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But economists have shown us that after basic needs are met, there isn't much 'marginal utility' to increased wealth. In other words, the difference between a guy who makes $15,000 and a guy who makes $40,000 is much bigger than the difference between the guy who makes $100,000 and the guy who makes $1,000,000. Psychologists, philosophers, and religious leaders are a little too quick to say that money can't buy happiness, and that really betrays a failure to understand what it's like to live in the streets with an empty stomach. Money makes a big difference to people who have none.

On the other hand, once basic needs are met, further wealth doesn't seem to predict further happiness. So the relationship between money and happiness is complicated, and definitely not linear. If it were linear, then billionaires would be a thousand times happier than millionaires, who would be a hundred times happier than professors. That clearly isn't the case.

On the other hand, social relationships are a powerful predictor of happiness—much more so than money is. Happy people have extensive social networks and good relationships with the people in those networks. What's interesting to me is that while money is weakly and complexly correlated with happiness, and social relationships are strongly and simply correlated with happiness, most of us spend most of our time trying to be happy by pursuing wealth. Why?

Individuals and societies don't have the same fundamental need. Individuals want to be happy, and societies want individuals to consume. Most of us don't feel personally responsible for stoking our country's economic engine; we feel personally responsible for increasing our own well-being. These different goals present a real dilemma, and society cunningly solves it by teaching us that consumption will bring us happiness.

Society convinces us that what's good for the economy is good for us too. This message is delivered to us by every magazine, television, newspaper, and billboard, at every bus stop, grocery store, and airport. It finds us in our cars, it's made its way onto our clothing. Happiness, we learn, is just around the corner and it requires that we consume just one more thing. And then just one thing more after that. So we do, we find out that the happiness of consumption is thin and fleeting, and rather than thinking to ourselves, "Gosh, that promise of happiness-by-consumption was a lie," we instead think, "Gosh, I must not have consumed enough and I probably need just one small upgrade to my stereo, car, wardrobe, or wife, and then I'll be happy."

We live in the shadow of a great lie, and by the time we figure out that it is a lie we are closing in on death and have become irrelevant consumers, and a new generation of young and relevant consumers takes our place in the great chain of shopping.

The Speed Of The Game with Dan Gilbert: Episode 5 | Karlie Kloss

Published on May 23, 2019

Gratitude... is a very appropriate emotion given all the lucky coincidences in our lives - and especially given the lucky coincidences that made our lives possible in the first place. There's scarcely a single self-help book that doesn't exhort its readers to reflect on the positives in their lives every night and feel grateful.

But there are two problems with gratitude. First, who do you thank? If you're not religious, there's nobody to feel grateful to. Second, habituation. The human brain reacts violently to change but adapts rapidly to situations. This is an advantage when disaster strikes-our grief at being abandoned or at being stuck in a wheelchair after an accident will fade more swiftly than we think, thanks to habituation. Dan Gilbert calls this our 'psychological immuone system'. Unfortunately, however, the effects of the 'psychological immune system' are not limited to disasters. Six months after we win millions on the lottery, for instance, the effect on our happiness will have dissipated. The same goes for the birth of our children or the purchase of a new home. Because ninety-nine percent of the positive aspects of our lives didn't just crop up today but are of long standing, the power of habituation has negated the joy we originally felt about them. Gratitude is an explicit attempt to fight this process by deliberately naming and emphasizing the positive things we have going for us. Sadly, however, we grow accustomed to this tactic too. People who make a mental "gratitude" checklist each evening find it weakens the effect on their wellbeing compared to people who do it less frequently. A paradoxical result - yet one explained by the leveling power of habituation.

These, then, are the downsides of the much-vaunted practice of gratitude - the question of who to thank and the issue of habituation. Now the good news: mental subtraction brings none of these disadvantages. It's such an unexpected move that your brain never sees it coming. In several studies, Dan Gilbert, Timothy Wilson and their research colleagues have shown that mental subtraction increases happiness significantly more markedly than simply focusing on the positives. The Stoics figured this out two thousand years ago: instead of thinking about all the things you don't yet have, consider how much you'd miss the things you do have if you didn't have them any longer.

Say you're an athlete taking part in the Olympics. You're in peak condition, even winning a medal. Which would make you happier, silver or bronze? Silver, of course, you reply. Yet a survey of medalists during the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona revealed that silver medalists were less happy than bronze medalists. Why? Because silver medalists measured themselves against gold, while bronze medalists measured themselves against the runners-up. Mental subtraction could have fore-stalled this adverse effect. With mental subtraction, you're always comparing yourself against non-medalists-and of course you can substitute "non-medalists" with whatever you like.

All in all, mental subtraction is an effective way of tricking your brain into valuing the positive aspects of your life more highly. Because it makes you happy, it also contributes to the good life.

With his own Quicken Loans headquarters, historic rehabs—and a new Shinola boutique hotel—Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock Detroit brings back the cool.