Invest in experiences rather than stuff

Live concerts. When your heart beats in the same rhythm of the music and you feel your voice tearing from singing your favorite lyrics together with the artist who’s now so close you start to wonder whether this really is happening to you. You look at your friends who are with you and you can’t help but smile. Your cheeks hurt from all the smiling, laughing and singing. It’s a warm night, but you get goosebumps as the sea of people all start to sing together, the artist looking at the crowd overwhelmed with joy. Words cannot describe such feelings properly. Concerts are magic.

The best memories I have from high-school are almost all related to some concert or festival and to my friends. I often think back about those moments, the moments I felt most happy (not that I wouldn’t be now) and every time I come to the conclusion that such moments are truly worth living for. 

Our experiences are what shape us. Such experiences like concerts or travelling. They bring not only us, but also the ones around us joy and a feeling of fulfillment.

Things - as awesome and new and shiny as they might be - will only make us happy a certain period of time. They don’t make us as happy as we think. Let’s say: We think that the new house or the new car will make us super super happy, but in practice, it doesn’t. And that is in part because it sticks around. Our mind has a very annoying feature of getting used to things. It’s the same house day in day out, and we just get used to it. As the psychologist, Dan Gilbert said: “Part of us believes that the new car is better because it lasts longer. But in fact, that’s the worst thing about the new car. It will stay around to disappoint you.”

We actually get more happiness when we invest in experiences, like going to a concert, or on vacation or to an art gallery. It doesn’t last forever. It goes away and leaves you with nothing but the wonderful memories.  A study made by Van Boven and Gilovich in 2003 shows that when people think about two purchases over 100$ they made (one experimental and one material), they report feeling happier just thinking about the experience, and they also consider it was money better spent. 

Extra: 

Kumar et al. (2014). Waiting for Merlot: Anticipatory Consumption of Experiential and Material Purchase. 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797614546556

This paper tells us experiences have a longer-lasting effect on happiness