Happiness Delta Optimization

Have you ever felt like you are turning into a money making machine? Willing to spend a lifetime in the office just to get to the next level?

Since some months now, I have been thinking on the relationship between advancing in the career and the money/recognition with happiness. I came to the conclusion that once you cover all your basic needs of money/recognition (some need more money/recognition than others), the relationship with happiness is not linear.

When you are in your early 20s you are willing to work as hard as it gets to get a stable position where you are recognized for your contribution and you can reach your goals, get a car, an apartment, travel as far as you can. After you reach that stable phase, and you are not young enough to choose the 11 pm movie when going to the movies with your friends, then the next level requires you to handle much more pressure and put aside some of your personal goals for when you are off work.

The Happiness Delta (or marginal utility) is how much happier you are with every professional step after you reach the stable phase in live.  The delta needs to be compensated by enriching some other parts of your live, hobbies, family, helping others, etc. Live is not only business, that is something to remember.  Every step in the career needs to be assessed carefully and balanced to keep happiness as a constant (no wonder I love math :)).

My husband and I were discussing about it and had no answer so we took on the most wonderful adventure we ever had as a family.  We come from the mountains in Ecuador, Quito to be precise. We have always loved to climb and feel the freedom that only the summit can provide.

When thinking about breaking the routine and finding our path in live, we decided to do the "Camino de Santiago" (St. James Way). The question was when to do it, since there is always a good reason to postpone it, above all when you have a small daughter (two and half years old).

In the last months we have faced the challenge of keeping the family time as a priority. When Emilia was born and I saw her for the first time I promised myself I would never leave her more hours at daycare that what she spends with us every week.

We needed to find a path as a family, so we took a decision, we would do the "Camino" as a family with Emilia.

Reading a little bit more about the camino and given the fact that we only had 2 weeks to do it, I found the "primitivo" (original path)  and the moment I read about its mountains and its wonderful scenary I knew it was the one for us. So the adventure starts leaving our home in Frankfurt with Oviedo as destination.

Next stop Oviedo.....