“John was fired from his most recent job as well. When he got home, he saw his wife with unpaid bills in her hand. After a dispute that night, his wife decided to leave him. His friends also had not been inviting him for gatherings where had some beer. He was nearly a loser on the verge of suicide. After the officers from the bank whom he had debts to delivered evacuation requests, John went to the attic and looked for an empty box to collect his few remaining belongings. A small and old chest caught his eye. It was found when his grandfather died and they emptied his room and threw it at the attic without even checking what is inside. He thought, “What a happy person my grandfather was.” He found an old diary in the chest and read it all in one breath. His grandfather mentioned a secret he acknowledged during a trip to Aztec lands that Aztecs themselves learned from their prehistorical ancestors. The secret was about how a man can find success and happiness. And John said to himself, “Why not?” He thought he could also be successful by trying what is told in the notebook. What he tried had kicked in on the very same day and the next week, he found a new job. He cleared his debts in no time. Then he started to go out with his friends to have some beer. And he married a young and pretty chick instead of his old and whining wife. Now he lives in a penthouse in Manhattan with a direct landscape to Central Park. He has a driver whom he hired only to park his Ferrari. The book John wrote to share the secret to success and happiness with the world became a best seller in United States in short time.”

After reading the back cover of the book, Anthony thought “Could it be real?” He was not pleased with his life recently. The unhappiness and unwillingness he could not identify had surrounded his life. Every morning he sighed, “Again? A new day? A new day of work?” He thought reading would do no harm as he directed to the safe.

And no differences happened to Anthony’s life except for a $20 fee on his credit card receipt.

What was Anthony’s fault?

The sorting we are used to is money, success and happiness. So if we earn the money, we become successful, which gives us happiness. However, the real sequence is just the opposite. Happiness, success and money. Because the greatest success is being able to be happy and money is its inevitable result. For this reason, none of the happiness formulas sold for money never works except for teaching us this fact by living it.

Imagine you need one unit of money for a living. Which of the following would you choose?

1. Earning 1 unit per month by doing a job that you like
2. Earning 10 units per month by doing a job you don’t like

Most of us would choose the 2nd. Because we imagine to purchase the happiness we lose by 9 units. But what we can buy with money is only the objects. And sometimes our health we lose for the sake of extra 9 units.

Ones who perform the jobs they don’t like initially imagine themselves successful with the money they earn, they buy false happiness and never be able to perform the progress they expect. Ones who love what they like to do only observe their earnings raise with their inevitable happiness then success.

In brief, liking or disliking, that is the question.

…

And John? There is no John, and never had been.