"Cash flow challenge" summary 2018

The total cash flow from investments in 2018 was $146,193. 

That is Level 2 of my "Cash flow challenge" - "Sailing".

The yearly expenses are more than covered. Anything above that is just fun. To have some of that fun I booked a larger cabin for our June cruise.  

Below is my cash flow per month and the S&P 500 performance for 2018. 

The cash flow was decreasing in the last 3 months of the year in the time when the marked was down. 
My minimum per month was above $2,000 and the maximum was about $19,000. 
The next level would be "Motor boating" which corresponds to $500,000 a year. That is $41,666 per month. I am not even half there. That will be a tough level to reach. It might take me a few years. 

my cash flow

S&P500 returns in %

What is happiness?

After reading both parts of my answer the her question about ungrateful family (Part 1 and Part 2), M. said: I guess I am "love starved" to a point and therefore, I am a people pleaser and care too much what others think. How can I stop this? I want to become tough.

It is not about becoming tough... It is about becoming relaxed.


Is the full love jug the same as the happiness?

What is happiness? 

Happiness is not a constant euphoric state. Even the manic patients can maintain euphoria only for some limited time. It requires a lot of energy. The body will not provide you with that much energy for euphoria because it will be spent very quickly and it will be a way to a soon and certain death.

The opposite of happiness is fear. Constant fear is also very energy draining. But strangely it requires less energy than euphoria.

Is happiness absence of fear?

What is in the middle between euphoria and fear? 
It is the comfort. 
Euphoria, comfort and fear and connected on a spectrum.

If euphoria is white color and fear is black color, then comfort is gray. Since it is a spectrum, there are very many shades of that gray color. And according to the number of your fears you will be closer to one or another end of the spectrum.

It is nice to settle in the light gray area. It is not energy draining euphoria and not the blackness of fear.

Based on this color representation, the move toward light gray means reduction of fears.

What fears do most people have?
Fear of judgment, fear of disease, fear of financial instability, or fear of death. And many others.

The primary fear is the physical. It has to do with preservation of the body. 
This fears includes fear of becoming sick, weak, being injured or incapacitated and not being able to physically take care of yourself. 

The less financial resources you have to take care of the body needs, the more you will depend on people around you. You will have to be liked by others because if you need their help, they will only help you if they like you. 

The more financial resources you have the less you need friends who will have to help you for free. It sounds harsh but it is true.  
Financial abundance will turn food into high quality food and place to stay will turn into a warm, dry and comfortable home.

Preventing of accident will be possible to some degree, like bying a safer and bigger car with modern safety features.

Taking care of the aging body is also easier with money, the aging body will not need to work as hard at the job when the time comes. You can retire early and stop wearing yourself out at work.

It is interesting how it all comes to money.

The more money you have the safer you feel. Because all the fears related to the body preservation from the above list can be taken care of.
And the stealth money is best, because it will not attract anyone who might be danger for your body (for exapmle kidnapping).


What about the other type of fears like fear of judgment by others? Is it a separate category? 
It just looks like it is separate. I think, it is still a derivative of the body preservation fears.

People live in groups (societies), because for someone alone it will be almost impossible to take care of the body preservation. Even in tribes the jobs are divided - some hunt, some cook, some watch children and some give directions (chief and his "spiritual adviser/shaman").
The more the society develops, the more different jobs there will be. And everyone doing a job will be rewarded with a monetary equivalent for their contribution.

Someone separated from this group has a very little chance to survive.

People in the society pick their jobs according to their abilities and their own degree of fear they have for their body.

Those individuals who try to be very successful have very high level of fear. The average protection is not enough for them. They need more.


The further away you are from you own financial safety level, the more you feel dependent on others.

If you don't have your own resources and the situation comes, you will have to ask others for the resources you don't have. Consequently you have to be liked by them, or no one will give you any resources.

The families in the third worlds countries are bigger because with absent financial comfort they depend on other people's help. The poorer you are - the more "friends" you need.

It looks like behind all body preservation fears and the fear of judgment is actually the worry about availability of resources.

Money is the universal representation of resources. The more money you have the more resources will be accessible to you.

If all that really works how I just described above, then happiness is the derivative of money.

What is your magic number to stop worrying?
Let's say it is $3 millions?
How much do you have right now?
If you have half of that or $1,500,000, you are already more happy then when you only had $500,000.
And you will be more happy when you reach the number. 

Everyone has their own number. Some need less, some more. If there is someone out there who is truly happy with very limited funds, his levels of fear must be very low. 

It sounds, like you need money to become happy. 

What if it is exactly the opposite?

Like some esoteric teachings suggest that the more happiness you have and the more joyfully you spend money the more money you will get. They say, you can attract money with law of attraction. And in the same way you can attract happiness with law of attraction.
I haven't tried it. If someone did, let me know. You can only be sure that something works, if it produces consistent results. 

