In a study carried out by a Harvard business school professor, he and his team decided to see if it was possible to buy happiness with money. To do this, first off, they took each of the participants happiness index, a number from 1–10 indicating how happy the individual was, the they gave a certain part of the selected participants an envelop with some money in it and an instruction asking them to spend the money on themselves. For the other group of participants, the envelope contained the same amount of money but with an instruction which asked them to spend the money on someone else, someone other than themselves. At the end of the exercise, the professor and his team took the happiness index again and they discovered that on the average those participants who spent money on people other than themselves had an increased happiness index by a point or two whereas those who spent the money on themselves mostly remained on the same happiness index. This experiment was carried out in North America, but to further prove the universality of this theory it was carried out in Africa as well with similar results.

What this tells us is that it is indeed possible to buy happiness with money it just depends on how you spend the money. Perhaps it is little wonder then that many billionaires after hitting the billion mark end up being very philanthropic. After having amassed so much wealth, perhaps they realize that using those resources to help other people is a better way to maximize happiness than buying yet another yacht or exotic island.

So how does this all relate to an everyday person ? Simple, helping others is one sure way to come out of a depression. You have only to look and see that there is someone out there who is in a worse situation than you are and who is actually in a position to be helped by you. It does not have to be money, sometimes it can just be time, a listening ear, a kind word, you never really know how far these things go. Are you feeling lonely and alone ? Well just like before, there is someone out there who is feeling an even deeper sense of abandonment and could really use your companionship.