If you keep in mind that happiness depends more on your state of mind than it does on your bank statement, you will understand that there can be only one tool to free you from the money trap: Appreciate and focus on what you have and don’t lament what you don’t have.
If you focus on what you don’t have, you’re going to be miserable. And that will happen again and again, because guaranteed, there will always be someone who has more than you do. If you look instead at what you do have, and I mean across the board, not simply the house and the car — if you look at your relationships and anything else that is meaningful to you, you cannot help but embrace and celebrate life for what it is. . . .
In the end, happy women know it’s not the woman who dies with the most pairs of shoes who garners the prize; it’s the one who has had the most fun dancing in them who is truly the winner.
— Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 60-61