What if your financial possibilities are limited? Does it still make sense to work on your happiness or is everything lost? Maybe there are many ways to skin a cat?  


I have two more ideas.
Maybe it just depends on the stage of your brain development? We think that a child goes trough several development stages and after the teen years it is done with all the stages. 
What if there is no stop? And everyone still keeps developing and going trough stages but it is less visible because the body doesn't change that much anymore.
What if everyone has his own speed of the development? And the happiness is just a stage (maybe the end stage) of that development? Like Stanislavsky once said: Everyone can become a great actor. Just some need 5 years and the others more than 100 years. Those will die before they get there.
So everyone can theoretically come to happiness stage if there is enough time in his life. If it is so, many people will never learn what happy is.


But what if it even crazier then that?

What if we really live in a computer simulation. And we do just that what we are supposed to do by the program.

Everything is pre-decided including even your wishes. Including your time of death.
You wish only those things you are programmed to wish and you like those things you are programmed to like.
You are meeting only those people you are supposed to meet. But you feel that it is a real life happening to you.

Where is the place for happiness here? It is accepting everything how it is. Accepting that you are not the author of the program or may be you are but in this reality you are just the player. And after accepting that, just play this game with pleasure. You can stop taking everything so seriously.

Since your death is also pre-programmed, there is no need to fear of flying on a plane, because if you are supposed to crash, you will, and if you are not supposed to, you will not.

If you are supposed to break a leg you will break it and if you are not supposed to, you will not.

The recipe for happiness here is just to accept the game. Game is actually not entirely correct because a game contains choices and free will. It is more like watching a movie, but being one of the actors at the same time.  
Some would ask why did I get this particular scenario? Why am I not some billionaire in this movie or game? But what if there are many levels and many variations of this game? Maybe you will be one in the next.



These were 4 different ideas about happiness. 

The first one is the most practical.
The increasing independence and increasing potential and availability of resources will definitely improve the emotional comfort.

The second, the "law of attraction" way is reserved for those who can't go the first way. They can try to attract money and if that works, they can then join the first way. If that doesn't work, that can try to attract happiness directly...

The last two leave no free will.
You either get there or you don't dependent on how you development speed or if it is in your program at all. 

The last two ways have the highest level of acceptance in them.
And if happiness is acceptance of self completely, the last two are the ways that can lead to happiness too.

If happiness equals reducing the fear, the ways 1, 3 and 4 can work. It feels to me that the 2nd, the esoteric way, is a dead end. The life is not long enough to test all of them.

Since no one can prove any of those ways, why not to take the best of all of them and try.

All you need at the end is a certain level of comfort. You will still live in a society full of other people.
The difference will show when rain drops fall on your face. An unhappy person will complain. The happy one will not care.

Special situation: Grown up children and parents/parents-in-law

This is the Part 2 of my answer to M.'s question: How to deal with ungrateful family? I can't cut them off entirely but my irritation is at the point that I want to.

The first part was dealing with "ungratefulness".
This second part is about specific problems in relationship with mother and mother-in-law.


Grown up children and parents/parents-in-law.

1. Grown up child and mother

This happens a lot: Mother gives a lot of advise to her adult daughter.  
The mother gives a good reason for all her advise: she knows what is best for her daughter. She is worried about her and want only the best for her. But the daughter can't live her life as her mother wants her to. Both are unhappy with the relationship.


The mother's reason sounds legit. But it is not the real reason. In this reasoning there are many levels and the mother herself often don't know the real reason.

When I dig deep to find the real reason I can identify 3 levels. 

Level 1: The apparent "ungratefulness"

This is the very surface. You can fix few things on that level. But they will keep coming up again and again until you fix levels 2 and 3.
See the Part 1 for how to fix level 1.


Level 2: Fear of loneliness

The mother feels lonely after her child grows up. She fears to be excluded and not to be needed anymore. She fears to be forgotten.

She tries to fix that by demonstrating how much she cares. And expects care for her in exchange. Here it the reciprocity expectation again: she cares and expects care in return.
Her ways to show care may not the best but she can only do what she can. An average mother is not a super human, she is a regular person and she will use only the methods that she knows.

Her care full of advise how to live life is not the care a grown up child needs. That "care" turns quick into "annoyance and aggression" and by reciprocity that what the mother is going to get back.
Aggression in the relationship is the result. Both sides are irritated and unhappy.

If the adult daughter understands the reason on level 2, she can give care to solve that problem. Because care is what is expected. It is difficult and the adult child needs to be careful by making sure that the care is something "good" on the receiving end (see example 3 in the Part 1).
Trying to decrease the loneliness and fear to be forgotten would be the solution but it is not easy with a parent who is irritating and aggressive.

It is easier to break this circle of irritation if you jump straight to level 3.


