By Dr. Jim Dahle, WCI FounderWe're going in a different direction just for today on this financial blog. As with anything you ever read here, take what you find useful and leave the rest.
In The White Coat Investor community, we often talk about wellness, beating burnout, and using our money to make ourselves and other people happier. In that vein, I thought it might be useful to share some of the wisdom I've picked up in my first half-century of life. By the time you read this, I'll be 49 and rapidly closing in on 50. I've spent a lot of time in school, I've lived on four continents, I've worked 80 hours a week, I've served in the military, and I've enjoyed what is essentially a very early retirement (I have averaged < 12 hours a week practicing medicine for the last five years or so, and 90% of the “work” I do at WCI can't really be called work when I love it so much).
I have good health, plenty of money, and more fame and power than I'm really interested in having. I've done all the things that people say they would do if they didn't have to work—extensive travel, pursuit of hobbies, time with family, etc. Sometimes I'm still not happy, but that's only because I have temporarily forgotten one of the two keys to happiness. When I remember them, I'm happy again. Let me share them with you.
#1 Be Other-Centered
I sometimes reflect on the two years I spent as a church missionary. This wasn't working in a third-world clinic or some other type of foreign humanitarian service; it was a proselytizing mission. I was trying to convert souls to Christ. For those unfamiliar with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, young people often go on these proselyting missions for 18-24 months. At their own expense, they dedicate their entire life from 6:30 am to 10:30 pm to this missionary work, 6 1/2 days a week. The other half-day is mostly filled with a trip to the grocery store, doing laundry, and writing two letters, one to the “president” of that particular mission and the other to your parents. Your apartment and transportation (if not just walking or biking) are paid out of mission funds, and then you are given something like $300 a month (half that in my day) to live on. You're essentially a monk. You're not pursuing your own education, your own financial stability, or even your own pleasure for a couple of years. You buy nothing but absolute necessities like groceries. I'd fall into bed every night completely exhausted and awake the next morning ready to do it all again. I don't think I've ever been so happy. Why? Because I was 100% focused, over 100 hours a week, on other people.
I was recently speaking with my oldest daughter, who is currently serving one of these missions very successfully. I reflected that every admirable quality and many of the useful skills I have in life were either developed or dramatically improved as a missionary, including:
- Selflessness
- Service
- Hard work
- Frugality
- Discipline
- Spirituality
- Writing ability
- Public speaking ability
- Teaching skills
- Confidence
- Spanish
- Thick skin (I'm pretty hard to offend compared to most)
- Physical fitness
- Tolerance for suffering
- Ability to listen
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Compassion
- Tolerance
The person I was when I returned was dramatically more admirable than the person I was when I left. Perhaps the most important lesson I learned, however, is counterintuitive. The more you focus on being happy, the less happy you are likely to be. Therapists have noticed this. It turns out that sitting for an hour a week with a therapist talking and thinking about nothing but yourself, your failings, and your own challenges is not necessarily therapeutic.
A past leader of our church, Gordon Hinckley, was early in his own mission way back in 1933. He was discouraged by health challenges, a foreign culture, rejection, and a general feeling of uselessness. He wrote about this to his father saying that he was wasting his time and his father's money and that he might as well go home. His father's reply showed up a couple of weeks later:
“Dear Gordon, I have your recent letter. I have only one suggestion: forget yourself and go to work.”
After reflection and prayer, Hinckley changed his attitude and resolved to follow his father's advice. Decades later he said, “Everything good that has happened to me since then I can trace back to the decision I made that day.”
Actor Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) gave the commencement speech this year at a local university. Among other pearls of wisdom, he told the graduates that rather than becoming self-centered, they should become “other-centered.” Serving others, even in small ways, will kindle more happiness than turning to self-indulgent vices like shopping, partying, or gaming. He said:
“Basically, everything the world is telling you about finding joy is wrong. Buying stuff, gaining social status, looking sexy, seeking distraction, partying, and doing all the stuff the cool kids are doing on Instagram and on TV ads and in music videos actually takes us further away from bliss. Don’t buy it for a second . . . I implore you to walk out of this ceremony with a decision for this next chapter of your lives to move toward being other-centered instead of self-centered.”
