DOES Buy Happiness">

Money can’t buy hap­pi­ness. Or can it? The Tier­ney­Lab blog from The New York Times recently con­ducted an infor­mal sur­vey. Based on Spent: Sex, Evo­lu­tion, and Con­sumer Behav­ior, a new book from Dr. Geof­frey Miller, read­ers were invited to:

List the ten most expen­sive things (prod­ucts, ser­vices or expe­ri­ences) that you have ever paid for (includ­ing houses, cars, uni­ver­sity degrees, mar­riage cer­e­monies, divorce set­tle­ments and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most hap­pi­ness. Then you’re sup­posed to count how many items appear on both lists.

I am rehash­ing this post I made sev­eral months back because I think it is good to read it again (for peo­ple who have read it); in any case, it is good to high­light this now, spe­cially after I gave a retreat to col­lege stu­dents around three weeks ago. The last time I directed a silent retreat was three years ago. It was great to have joined that crack group of Jesuits and lay peo­ple who did one-on-one spir­i­tual direc­tion to stu­dents for five days! I directed some col­lege seniors who were about to spend their last semes­ter of col­lege and enter into a dif­fer­ent world. This post is ded­i­cated to them.

Some weeks ago, I talked about GAINING YOUR SOUL, AND LOSING THE WORLD. And some­times, we can live in clear cut dual­i­ties of: “the world” vs. “not-of-this-world”, or “love” vs. “hate”, or heaven vs. hell. But more life is often­times gray more than black and white. And many times we are made to choose not between good and bad, but between bad and worse or good and bet­ter. That is when things get more com­pli­cated and not so clear cut. That is when DISCERNMENT becomes very important.

Today, let me talk about this in more detail.

On June 12, 2005, Steve Jobs spoke to the grad­u­at­ing class of Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. This is the first part of a speech that made a great impres­sion on me when I first read it. Great read!

This week, we will be talk­ing about the actual steps in mak­ing deci­sions. While these are not fool­proof, you are assured of mak­ing an informed deci­sion when you fol­low these steps. Remem­ber, intu­ition comes in all steps of this decision-making process. It is impor­tant to allow your gut feel to guide you as well.