Level 3: Love jug

On this level the real problem is not the fear of being forgotten or loneliness.

Mother usually sees her child as an extension of herself. 
If the mother is happy with herself, she will be happy with her child. 
Anything the mother doesn't like in herself she projects onto her child and tries to improve her child. The child is not accepted how it is because the mother does not accept herself how she is.

The mother who doesn't have enough love for herself will never give enough love to anyone else, including her child.

Imagine that everyone is carrying a jug filled with love - the love jug.
Only the self-love is as thick as honey.
All the love substitute people can get from others is sugar water which evaporates quickly.
People who don't have enough of honey (love for themselves) still have to fill the jug. They desperately try to at least collect sugar water from others. They collect that love substitute  in form of approval from others, being people pleasers, by self-sacrifice, or attention of any kind. Those substitutes fill the jug but evaporate quickly and have to be constantly refilled.

By completely accepting yourself how you are you fill your jug with thick honey. You don't need any sugar water anymore.

If you know how, you can make honey yourself. The sugar water is different. It can only be received from others. People with empty love jugs are going around trying to get that love substitute from others because they can't make it themselves.

There will be enough people who will try to give you the sugar water, because by reciprocity they will try to get some sugar water from you.

Once you have honey, you will have no need for that love substitute.

You will be able so see and differentiate people with their love jugs filled with honey from others who don't love themselves, are running around, busy trying to get various kinds of love substitutes from others (approval, attention, admiration, jealousy) to fill their jug with at least some sugar water.

Since it evaporates, they have to work for it all the time. If they don't get enough from others, they are unhappy and that is a painful feeling.

Back to the mother.
Mother who can't accept herself how she is, doesn't love herself. Because there is not enough true love (honey) in the mother's love jug, she will try to get the missing love from someone else including her child.

To fill the jug, the mother will go to whoever is closest to her. If the mother a good relationship with someone, she will try to get the sugar water out of that relationship first. That's why mothers who have active relationships themselves don't bother their children as much as when they are lonely.

All "I want the best for you" justifications are just a cover for a scream "Give me some love. I can't make honey, please give me at least some sugar water."

That jug has to be filled somehow.

The same is for children. If mother was not able to give them enough true love (honey) when they were growing up, their jug is not full unless they learned to make honey by themselves, became self-sufficient and independent from the need for love substitutes.


To fix the problem on level 2 you will need to give more attention to your mother. But that is difficult if the mother constantly needs a lot of attention because her love jug is empty.
Mother can't make sugar water herself. By demonstrating her care for the child she tries to give the child some sugar water to get some in return. But the child only gets irritation and by reciprocity gives irritation back. But even irritation is better than nothing, it is like a very low quality of sugar water, at least some attention instead of being completely forgotten.

It will be up to the child to work on the solution.

Acceptance is what makes honey. Accepting yourself and others. Accepting your mother how she is and telling her that will produce a portion of honey you can give her. Her jug will fill with that a bit and she will be less thursty for sugar water.

By saying: "Mother, when you say things like that to me, it is difficult for me to be close to you. And that makes me sad. I will always love you because you are my mother. I want to live my own life how I can. It is sad that you don't accept it. But even if you don't accept my choices in life, I will still love you."
And then give her some time.

If you want to know how it feels to hear it, you can imagine that you don't like a certain part of your own body, for example your right hand. You try to convince the hand to change, because you care and also because it will be better for the hand to change. For example it will be better for the hand to get longer fingers or smoother skin. And the hand tells you: "I can't change. That is how I am. But I will always love you because I am yours, I am part of you".


When mother realizes that she is accepted how she is, she will feel different.



2. Mother-in-law


She is afraid to become obsolete in her son's life.
The son's wife is a threat to her because her son will have to divide his attention and there will be less left for the mother. And that is very scary for someone with an empty love jug. She will do everything to get the competitor out of the game.

The daughter-in-law can try to give her some attention but the love substitute from close relatives like her own son is always stronger and more valuable, it is a bit better quality sugar water. She will still fight for that.
It is in the hands of her son to fix that problem. The daughter-in-law has very little chance to fix anything.

Fixing the problem on this level is the same as for the mother and daughter: acceptance.

How to deal with ungrateful family? Transaction of "doing good" to someone

M. asked me: How to deal with ungrateful family? I can't cut them off entirely but my irritation is at the point that I want to.

Part 1

From this question it sounds like M. tries to help her family members and her help is not accepted or it is taken but nothing comes in return.
M. has very kind and soft personality. For me it is difficult to imagine that she will really cut anyone off. But this threat shows the level of her unhappiness with how things stand.

M.'s question is very general. It could be a mix of a few  things. The first what stands out is "ungrateful". The second is "family". I will go trough them separately, starting with "ungrateful". In the next post (Part 2) I will touch on "family" specifically.