If you want to be happy, quit looking for happiness. Look for purpose instead. Try to figure out how you can help others. Sure, take the time to relax, smell the flowers, and do lots of fun things. But don't expect that to be the source of never-ending happiness in your life. If you find yourself feeling unhappy, go find someone else to make happy and you'll likely find that you become happy in the process.
More information here:
The Happiness Index: Mine Required My Own Version of Retirement
Leaving Dentistry and Finding Happiness
#2 Lower Your Expectations
The source of a great deal of unhappiness in our lives is simply that our expectations are way too high. It's like being on a plane. People get upset that the WiFi on the plane is down, forgetting that they're in a chair, flying through the sky at 500 mph. Instead of being grateful that we don't have to drive for four days or take a boat for a week, we complain about turbulence and the guy in front of us with the stinky feet. Lower your expectations, and you'll be happier.
I'm married to the best person I know. Seriously, Katie is an incredible person. Talented, compassionate, and intelligent, and I'm madly attracted to her. Is she perfect? Of course not, and I'm sure if I really thought about it, I could tell you about all the ways in which she is not. But will that make me happier to do so? No way. As minister Jenkin Lloyd Jones once said,
“Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise.”
Lower your expectations, and you'll be happier. I do it all the time for patients in the emergency department, and it works.
“This workup is probably going to take about four hours, and although we might not be able to come up with a diagnosis for your pelvic pain, we'll treat your pain in the safest way possible and make sure whatever is causing it will not kill you.”
With that introduction, they're thrilled to get out of there in two hours with a negative workup, a shot of Toradol, and a referral to GYN. Lower your own expectations of what you're going to get out of life and then be pleasantly surprised.
You deserve to be happy. Try to set up your ideal life with the proper amount of purposeful work, relaxation, and fun. Spend your money preferentially on that which brings you happiness. But if you want to be truly happy long-term, focus on others and lower your expectations.
What do you think? What would you say in a commencement speech to help graduates find happiness in their lives? Why is it that focusing too much on our own happiness can make us so unhappy?
Great advice! This weekend, I found myself stranded at a bus stop in a foreign country with six others, including four very young children. I was the only one with the means to get us all to our destination. It meant missing dinner and almost two hours of shuttling back and forth. I was rewarded ten-fold the next day with a homemade Ethiopian meal! #happiness
That’s really cool!
Oh so true and a great reminder!
Purpose is so important, as is giving. Hope to use these 2 principles more often. Thank you.
You are awesome at 50!
Great advice thanks for sharing
Great advice:
If you become too zealous, lending your money to people who in financial trouble you will find some will pay you back. Others will not. You need to be prepared
One of the best of the best post! I agree with you 100%! It takes years to find that truth …
You are truly an inspiration in every way. Thank you for making my life better!
So true! A life of serving others has given my life great joy and purpose.
I think I will steal the phrase to tell patients. Too often, I find myself explaining to disappointed patients that in medicine, we are better at ruling out the big bad stuff than answering every diagnostic question. Doing that up front makes so much sense.
I disagree with only one part of this: Katie is perfect!
Loved this post and so true!
This is an amazing post. THANK YOU!
Awesome post Jim as always. I think that’s why social media is so detrimental to our happiness as we are reminded of the things other people might have that increase our expectations of ourselves. And social media also focuses on self-centeredness most of the time as well.
Love the post! Couldn’t agree more: One of the greatest “secrets” of life is the more love and help you extend to others, the more love and happiness you will feel. So simple but so opposite of current culture, social media, and “me time” messaging.
Loved thos post and so true!
I really needed to hear these words today. Thank you for enriching the world around you. You’ve been a true inspiration to me since I became a regular reader of the blog around 2016.
You nailed it. Keep the faith.
I love this post. It’s a good reminder at a time when I’m struggling to feel great despite doing very well from an outside perspective. Thanks Dr. Dahle!
“Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.” -Robert Ingersoll (the “Great Agnostic” of the 19th century.)
Love it. Thanks for sharing.
My God this post was awful. Horrible, horrendous and worthless.
Ok, just kidding about all of the above. Good post. But since everyone else above stated that this was such a great post, I wanted to lower your expectations for the rest of the responses. 😉
Thanks for another great, inspiring post.
I have a folder of a few articles/speeches that I read over when I feel that I have lost my way or I feel unhappy about a turn of events. I will add this to them .
