By Jill Alphonso

According to a recent report, Singapore saw a total of 10,000 people joining the millionaires club, bringing the total number here to 77,000.

I am certainly not in that league.

But when a very dear friend, who works as a financial planner, asked me what I would do if I were a millionaire, I didn't hesitate in my response.

"If money was no object," she asked, "what would you do with yourself? I mean, you wouldn't have to go to work, your time would be freed up, and you would be able to do anything you please."

I wouldn't be doing anything different, I replied.

In fact, I already feel like a millionaire.

"Really?" she said, surprised.

"Yes," I said, also surprised.

I, like many of our friends, live payday to payday, struggling to save and pay off debts.

I would love to have more disposable cash for any number of things, from being able to go off and do a two-month yoga-teaching course in Mexico to taking a trip to Italy where I would eat my way through the country, from Naples to Venice.

But, by and large, I wouldn't really change anything.

I wouldn't even want to quit my job because there's actually nothing else I'd rather be doing.

In short, I'm happy and genuinely feeling like I'm on top of the world every day.

I didn't always feel like this.

Not to sound corny, but regular yoga practice, as well as reading books like Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love and the Oprah Winfrey-endorsed The Secret, helped me to get to a state of almost daily bliss.

From what I've heard, I believe some people call it "emotional wealth".

Many books that I read were based on the foundation of gratitude. Be thankful for anything and everything in your life.

I began to realise that I was thankful for a lot - the people in my life like my friends; my wonderful mother who, back in the 1970s, quit her job to raise me; my father who still provides for the family; the gorgeous human being who is my boyfriend.

In yoga, I also learnt a beautiful mantra - om namah shivaya - which roughly means "I bow to the divine within myself".

I was using it to get through a posture which I find immensely difficult. There, in class with my legs spread, my hands clasping my feet and struggling to touch my sweaty forehead to the floor, something clicked.

I realised that everybody carries the divine within them, and the enormity of that realisation so moved me that I stopped struggling - both in class and in my own life.

It's by no means a unique experience. And I'm not saying I'm some kind of saint who never gets annoyed, angry, or resentful, or that touching on that feeling makes me better than someone else.

But it gave me room in my life to breathe a little more, to create a little space.

It freed me from struggling for more love, more happiness, more money, more whatever. In that space, I found some joy in just being where I'm at.

"You cannot force anything to change, but you can let it become good again," says a website on emotional wealth.

"Being and allowing are positive energies, and they bring happiness and success to you."

My ex, who I hadn't seen in a year, was unused to my new state of mind. He used to find my anger amusing, and would gleefully brace himself for an anticipated tirade every so often.

When they didn't happen, he asked what was up.

"I don't know," I said. "I guess I'm happy and things bother me less."

Would I like to be a millionaire? Sure thing.

But I could easily take it or leave it.

If you're happy every single day of your life, you feel like you're living like one anyway.


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