Have you ever heard people say that some of the richest people they know are also some of the unhappiest? I argue this is because of one of two reasons. The first is that money may not be the actual route to happiness for that person. If the true key to your happiness is the approval of your parents, or finding true love, or having a child, if you don’t have that one thing, all of the money in the world is not going to provide you with the happiness you seek.
The second reason is the fact that once you have enough money to guarantee yourself financial peace of mind, if you had the ambition and drive to obtain that much money in the first place, chances are you will need some other type of goal to strive for or else you will find yourself feeling unfulfilled.
Now, I know a lot of you out there want to cite the actual money itself and having it in large quantities as the root cause for the unhappiness of the rich, but it’s never the actual money itself – it is either the fact that the money has still failed to fill whatever void in that person’s life they were trying to fill with money, or the fact that the successful attainment of that money has left that person with nothing else for which to strive. As much as those without money want it to be the actual money that is causing those they feel are rich to be unhappy, it is just not the money.
So, the next time you find yourself blaming their stacks of money for the unhappiness of the rich, all the while, not feeling the least bit sorry for them, or if you’re standing amongst your stacks and stacks of money, trying to figure out why you’re still not happy, remember that it’s not the money’s fault.
We are always told to mind our Ps and Qs, but what about our ands? Shouldn’t we also be minding those as well?
It sure seems like many of today’s writers and content creators set out to cram every possible thought into a single paragraph-length sentence. But, this can easily confuse readers and force them to reread sentences over and over to determine which of the writer’s thoughts are joined by which and.
Why do they force so many words into each sentence? I was recently reading a report that got me thinking about this subject when I came across a sentence very similar to the one below:
We reviewed the infrastructure and networks that made up the wireless guest networks and the filtering and segmentation between the wireless guest networks and the wired corporate network and the encryption and authentication in use on both networks.
Look at all those ands in one sentence! Six ands!
When you are writing, be sure to count the number of times you use ‘and’ in each sentence. You should rarely have more than one or two, though in the right context, three ands can still make sense. But, once you approach the fourth, fifth, sixth (or even more) and in a single sentence, it is time to split that sentence up into multiple sentences and perhaps use some other conjunction or phrase.
As an example, see what I have done to our ‘six-and’ sentence example:
We reviewed the infrastructure and networks that made up the wireless guest networks, as well as the filtering and segmentation between the wireless guest networks and the wired corporate network. We also reviewed the encryption and authentication in use on both networks.
You can see by changing one of the ands to ‘as well as’, and splitting the sentence into two sentences, I’ve essentially removed two of the ands. Also, neither sentence has more than three ands. The paragraph is now much easier to read.
So, when you are writing, please remember to limit the use of ‘and’ to no more than three instances per sentence. Your readers will thank you!
Graphic by William L. Savastano
