I want you to think about this for a minute...Are you a slave to your desires or a master of them?
Put another way, is what you have never enough or are you grateful and content with what you have right now? Because if you are always wanting more and not content and grateful, you are a slave without power over your life. You live in a "happiness when" universe that never arrives. The masters of advertising, social whims, fleeting fashions all yank your chain and make you give them your blood, sweat and hard-earned money...for what?!? Vaporous illusions that never satiate your desire or fulfill your soul, but only leave you thirsting for more.
Contrast that with a mind filled with gratitude and content with the abundance that exists in the present moment. We live better now than did any king of only a few centuries ago, with more knowledge, more comforts, and superior lifestyles.
If we look inward and cultivate gratitude, we will rest in comfort and easy peace of mind. It is only when we look out and compare that we feel lack and scarcity. Our perspective dictates the power we retain to ourselves, or what we give away to others.
The Mahan principle is the turning of life into money, to make gain off of other people's pain. When we become slaves to others by our unbridled desires, and ungrateful about what we have never being enough...it is our lives that our being turned into other people's gain. They suck our life-force to make themselves more gain.
True power lies in being happy with what you have right now, in the present moment. Gratitude and contentment are the mindful practices that build the "happiness now" mentality better than any other tools I know. This takes a lifetime of practice, and it gives us moment by moment, a lifetime filled with happiness and grateful contentment as the master of our soul.
Namaste