Money can't buy you happiness? Well, what if it could? Not by making it or spending it, but by giving it away.
In an experiment in Switzerland, researchers gave each of the 50 volunteers 20 yuan every week for four weeks and asked half of the volunteers to spend the money on themselves and write down how they spent the money. But researchers asked the other half to spend the money on another person.
After that, all 50 volunteers did the same task in a laboratory. They needed to think of a person who they would like to give money to. Then they had to decide how much money, from 3 yuan to 20 yuan, they wanted to give away. While the volunteers thought about this, researchers studied their brain activity using an MRI machine.
The results showed two things. First, the 25 volunteers who gave their money to others during the four weeks were more generous (慷慨的) and chose to give more money to others in the laboratory task. Second, those same people were much happier than the people who once spent the money on themselves. In the experiment, the volunteers must give money away.
But would you like to do this in your daily life? Can you really make yourself happy by giving? The answer is yes, but remember to start small. You can start by giving £1 to a homeless person. Little by little, you can try to change your habits so you save money to give away. For example, stop buying something that you don't really need. Then you can save some money and give it to people in need.
Learning to give away money is all about changing the way you behave. It's about living with less money and being more generous. And this will make you happy.
