When I reached FIRE, my motto was that rather than working for others to achieve financial independence, I can now work for myself to achieve happiness.
One of the challenges to the question of what makes us happy is that happiness is subjective and short term happiness may actually cause longer term life unhappiness.
Good relationships are the most important thing for finding happiness. Considering the importance of good relationships for our own happiness and for that of the world. That’s right.
I am going to go out on a limb supported by research data above, common sense, and the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and just say it. To me, this means that treating people well is not just the golden rule but it is actually good for you personally.
I had the pleasure of recently completing another item on my bucket list in attending a relationship workshop with my lady: The workshop that we chose was based on 50 years of research by a well known husband and wife team studying couples.
It was a lot of fun to see their passion and humor in person and this workshop really resonated with my wife and I as data-driven sort of people. As a nice bonus, this also meant that we got to spend a weekend together.