I think one of the hardest things to do as a human being is to be satisfied with what you have...it's something that as a race we have refused to do over thousands of years...and thankfully so otherwise we'd still be huddled in caves...but it's a double-edged sword, the drive to have a better life because what a better life is, is different to every single person. To someone in California it might be buying a new car, to someone in Addis Ababa it might be clean water, both mean the same thing to that person and yet in a rational mindset, one is quite clearly a much greater need for survival than the other.
When you throw society into the mix, then it gets even worse, the same media that is used to bring us pictures of those worse off than us, also brings us things like 'Celebrity cribs' or even just pictures of someones new computer setup. We look at screenshots of people running a graphics intensive game on full graphics settings and think "Man, I wish I had a rig that could do that", unlike that person in Addis Ababa, we are much more aware of what we don't have, than we are of what we do. Of course, there are exceptions, and they are mostly those who have built what they have from scratch, working up that ladder, like Soopaman, however if the opportunity came for advancement, they would not pass it by...and I don't blame them.
The problem comes when peoples drive leaves them up the ladder further than they can cope with being, and then they find themselves run ragged trying to cope, and stress pulls in, family life suffers and they die of a heart attack before they are fifty.
Finding that balance between personal happiness and personal advancement is, I think, one of the keys to a happy life.
Winning the lottery helps too....
