Happiness
Bob Rich’s Self-Therapy Guide: Change Your World
In this series, Dr. Bob Rich teaches you how to leave behind depression, anxiety, and other forms of suffering all too common in our crazy world. Recovering the Self published three sections of Bob Rich’s book From Depression to Contentment: A self-therapy guide in a series of posts – the first section ending with the quest for meaning and the second section concluding with The Development of Resilience.
The third section of Bob’s work was marked by special attention to various techniques and practices that are helpful in controlling depression. It concluded with a discussion on values and their implication in therapy. Bob now shares the final section of his self-therapy guide that delves deeper into the practical side of his therapy work illustrating with examples from individual cases of his own patients. The first post in this section, The Destination, explored the role of kindness versus isolation in one’s mental wellness. Here, Bob illustrates the difference between “need” and “want” in the context of happiness.
Don’t Like Your World? Change It!
Daniel is a builder by training, and ran his own business until 18 months before he saw me. He then decided he needed more money and found a job with a large company that erected high-rise buildings. Dan’s job was to supervise ongoing projects.
On the surface, he had it all: a loving wife, two delightful children, an income of $250,000 a year, high status in the community, the respect of the workers under him. All the same, he saw his doctor because of a long list of complaints. He’d lost a lot of weight, complained of tightness in his chest, suffered digestive upset. He really missed having time with his family. He wanted to extend his house, but simply couldn’t spare the time. He used to do martial arts, rode a bike, but no longer. His job took up 60 to 70 hours a week; he barely had time to recover from work during the little time left to him.
The doctor told him he was depressed, prescribed an antidepressant, and sent him to me.
Dan explained that although he worked such long hours, he was still always behind. His typical load was to supervise thirty projects, often well apart. He needed to ensure that everything went right, sort out conflicts, prevent problems before they occurred, discipline staff… I could see him tensing up as he told me about his work.
“Can you go part time?”
“No! I wish! It’s full commitment or out.”
“And what are the consequences of getting out?”
“In a word, money. No way can I earn this much if I work for myself.”
I decided to tell him a story from my life.
In 1978, I was in his position, with a very high-paying job that required my commitment 24/7. The job itself was great, but it left no time or emotional energy for anything else. Also, my wife and I were committed conservationists, and we figured that our lifestyle was damaging the future our children would inherit. We couldn’t reduce this damage while I was working so much, because money replaced time and other activities. And as a first approximation, every dollar you spend steals from the future. (I explain this in “How to change the world.” Yes, I know I mentioned it before, but it does describe a major route to contentment.)
So, at 35 years of age, I “retired.” To the amazement and even ridicule of most people who knew me, I gave it all away and instead started building a house with my own hands, not by hiring Experts to do it.
As a result, we stumbled into contentment. We have raised three wonderful people into competent adulthood, while living well below the official poverty level.
I then asked Dan, “Do you have a mortgage on your house?”
“No, paid that off.”
“OK, any other major debts?”
He did own an expensive car. “I could trade down, though, and wouldn’t miss it,” he said, not really to me.
He turned up for the second appointment, but only to thank me. He said, “I’ve talked it over with Helen, then gave notice. I’ll be working for a builder mate as a chippie. It’s a quarter of the income, but I already feel fifteen years younger. Thanks, Bob.”
Not all of us can do this. You may have a huge mortgage you can’t get out of, or rent you can barely afford. There may be other ways you have locked yourself into a situation in which you need to earn, or face disaster. However, reengineering your life is still possible.
All of us have needs and wants. A need is something you can’t do without in your circumstances. When one of our children had her second teeth growing in a very undesirable way, she required oral surgery followed by braces. The cost was $2500. We found ways of earning the extra money, because the health of our children was a need, not a want.
A want is something you enjoy having, but if you don’t get it, you won’t suffer actual deprivation. If you live in a place with poor or nonexistent public transport, having a car may be a need. Moving closer to public transport can convert it into a want.
However, owning a new car, or a status brand, is a want. Having a house to live in is a need for most people in western societies. Owning a big, imposing, expensive house is a want.
I once heard the CEO of a large bank being interviewed on radio, at the time of his retirement. He started as a boy Friday in a branch of the bank, trained to become a teller, then an accountant, then branch manager, and worked his way up to the top job. His first car was an old Bomb he bought for next to nothing. He stripped it down and rebuilt it. His last car was a luxury limousine. Guess which was his favorite car over all his life? The old Bomb of course. When he married, they managed a deposit on a ramshackle little cottage, but then had no money for furniture. They made do. Now, he had a mansion in an expensive area.
He told us that his son had just got married. He wants a house exactly like mom and dad’s. No, not the ramshackle cottage, but the mansion.
The CEO said, poor boy is missing out on the struggle, the joy of achievement. He is confusing want with need.
In my novel, The Travels of First Horse, my little hero said to the King of Tyre: “Majesty, why do people want more than they need? I feel that if each person could be satisfied to fill his belly and clothe his back, to have a house against the weather and beauty about him, then all this strife and unhappiness would be unnecessary.”
This shedding of wants has been a huge part of my healing.
Remember, I’ve said that consumer society is built on necessary, continuous dissatisfaction? Opt out of wanting, and you’ve opted out of this insanity. One of my ongoing joys is to look at advertisements for almost anything, and think, No, I don’t want this.
Homework
Do read my essay “How to change the world.”
Engage in brainstorming with your family, separating wants from needs, and reduce the wants as far as possible. This can be a gradual process, and there is no need for heroics. It’ll help you to read the transcript of a speech I made in 2002, http://mudsmith.net/yarravalley.html.
– Dr. Bob Rich
