The Economics of Happiness and the Significance of Joy | Elizabeth Salinas | TEDxYouth@ASFM

Boredom The desire for desire is like a great void that spreads throughout everything like the sky is the disease of our time, yet most of us will spend our lives ascending to ever greater levels of comfort and we want to know that all of this Having and wanting and obtaining makes us happier because if not, what's the point? I am an

economics

professor and

economics

as a discipline has tried to intervene in the debate about

happiness

. How many surveys have you seen lately about the happiest people in the happiest places they live? They are everywhere, however, any student in the first week of class will discover that economics studies how we have unlimited designs for things and how we compete with the limited resources of our planet, so how can we have unlimited desires for things and yet get bored at the same time, why doesn't all this having, obtaining and wanting make us happier?

I think to find the answer to that question we have to go back to when we started associating happy

happiness

with things in the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Originally it said life, liberty and property. The problem is that when we take something that is intangible like happiness and try to quantify and measure it, we turn it into a commodity and subjugate it. According to the laws of the market, all these things will not make us happier. Money and things will not make us happier. They won't either.

Honors. Awards. Degrees. Recognition. When we have these things, we are afraid of losing them. We might feel frustrated about not having them. we have more or we get bored of what we have what do we want then what will make us happy I think we don't want the things that society tells us we should want honors awards recognition wealth power pleasure we were not made for the little things that this world can give us We were created for the great things we can give to this world We were created for a meaningful life and for joy How can we live a meaningful life and where do we find joy? meaning the word begins with a sign and that is what we need something to guide us in a direction.

We must first decide to live with purpose because if we don't decide how to live our lives, someone else will decide for us. Purpose says educational author Tony Wagner begins with play. The things we love when time slips away and we enter a creative space called flow. Recognizing these moments and taking advantage of them can help us find our passion. For many people, passion is the end in itself. It's like the golden key that opens all doors, except for me. Passion is more like a spark to let the flame build up, we have to fan it, we have to give it some oxygen and we have to give it some time for the flame to build up and the same goes for your passion.

You will be able to bring it and develop it to the extent that you dedicate time and energy to it and when you find your passion many times we want to hide it, we want to cover it, we want to treasure it and preserve it. For us, nothing could be further from the truth. We have passion and it will become purpose and lead to meaning to the extent that we give it away. Think about it. Your talents, interests and abilities were not given to you. If you don't choose them, they were given to you for free and whatever you do with them you should share them freely with the world.

That's not to say that great careers and fortunes weren't built by doing our best in the workplace, but many times we do it the other way around, we start out chasing money and forget about our talents and skills along the way. Money is not an end in itself, but it is often the result of excellence in whatever field we have. I can't think of a better example of a person. who lived a life more important than oeno garas Sada took a brewery that was in ruins after the Mexican Revolution and on the verge of bankruptcy after the Great Depression and turned it into a large company that at the end of his life consisted of six 30 different companies including Alpha vitro and FEMA as ohen garas did Sada gave back first gave back to his employees shortened their workday from 12 hours to 9 hours gave them Medical Care before the Mexican social security system existed and gave them housing before that public housing existed, but he also gave to society and gave through education.

Don Oeno knew that Mexico needed to develop the talents of its workforce to meet the needs of industrialization, so he founded a university. technico de monter, which today is a system of high schools and universities with more than 26 campuses throughout Mexico serving almost 990,000 students. The life and legacy of oeno garas sada continue to impact Monteray Mexico and the world and us as we turn our gaze and look outward. towards the world instead of ourselves, we will begin to live a meaningful life, but what about joy? Where does joy come in? Unlike happiness, joy cannot be bought, it is not the result of an emotional state, luck or circumstance.

You can't buy it, but you can catch it. Joy sneaks up on us when we least expect it and awakens us to a greater reality. CS Lewis, a great hero of mine, said that Joy has the characteristic that anyone who has experienced it will love it. Once again, joy is the antidote to boredom and the result of a meaningful life. Remember that what you know is not as important as what you do with what you know. Getting your degree in economics and using it to engineer the next financial crisis is not the same. as is taking your degree in economics and using it to solve the varied and complex problems facing the world, such as income inequality and poverty, the list goes on, so use your powers for good, in the end, the good that don't do will win.

If not done by someone else it will remain undone, no one can do what you were here to do and when you recognize it and put it into practice your life will have made a difference, you will have found meaning and you will have found joy. you