TRAVEL, Around the block or around the world, either one works

Sometimes I am asked, "Why do you like to travel so much?"

This article from the Journal of Consumer Psychology answers that.  

We think because our brand new TV will last longer than a cruise to Bermuda, that the happiness we felt at purchasing the TV lasts longer, too. Unfortunately, that isn't the case.

"One of our enemies of happiness is adaption," says Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University who's been researching the correlation between money and happiness for decades. "We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed, but only for a little while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them."

Because our new TV is right there, it makes it easier for us to adapt to it. But slowly, it starts to fade into the background as an electronic wallflower of our lives. Trips we took, and experiences we've had, start to become part of our identities.

Think about it: Which had a greater impact on you -- that video game you got as a kid, or the family vacation you took to Greece? You know, the trip with stories that can still make you and your siblings laugh when reminiscing.

"Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods,"

said Gilovich in the study "A Wonderful Life: Experiential Consumption and the Pursuit of Happiness," published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

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