Thanks for sharing. I wonder how one would balance putting others first and his/her own desires for happiness. Does putting others first mean suppressing or even repressing one’s own desires?
Thanks for the post. As Ingersoll and Dawkins and fun2bfree point out, one can reach the same conclusions without religion.
Awesome post! Truly inspiring- will be sharing with my family
Good post. I fee like one other tip is to surround yourself with nondocs. Too often people are complaining about stuff that the average person would look at you and say you’re crazy. I see docs on forums talking how they should have 400k a year instead of 300k. While we should all get paid what we’re worth. That complaint will ring hollow with the 2 teachers earning 150k combined raising a family of 4.
18-straight comments saying “great post” so I’ll agree but take it a different direction. There is a superficiality in the concept of “happiness” and this is highlighted in the difference between your number one and number two. I think point #1 of serving others leads to something greater than happiness: joy. Sharing a similar faith as yours, Jim, I find the concept of joy in the midst of suffering can be unexplainable to some but life changing to those that pursue it. Point number one can get at this joy. Point number two is great in framing the mindset of appreciating what’s happening.
Religion, not religiosity with dogma, is needed to get over the hurts and bumps in life, when all you can do is to offer it up to the creator, who, in fact, is the one in charge of our existence and all that exists. Always remember the creator is a spirit and we were created to worship the creator in spirit and in truth. That’s why we have souls that live on long after our earthly body has breathed its last breath. “Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal: Dust thou art, to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul.” Longfellow.
Growing up living with animals like my grandma chicken farm on top of the fact that my grandma took me in as a 50-50 live or die infant baby boy with premature birth illness I am so different from all my siblings because I am more considerate and kind to my siblings and I cannot stop thinking about my grandma empathy and compassion of taking in orphans and raised them as her own families and I look back and I wonder why my siblings are so blinded by money and fame only to fight about money and self interest, I give all the credit to my grandma for instilling in me my humanitarian US journalist job I today because money don’t matter to me but humanity matters to me to make a difference in people lives thanks to grandma for keeping me alive to follow in her compassion and kindness to our humanity. I hate money but it’s a necessity 24/7.
Absolutely true, We have so much in common “(the fowl coop with eggs and chickem)” Givingback is so much happiness. Warm regards!
Inspiring!
Thank you.
I once read 35 years ago, on a bulletin board, a clipping of someone quoting someone, that “a man wrapped up in himself, makes a small package. ” That stuck with me!
JI am a recovering alcoholic and have been sober for 24 years. In my recovery program it is important if we want to stay sober, we have to give away, what we have found through our fellowship. Helping others is the highlight of my day and what I do that I get filled with joy and happiness, knowing that I’m helping someone have a better life. In return, I get a life of health, wealth and happiness by being a service to others. I have been a taker and selfish most of my life and helping others is the last place. I thought I would find happiness, but I have.
Amen. I have an alcoholic friend, sober for something like 2 decades now. Still goes to AA every day, mostly to serve, but there is some personal benefit as well.
Thank you for sharing, I truly needed this.
I am in a position at the moment of trying to find a place to live, I am staying with a friend that had reached out to me, when I was going to move, I was planning on moving back to California where all my family resides, however she offered me her home, In Nevada, I prayed about it, I asked her twice if the offer still available, she said yes. I kept praying about it.
The answer was yes, I came to live in her home, not knowing that she has the beginning of Dementia, & also she had rented a rom to an Alcoholic man, that did not want me here, I left for 2 weeks, came back to pay her for the time, I had lived here, had no place to go, she asked me to stay here as a tenant, the Dementia is getting worst, the Alcoholic man is still here, he tells her, & her Grandson to kick me out of here every chance he gets. She now calls me her Roommate. I am looking for a place, however this time back to California, to be near my Sone, however I am very limited with my income, however I now realize that I am here to take care of her because of her Transition with the Dementia. I have not ever been around this issue, she has been one of my best friends. Very kind & caring. She always has a smile on her face. She does have 2 Adults Sone that are in charge, however they are not doing much, I have been reporting to one of them all her changes. She is still driving, she is 86 yrs old. I am truly concerned. This is my Mission, I will leave here in God’s own Divine timing, back to California. Thank you for listening.