Ungrateful

Generally (actually almost always) when people do something they consider "good", they expect something "good" in return. Not always it is material, but at least some acknowledgement or "gratefulness".

This giving and getting back is a transaction. But this particular kind of transaction of "doing good" is somewhat tricky.

If you do "good" to your friend or family member you expect them to be at least grateful.
You did something for them. It was something "good for them". Not neutral or bad, it was good. STOP! That was something YOU think was "good". Was it really good for them?

This transaction requires reciprocity. By reciprocity you will receive back the same what they have received. NOTE: Not the same you gave them but the same they have received. Those can be two different things.

The tricky part of this transaction is that the valuation can change as soon as the "good" changes sides. 

On the receiving side the "good" can turn "bad" instantly.
The "good" turns to "bad" and you will receive "bad" back by reciprocity. That is the reason to make sure that something you give is not only "good" on your side but will also be receives as "good".

The key moment for a successful transaction is that during the transaction the "good" stays "good".

There are many reasons for something "good" to turn into something "bad".

For example, the people's taste is different.

A very simple example (1): a very strong coffee. You like very strong coffee and consider strong coffee something "good". 

But it is not the same "good" for everyone.
If it is offered as something "good" to someone who doesn't like coffee, especially a strong one, that offering of "good" immediately turns into something "bad" for the receiving person.
A joyful, accepting and happy "Thank you" can't follow that offer. 
By reciprocity that what was RECEIVED will go back. A "bad" drink was received and something "bad" will have to be returned. 
People are polite and try not to hurt others feelings but there will be at least some bad emotion coming trough instead of happy accepting. And that was just a simple coffee offer.

As soon as the offer is evaluated and is classified as "bad" the reciprocity kicks in and you will get the mirror of what was received. "Bad" will be paid back with "bad". "Good" will be paid with "good".


Here is another example (2). Your friend is shopping for a dryer. You recently have discovered a new dryer that can not only dry cloths but also de-wrinkle them and even perform dry-cleaning. You think it is the greatest thing and everyone should enjoy it, especially you close family members or friends.
You want to do your friend something "good" and convince her to buy that new dryer. Your friend doesn't like it, but she is shy and polite and doesn't want confrontation. She buys it because your advise is so pertinent.
You think you end up with having done something "good" for her. But actually it is not "good" for her at all. She had to spend more money on those extra options, it doesn't match the washing machine she already has, it doesn't fit into the space that well, and in addition, your friend doesn't use the de-wrinkling or dry-cleaning options.

The "good" you gave her turns in to "bad" on the receiving end. By reciprocity there is no way you will get something "good" back.
But you are still convinced that you did something "good" and by reciprocity you expect "thanks" as something "good" back. You don't get it and classify your friend as "ungrateful".

Your friend has received something "bad" and now will have to return something "bad" by reciprocity. Of course there will be absence of gratefulness. Even if your friend likes you a lot and is very polite, and also realizes that you wanted the best for her, the fact stays there - she has not received anything "good". 
It is very difficult and unnatural to be grateful for something "bad". It is like saying Thank you for new unnecessary problems. Most people will not thank for that. And almost no one can do it with an honest looking face.

Here is a more complicated example (3).
Your mother-in-law is not good with money. She buys a lot of useless things and can't manage her money well. She is talking about her money problems and complaining about it. But she is not asking for help with managing her money.

You think that the best for her is to learn how to manage money and try to teach her that. She is irritated and unhappy. You consider her ungrateful.

What she really wants is attention. Complaining about her money problems may be one of the ways she gets the attention she wants. It is especially true if she does nothing to fix the problem and only complains. Getting attention trough complaining is her solution to get that secondary gain of attention.  
This is not a perfect way to get attention but that is one of a few she knows and it has worked before. By offering to teach her money management you actually offering her a way to get less attention after the problem is solved. You are attacking her secondary gain. That that is nothing "good" for her. Her response will be appropriate.

Unwanted help and unasked advise are the same as an attack. The real reason is not always visible. Unwanted help starts an involuntary transaction.
In those cases one has to be really sure that the receiving person will classify it as "good".

The "gratefulness" or its absence is the sign for what really was received on the other end.

Someone who has a lot of ungrateful people around has to take a break to think about all the "good" he does to friends or family.
He runs a big risk of doing a lot of "bad". With the reciprocity it will come back to him as lot of "bad".


I just described the most common reason for "ungratefulness".
Lending money to help is a special topic and the consequences of money transactions are described in this post.

It seems to me that it might not be entirely applicable to M. I don't have an impression of being a person who goes around giving unasked advise to everyone.

If her troubles involve "family" it could also be relationship between her and her parents or parents-in-law. Relationships with mothers and mothers-in-law are a special situation and I will describe in separately in Part 2.