If you’re reading this sentence, you’re probably not on an island in the South Pacific, sipping Mai Tais while tiny little goldfish nibble on your feet keeping your formerly sandpaper like skin silky smooth.
Which means you didn’t win the billion and a half dollar lottery last week.
Neither did I.
In fact, my wife and I had two tickets and failed to match a single number on either ticket. There ought to be a prize for that. What are the odds anyone’s luck can be that bad?
Of course, it could be that we’re the lucky ones for not winning.
70% of all lottery winners are broke within 5 years.
And you don’t have to search very hard to find dozens of horror stories from winners who say that it was the worst thing that ever happened to them or at least they would say that, you know, if they weren’t dead.
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David Edwards had just lost his job and was facing an expensive surgery when he was one of two winners of a $295 million Powerball jackpot in 2001. It must have seemed like a gift from the Gods.
He opted to take the $41 million lump sum pay out telling Good Morning America that he was perfectly capable of hiring the right advisors and managing his own money.
He and his advisors went on to buy a Lamborghini, a Lear Jet, three race horses and a string of unsuccessful companies from limos to fiber optics.
He ended up living in a storage unit surrounded by dirty clothes and rotting food. He passed away in hospice at the age of 58.
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Mark Metcalf and his estranged wife Virginia Merida split a $34 million jackpot in 2000 and divorced the next year. They bought his and hers mansions in Kentucky. Within 3 years he had drank himself to death and her partially decomposed body had been found in her bed surrounded by the stray cats she had brought home to keep herself company.
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Jeffrey Dampier won a $20 million jackpot in 1996, subsequently divorcing his wife, remarrying and moving to Florida where he was kidnapped and murdered by his new sister-in-law, with whom he was also having an affair.
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But that could never happen to people like you and me.
Maybe not. You have to look to find them, but there are stories of people who have won big jackpots and did not die beside a dumpster in an alley behind some random crack house. It can happen.
But even if winning the lottery doesn’t ruin your life, you’d be hard pressed to find any evidence of of big winnings improving the winner’s life.
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But even if winning the lottery doesn’t ruin your life, you’d be hard pressed to find any evidence of of big winnings improving the winner’s life. It’s fairly well researched that money only helps make us happier up to about 75 grand a year. Above that it has no bearing on our happiness.
And Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert goes on to say that big dramatic life shifts like winning the lottery have zero impact on our happiness three months later. We gravitate back to our natural state.
If you were carefree, well-adjusted and generally happy go lucky before you won the lottery, maybe you’ll do ok. If you were a miserable, depressed asshole before you won the lottery, now you’re just going to be a miserable, depressed asshole with deep pockets.
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I’ve had a lottery list for as long as I could remember. Actually two lists: The list of things I’m going to buy with my newfound wealth and the list of people who can kiss my ass as I walk out the door.
Fresh out of college, I had a poster on my office wall of a black on black Porsche 911 Turbo, my dream car. And number one on the hit parade of things I would buy if and when I ever hit the lottery.
Oh there were other things too: skyscrapers and pro sports teams, private island with Mai Tais on tap and an unlimited supply of hungry goldfish with foot fetishes.
After you’ve been kicked in the sack enough times, after the golden ring has been dangled in front of you and yanked away enough times, after you’ve come face to face with your own mortality and the mortality of those that you love, maybe, if you’re one of the lucky ones, your priorities will start to shift.
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But God has a funny sense of humor. After you’ve been kicked in the sack enough times, after the golden ring has been dangled in front of you and yanked away enough times, after you’ve come face to face with your own mortality and the mortality of those that you love, maybe, if you’re one of the lucky ones, your priorities will start to shift.
A few years ago, I was sitting on my back deck drinking coffee trying to figure out my life by paying the “what if” game. “What if” time and money were no object. “What if” I really could do whatever the hell I wanted. “What if” I won the lottery.
Tell Me What You Want. What You Really, Really Want—The Spice Girls
Now I never thought one of the defining moments of my life would include the lyrics from a Spice Girls song, but I came to the realization that what I wanted, what I really, really wanted wasn’t the black on black 911 Porsche Turbo. It wasn’t a Donald Trump style skyscraper with my name in gold across the front entrance. And it wasn’t a pro sports team or a private island.
All of things would be OK I guess. But they’re too far removed from my actual life to have any meaning. They’re a mirage.
I came to the understanding that what I really wanted was exactly the life I had… only better.
The exact car I had now, just a few years newer.
The exact house I live in now only remodeled and fixed up nicer.
The same job, the same marriage, the same family, the same life only better.
As long as our dreams are far away and out of reach, we have to rely on hitting the lottery for them to have a chance at coming true.
But the moment you realize that you’ve already won the lottery. Your life will change in ways you can’t even imagine.
99% of the people who have ever walked the face of the earth would trade places with you in a heartbeat.
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99% of the people who have ever walked the face of the earth would trade places with you in a heartbeat. We live in amazing time with the sum total of all human knowledge from the last 10,000 years literally in the palm of your hand.
Your life will never be better until you truly understand just how good it really is already.
But once you can wrap your mind around that, once you truly appreciate the myriad of blessings that have been bestowed upon you and learn to become a steward for those blessings instead of casting them aside for the next shiny object you see, you won’t need the lottery to make your dreams come true.
No one needs billion and a half dollars to be happy. Any any objective look at the evidence will tell you that it’s at least as much of a hindrance to your happiness as a panacea.
If you can take your eyes off the jackpot and the Lamborghinis and the Lear Jets. If you can take a good hard look at where you really and what you really, really want, maybe you’ll find you don’t need to win the lottery to get there.
Sustainable change is almost always incremental change.
Start where you are using what you have.
With a little work, you can make your actual life better one minor adjustment at a time, one better habit at a time, one focused action at a time.
Photo—nist6dh/Flickr