because it comes with immense responsibility and incredible burdens.
Happiness is an inside job and no matter how hard we try to fix it with outside tools, we just can’t reach it.
2. People treat them differently, in both a good and bad way.
Everybody wants something from the ones they admire, desire, or envy. And when they can’t get it, all hell breaks loose.
People will destroy what they can’t understand or control.
When you’re good-looking, people want you. They want to be close to you, touch you, love you, and possess you. You or rather the idea of you.
When the package is that beautiful nobody cares what’s inside.
It’s the same when you’re successful. Everybody wants a piece of you, they want to come so close that your success rubs off on themselves, crawl inside your head so they can pick your brain better.
Fame, wealth, and beauty will all result in dehumanization and most of us don’t even realize we’re doing it until we’re at the receiving end of it.
3. The game is not so easy to get out of.
Life is a lot more complex when you’re rich.
Success, wealth, and looks are not something that you just get and it’s there to stay.
Usually, it’s something you earn and it takes a lot of work to keep.
Even Brad Pitt needs to go to the gym to star in a movie like Troy. He also needs to invest his money wisely, otherwise he, just like the rest of us, will be in debt. Much bigger debt than ours.
Opting out is not an option, just like it’s not an option for you or me.
Just like most of us, Brad probably has a mortgage to pay, projects with business partners or friends, alimony, and various relationships that are dependent on his current lifestyle.
Our lives, whether good or bad, poor or wealthy, are many times nothing but raging snowballs galloping down the side of a mountain.
We are usually not just one choice away from what we want to become. Our lives are ecosystems, not 1-way streets.
If you destroy one element and you don’t put anything in its place, the whole system will eventually fail.
4. People get used to anything.
All the gore and glory of this life will eventually be nothing more than a mundane experience when you get used to it.
And that works both ways.
Take chronic pain, for example. An estimated 20% of U.S. adults are living with chronic pain. That’s more than 50 million people who endure daily pain of various intensities.
Maybe you’re one of them and you know what that feels like. And you also know that you slowly but surely got used to it. Some days, you might even not notice it’s there.
It’s part of our brain’s coping mechanism. Just like your eyes don’t see the nose right in front of them, because the brain decides to ignore something that’s in the way of your field of vision, you’d stop seeing the pain or the riches in your life.
Once you took something off the shelf and brought it into your life, it loses all its luster and soon becomes just as unimportant as that pair of mega expensive couch you loved so much in the beginning and now it’s just part of the décor.
Does the couch look different now, only 6 months later? No, you’re just used to it.
The same happens with money, experiences, objects, and even people.
Every drop-dead gorgeous trophy wife will eventually become just another woman who chews her bonbons with her mouth open and not the stunning fox she was when he first laid eyes on her.
And no, it’s not because he’s a jerk. It’s because he’s human and that’s how human brains work.
Conclusion
Rich, successful, and good-looking people are not happier than you because being rich, successful, and good-looking doesn’t make anybody happy.
It can make you content, give you validation, ensure a better life, and make you feel safe and seen.
But happiness is an entirely different beast.
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