If I were to ask you: How much money will you like to earn? What will be your response? 1 million? 10 million? 100 million?... Irrespective of the amount you choose, the pertinent question you need to answer is why do you want to earn that much? What does it mean to you? The truth is that most people don’t have an idea of how much or why they will like that much money. All they want is more money. Consider this: Who do you think a financially wealthy person is? To this most people will probably say someone who is worth over a billion dollars or more. Probably because it’s a lot of money. If your definition of wealth is limited to the amount of money alone, then you’re missing the point. No amount of money will ever satisfy you. You may be worth billions yet you’re still depressed. It sounds strange but there are rich individuals who had all the money they needed but who ended up committing suicide.
If true wealth isn’t just about money, then what is it? In his book, “The One Thing”, Gary Keller gives a very good definition of true wealth. He writes that: “Financially wealthy people are those who have enough money coming in without having to work to finance their purpose in life.” This definition brings out an important point, purpose. To be truly wealthy, you must have a purpose in life. It means you have enough money to pursue your purpose freely. While it’s true that having more money can make you happier, there's a limit. At a certain point, it really doesn’t mean much. What’s the point of acquiring a lot of money and not being able to enjoy it? As Henry Thoreau said: “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life”. True wealth doesn’t only have a financial component. There is relationship wealth, emotional wealth, physical wealth (being physically healthy), and spiritual wealth. Being truly wealthy is having a balance in all of these. The mistake some rich people make is to focus their whole lives on financial wealth to the detriment of the rest. That’s why you see rich people committing suicide.
There’s really no point accumulating all that wealth and having an unbalanced life. Wealth is gratitude. Do you focus more on what you don’t have or on what you have? There are several things to thankful for. You just need to be mindful of that. The more grateful you are, the happier you’ll be.
Make no mistake though, money is important. This is not in anyway saying that you should ditch money. This is not an excuse for you to remain poor, or an excuse to stop trying to earn more. After all, if people spend over a decade of their lives working for money, then it must be important. The truth is that you need money to be fulfilled. You need it to pursue your purpose. Your focus however should be your purpose. You should seek balance. Don’t go over the hedge in pursuit of money. If you’re not grateful for what you already have, you’ll never find fulfillment. I’ll close with this inspiring quote from Sir. John Templeton which really drives this home:
“If you’ve got a billion dollars and you’re ungrateful, you’re a poor man.
If you have very little but you’re grateful for what you have, you’re truly rich.”
Based on the above, do you think you’re truly wealthy? Is there an area of wealth in your life that’s lagging? It’s not too late to balance your course. We hope you were enriched by this piece. Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to our blog for more. Thank you for reading and until next time, BESTech remains your BEST bet.