Adam’s Peace

The Web Entrepreneur Tyler Cruz, owner of a very popular blog and the mastermind behind Publisher Spot, a repository for very high quality ad network reviews has asked me a question. In fact, it isn’t just any old question, but it is an extremely thoughtful question that goes to the core of human nature.

Before I get to his question, though, I would like to spend a few paragraphs introducing Tyler, his blog, and Publisher Spot.

I first became acquainted with Tyler’s work after reading a top-ten list of entrepreneur related blogs about four months ago. I added each blog to my list of subscribed feeds, then slowly started the process of weeding through their content to decide which blogs I wanted to continue reading. After removing the blogs that simply advertised for their e-books, or those which consistently gave partial feeds that failed to catch my interest, I was left with a couple that I really liked. Tyler’s is now at the top of my list because he posts consistently, he writes about relevant topics, and he has a sense of humanity in the way that he writes.

What are these relevant topics? The topic of motivation is one of my favorites, and it is expressed in his personal challenge to work for 40 hours in a week. His first and second attempts show just how hard this is, when he is the master of his own time and is not the slave to a clock. His third attempt shows that what he needed was a challenge in the form of learning a new skill, and his fourth attempt shows his overwhelming success as he truly grabs his challenge by its ears and holds on for a wild ride. Tyler also talks about other topics of interest to online professionals, including his taxes, advertising networks, and Guitar Hero. (By the way, I’m also addicted to Guitar Hero as well, though I can barely pass half of the songs on the Hard setting.)

One of my favorite posts by Tyler is titled Deal or No Deal or Break Your Legs, where he takes a comical approach in explaining that there should be more risk involved in the game show Deal or No Deal.

His new site, which he has been launching for a couple of months, is Publisher Spot. This new site reviews advertising networks fairly, comparing them against each other and listing their pros and cons, how to use them to maximize your profits, and how to get started in using it. I can personally attest to the quality of the reviews, as I took on his challenge of reviewing AGLOCO in exchange for being the person who recruits him. Despite giving my best effort, I came in second (out of two applicants, so really, I was the worst ), as Tyler made the wise choice of selecting the best review. If I were far more ambitious with monetizing this blog, or any other site that I may create in the future, Publisher Spot would be my first stop in finding the best advertisers.

Now that I’m done touting Tyler’s accomplishments, it’s time to address his question.

If you could have everything and anything, what would it take to make you completely and hopelessly happy. Not just happy, but truely happy. I guess I’d define this as the moment when you don’t think about such things anymore, but are just enjoying life, and couldn’t ask for anything more.

Try to think of this in the relation of realism, so wishing for “peace on earth” isn’t really an option, but you could choose to be a billionaire, healthy, and living in a tropical massive tree house with family. Would that make you purely happy though, or would you still have times when you’d want more. Is it part of the human condition to want more, even when you have everything?

People always want more, and even people who say they are perfectly happy and couldn’t ask for another thing, I’d still be willing to bet that from time to time their mind does wander off to want more.

What would make me happy as an individual? I have actually thought about this quite a bit…

A lot of people say that money can’t buy you happiness, but after reporting $2,000 in taxable income last year, I would have to disagree. (Actually, I had about $12,000 in unreportable income in the form of the Montgomery GI Bill’s education allowance, and $6,000 in deduction, including tuition, which brings me up to a gross income of $20,000.) Money itself doesn’t bring happiness, but the use of money does, most definitely, allow a person to be happy.

So, with the U.S. government correctly believing that I’m poorer than dirt, I would have to say that money, at least in modern society, is one requirement for happiness. Money only brings happiness to the poor, though… After your basic needs are met, money starts to matter less and less. This actually leads people into a common trap. Since, when a person is poor, money does indeed buy happiness, people get into the habit early on of gathering money to be happy. After the basic needs are met, though, and money stops buying happiness, this habit of gathering money to be happy starts to lead people into a spiral of misery, as they take on more and more stressful jobs to earn more and more money.

This leads to my first criteria of happiness… to have enough income to always be able to meet my basic needs. I estimate this to be around $50,000 per year before taxes based on the cost of living for where I want to live. If this comes in the form of passive or blogging income, then so much the better.

The second criteria comes from my experience of video games. I find that the games which I enjoy the most are the ones where I can find a difficulty level just one step above what I’m capable of. If the game is too easy, I quickly lose interest. If the game is too hard, I become upset and stop playing.

I noticed this same attitude reflected in many different parts of my life. Throughout my years as a slave to the public education system, I found the “games” to be too easy, so I lost interest. Unfortunately, my grades suffered as a result, and I was eventually put into special education classes, despite consistently scoring extremely well on any test that I took. I simply wasn’t interested enough in homework to even bother thinking about it. (I should have taken a page from Steve Pavlina and pulled out my crayons and cardboard boxes.) While I was in the Army, my personality type was simply incompatible with being a leader of other soldiers. Since being promoted beyond the rank of Specialist was impossible for me, I stopped trying altogether, despite being one of the most technically adept soldiers in my platoon.

With programming, though, I am constantly faced with challenges that are just barely beyond my skill level and knowledge. Because I can always push myself a little bit harder, learn new things, and get immediate results, I have come to be at the top of my class in college. The only real difference is that the challenge isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible either, so I truly enjoy the process. I enjoyed the process of writing the review of AGLOCO as well, as I learned many things about my own writing style, so despite being the worst of the applicants (all two of us), it was a very rewarding experience.

So, the second criteria of being happy is to have a steady stream of challenges that are just beyond my reach.

Is it part of the human condition to want more, even when we have everything? Absolutely. It isn’t getting more that increases our joy, it is the process of working for more that increases our joy.

I am at my happiest when all of my bills are paid and I have just accomplished something. The accomplishment could be as simple and mundane as cleaning my apartment. For a few hours afterwards, I can look back at the work I have done, look at the results, and truly smile, knowing that I made a difference. The same goes for writing posts in this blog. Thinking of topics doesn’t bring me joy… Depending on what I write about, I could be deeply troubled while I’m writing, but once I hit the Publish button and view the post in its public form for the first time, I can truly say that I am happy.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I have dreams for a large mansion, and I’ve even drawn up a basic floor plan, which includes a bowling alley and theater in the basement, but owning it wouldn’t make me happy… Earning it will.

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If you have a question about peace, in any of its forms, feel free to use the Contact Form or leave a comment on this post. If you would like to add to this answer in any way, feel free to leave a comment here.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Responsibility, Inner Peace, Joy, Personal Finances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.