If
only I could win the lotto, if only those six numbers
I've been taking since 1978 would drop out of that
big perspex ball - wow, my whole life would change
for the better and my life would be complete and everybody
would be happy.
True? Does money buy
happiness? Or does success bring far more happiness
than money ever could? And what's the difference?
Have a think about a
guy from Kentucky the USA called Mack Metcalf. He
was a forklift driver who picked up $US65 million
in Powerball and told all and sundry he'd finished
with it all and everybody else and he was going to
move over here to Australia and live the good life?
Did he? Not even close.
He bought a small southern
style mansion that looked like the set of Gone With
The Wind in Kentucky on a "modest" 43 acres,
bought mega expensive cars to play with, got sued
by a former wife (who saw his photo on TV) for child
maintenance, got ripped off by a former girlfriend
for half a million while he was drunk, became an alcoholic
and thought every one he knew was trying to kill him.
The grog gave him cirrhosis
of the liver and hepatitis and he died three years
later at age 45. On his tombstone it simply reads
"Loving father and brother, finally at rest".
$65 million sure bought
him a lot of happiness. So money doesn't buy happiness?
Isn't that what your mum told you? But, if you're
like me you've probably always had a hankering to
find out for yourself. If having money isn't number
1, it sure is giving whatever is in first place a
hell of a race.
Perhaps it is true that
money does buy you time and with that time it is possible
to do other things that make you happier. So many
of us, like approximately 99% of us, spend so much
time trying to make money to pay the bills that anything
you may wish to do to give you pleasure falls in to
the "too hard, no time" category.
Extending the argument
out, do people who live in so called rich countries
have happier lives that those that live in poor countries.
According to a 2006 survey, the unhappiest place on
earth to live was Zimbabwe- well, what a surprise
- the joint is a basket case run by a psycho dictator
and filled with people who've spent the last twenty
years eating dirt. But when you get past that level
of abject poverty and in to a small degree of monetary
"comfort", does the extra money make any
real difference?
Now you'd reckon that
a country rich in history and culture and a modern
way of life like France would be a happy place to
live. No - wrong (buzzer sounds). In that same survey
only 36% of people living there said they were happy
yet, in Mexico, obviously poorer in most measurable
terms, nearly twice as many people said they were
generally happy.
So what has this all
got to do with punting on the races? Think about it
- if you back a winner at 10/1 and one at 3/1, which
one makes you "happier"? I would reckon
that most of you couldn't notice any difference in
emotions when you think about that. So is it the success
in making the correct decision that
makes you happy regardless of the financial profit?
Is it that you were smarter than the mob and able
to arrive at a successful decision more important
than whether you won $100 or $300?
People ALWAYS think that
the "good life" is always on the next level
up to where they personally exist. Read that again
and absorb it. People ALWAYS think that the "good
life" is always on the next level up to where
they personally exist.
So does having money
make you happy or is it having more money than the
next punter what makes you happier? Perhaps out of
our primeval past comes the urge to show that we're
better than others. 100,000 years ago, it would have
given us happiness to have more animal skins than
the troglodyte in the next cave. This would of course
help ensure mating prospects, which would keep our
genetic lines going.
This is not to say there
is something strange about measuring our success with
money. I measure one selection method's success against
another mostly on dollar grounds BUT other things
do come in to play like hours of work needed to return
x as compared hours required to return y. Because
when you think about it, time is something on which
you can't put a price. So if one method I use returns
a profit of $200 for 20 hours work a week and another
returns $100 a week for 4 hours a week time investment
which one do you think is the better return on all
measures of quality?
US President Theodore
Roosevelt was a pretty smart dude. His words: "happiness
is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in
the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative
effort.”
My passion in the creativity
area is all about finding patterns in racing that
bring me a modest return on hours invested. The freedom
that this brings me, gives me immeasurable happiness
in having the time to indulge in many other things
like family and friendships and other constructive
pleasures.
Make no mistake - money
IS a handy measure of success. But there is a dark
side to it. A lot of people tend to forget that money
is only a measure. Some people focus on money
for its own sake, forgetting what really brings the
happiness to their lives.
If you are one of the
5% of punters who make consistent profits from racing,
that's terrific BUT never lose sight of what it is
really all about. Enjoy life. Have fun while you're
here and doing it because you're going to be gone
for a long long time.
© RaceRate.com 2011
