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What do you think are the most important things that everyone should have in life and what is their order of importance to you? Some people might think that the number one thing that we all need for a happy life is family, then health, then money and then time. In fact, just recently I was speaking to a teenager who listed, in this exact order, the things he thought were important in life in order to be happy. Do you agree with him? Don’t forget he was a teenager (I think he was around 15) who hasn’t really lived life.

In all fairness to him I think he was partly correct. I think he did list some essential items correctly (aside from time, I don’t know what that’s about) but I also think he got them in the wrong order. When we make a list of all things that we need in life to be happy, we should be smart about it, by listing them in the order that they would naturally occur once the preceding item has been fulfilled.

Yes, family is important whether it comprises your spouse, children and grandchildren or your parents and siblings. Yes, they’re important in your life but that doesn’t automatically equate to health and it certainly doesn’t bring you money. There are many people who have these families but happiness is not part of their home life if the relationships between individuals in that family is strained, especially to the extreme.

There is often acute intolerance and extreme stress, especially as the individuals in that family get older, as a result of which there is likely to be infighting and ill-health. In fact, some people with such a family life wish they could live alone for a while.

So what should come before family? Well it’s not money, unless you’ve been living on your own for a long time and are thinking of starting one. Then making a decent living before marrying does make sense so that you can start without having to worry about how you’re going to pay all your bills.

But let’s say you’re already part of a family, as is the case with most people, and you want them to be happy and healthy. Is it money that you need after ‘family’ to ensure that they stay healthy? No. What you need is a stress-free life because, in most cases, poor health is brought on by stress. That stress-free life is what results in happiness. But what comes before happiness that leads to a stress-free life? No, again it’s not money although many naïve people think that if they had money, everyone in the family would be happy.

Many rich people are neither happy nor healthy. What comes before stress, therefore, is tolerance. If everyone in the family overlooked some things, laughed everything off and minded their own business from time to time, the family would be a little happier. So the next item is tolerance. So does happiness come after tolerance? Well, there’s likely to be less stress in the house and, thus, a greater chance for people to laugh once in a while. So, if you’re happy then, of course, you may be healthier in the long run.

So where does money play into this? Money is important, of course. It can buy you a bigger house and, of course, pay for all those health issues if you don’t have health insurance. A bigger house means that individuals have time to themselves, their own space and are not always in each other’s faces, which can create too much familiarity and often contempt, even within a family. Thus people having their own private space can go a long way to dispelling tensions that might occur. This is especially the case in families where the individuals are older.

And really that’s where having money could be important. If you have the money, however, and you still choose to live in circumstances that create stress, unhappiness and poor health, then there’s something severely wrong with your thought process. I actually don’t know what you’re thinking. What’s the use of all that money then!