Pretty simply question in the title, but I want to break it down a bit more.
Note: when I use the word "happiness", I'm not talking about occasional spikes e.g. reaching a goal and feeling great for a short while, having a great holiday and buzzing for a week after returning etc. I'm talking about permanent changes in your moment-to-moment happiness. Happiness in each and every 3 second interval of your life (also know as "the present moment" – the ONLY time that ever matters. Right now. The past is a memory, and the future never arrives).
1) Has your level of happiness permanently increased as your income/net worth has?
2) Has your level of happiness permanently increased as your portfolio has?
3) What's had the biggest positive, longterm impact on your happiness?
4) What's had the biggest negative, longterm impact on your happiness?
5) Those who have reached "financial freedom", has your permanent level of happiness increased?
6) Any words of wisdom, insights, books, experiences, anything you recommend tor SSers to increase their happiness and wellbeing?
7) How old are you?
I ask only for considered, honest answers.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling
