Identification

• Webster's dictionary defines happy, or happiness, as:
  ·lucky, fortunate
  ·expressing or characterized by content
  ·well being
  ·pleasure, or good
  
  Wealth and happiness in this context can be seen as different sides of the same coin; or not.
  
  That so familiar saying, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" doesn't have to just be about beauty. Isn't, rather, happiness in the heart of the experience? And maybe wealth in the contentment of the heart? Let's see.
  
  

Misconceptions

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  So many people see the solution to all of life's problems in the power of the dollar. And granted, more money may mean less financial stress, but what other stressors will we find underneath? Another way of asking this is why do so many lottery winners, who were struggling financially, end up right back in the same situation they were in before they bought the winning ticket?
  
  Monetary wealth is a set of circumstances. The status quo has rather translated this particular set of circumstances into an ultimate quality of life. It's a value map that's been drawn in reverse, leaving many at a loss as to what comes first.
  
  

Indicators

• Webster's dictionary defines wealth as:
  
  ·valuable possession of any kind
  ·riches
  ·an abundance
  ·rich, prosperous
  
  Interesting how the reference to money, or monetary gain is not directly stated within a dictionary definition of wealth. On the contrary, the definition itself is rather subjective in context. "Richness, abundance, a valuable possession of any kind"-- sounds like the core, root essence of what happiness is.
  
  Wealth and abundance originate inside the experience of happiness. To find contentment within whatever state we're in leaves us free to choose what additions need to be made. Choices made from within this context become self-driven definitions of wealth, rather than sets of conditions that exist outside of self.
  
  Happiness is that state of being that finds wealth by instinct.
  
  

Benefits

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  To be happy is to hold all that life has to offer inside our hearts. It's a "knowingness" that moves with us from moment to moment regardless of circumstances or possessions. To be happy, in this sense, is to be wealthy.
  
  It's so easy for us as individuals to sell ourselves short in terms of our own capability to define what wealth is, and what happiness is in our lives. Which is to say, once we find happiness, wealth is already there waiting.