10 Honest And Happy Things That No Amount Of Money Can Buy

Money makes the world go round. But it’s the things that money can’t buy that give the world, and all the life it holds, value.

There is an important difference between value and monetary value. Sadly, many people confuse the two and spend a lifetime chasing after that white rabbit.

Life is as amazing as it is because every single person in the world is capable of accomplishing just about anything he or she could ever dream of.

If you have the will to do it, you can find a way to make it a reality. Just be sure that what you're chasing after is worth chasing after.

The last thing you want is to arrive at your destination and realize that you plugged in the wrong coordinates.

Real friendships

Friendship is one of the most valuable things in the world. Having relationships based on mutual respect is the only thing that allows societies to function as well as they do -- as well as most do, anyhow.

Friendship harnesses trust, and without trust, you cannot have a healthily functioning society. Moreover, having good friends in your life makes for a better life altogether.

Friends function as a support system -- if things get tough, you have someone to call on for help. Even if you don’t ever bother calling on your friends for support, knowing that you have that support system will make you more confident and more daring in your personal endeavors.

Family ties

You can’t put a pricetag on family. They may be a pain in the ass most of the time, but the truth is that they more likely than not will have your back even when the rest of the world turns away.

Family members are sort of like friends who are almost guaranteed to help you when you ask for help.

Friends come and go, but family is there to stay. Depending on the relations you have with your family members, the support they provide could mean the difference between being successful in life and being miserable.

There’s little in life that can be accomplished entirely alone. Family ensures that you never really have to be alone.

Good health

If you aren’t healthy, you’re unhealthy. The unhealthier you are, the more likely you are to die. Dying -- obviously -- is bad. Avoid it for as long as you possibly can. The healthier you are, the more likely you’ll be to have extra time to do the things you wish to do.

Being healthy isn’t just about living longer; it’s about living better. The healthier you are, the healthier you feel, and the more you’ll enjoy the things you experience in life.

It’s difficult to understand the difference until you experience how it feels to be exceptionally healthy. Getting bloodwork done annually can help you better understand your body and tweak your diet and general lifestyle in order to maximize the pleasure you get from living.

Knowledge

To be clear, I am not saying education. The education system is flawed at best and more often than not, it fails the people it's supposed to benefit. Luckily, we live in an age where anyone who wants knowledge, who wants to get his or her hands on the right information, can do so anytime from anywhere.

If you’re going to trade your time for anything, trade it for knowledge. It will benefit you more than anything else in life -- in more ways than one.

Rational thought

The world would be a much better place if people focused more on rationalizing life and the situations they find themselves in rather than basing their entire lives, and all their actions, on some sort of faith. Religion or no religion, rational thought always has and always will reign as king.

Question everything. Consider all possibilities, all possible causes and outcomes. Make decisions after you’ve thought everything through rather than just acting on gut instinct or acting on outdated information. No matter what you believe you know, you could always be wrong.

Circumstances always change, but the right -- or best -- decision can always be found. Don’t be mind-lazy.

Honest love

Finding anything honest these days is hard enough, but finding honest love is by far the most difficult. It takes time to understand people and their true intentions -- rarely are people the open books we believe them to be.

Most individuals won’t ever open up to you enough for you to ever get to know who they really are.

Honest love isn’t so much found as it is created and nurtured. It takes years to develop and a lifetime to maintain. However, when someone loves you for the rawest version of yourself -- and you find that you love that person just as honestly in return -- what the two of you have together makes up some of the greatest stories the world has ever heard of.

Honest love may come with a price-tag, but not a monetary one.

Good times

I often think about the concept of time and how our psyches, although seemingly able to bounce between present and past, truly only exist in the present alone. It may be an illusion of sorts, but nevertheless, it's an illusion we all adhere to.

Think about the person you are right now, the existence you're now experiencing. It almost certainly feels like the only existence you have.

You don’t feel you existed in the past. You remember the past; instead, you realize that you exist in the current moment. One day in the future will be the last day of your life, and you'll feel as if it is the only time that you've ever existed.

Except, of course, for all those memories you’ve created over the years. It’s these memories, these good times, that remind you that you haven’t just existed for the millisecond, you're living in right now. You've existed for a lifetime. Without such memories, life will one day seem entirely void.

True success

Money can’t buy success. It can buy you a whole lot of things and although just about everyone believes that it can buy success as well, it can’t. Do the most successful people have a lot of money? Some do, but not all.

Neither fame nor money makes you successful, only success does that.

You have to be careful with how you measure success -- create your own standards instead of relying on the standards of others. Success is the end destination of our personal journeys.

What success means for one individual will differ from the next. Be certain of how you define success, and then go after it. Money may not be able to buy it, but you can nonetheless create it.

The ability we have to create change

This is probably the most undervalued aspect of life. The fact is that you can only matter to you, and then to other people.

The only way you can matter to other people is if you either have or continue to influence their lives in some shape or form. Because you affect them in some way, you literally become a part of their lives. Become the part of enough people’s lives in a positive manner and the possibilities are endless.

Happiness

You can’t buy happiness. Sure, you can buy jet skis, and no one frowns while flying off ocean waves, but that’s joy -- not happiness. Joy does factor into happiness, but more than anything else, contentment is what matters.

When you're content with yourself, what you have done with your life and with what you can still do with your life, you become happy. Why? Because you can’t find a reason to be unhappy.

Happiness is so incredibly elusive because it isn’t actually a thing or presence; it’s a void. It may seem counterintuitive, but that’s only because our minds have a difficult time grasping how something seemingly positive could stem from the lack or negation of something.

Being happy is as simple as not having any reason to feel otherwise. The only other trick is understanding what is worth being unhappy over and what is trivial. You can’t purchase happiness, but when you learn to understand it, it becomes second nature.

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