500 Words a Week - What’s Our Relationship With Wealth? Part Two
How often are stories shared of individuals who are deemed successful, are admired and adored, have endless financial wealth and all the possessions we could ever dream of, but behind it all, are completely lost and miserable inside? It’s a tale we hear frequently.
Morgan Housel reminds us that “an important life skill is getting the goal post to stop moving”. That our modern society is good at two things: “generating wealth and generating envy”. Our expectations for what we want our life to look like, have a marked impact on how we perceive and respond to the world. As we progress throughout our life, as salaries naturally increase with our age and experience, a task for us is to get the goal posts to stop moving. To become more grateful for what we have, to live below our means, to stop the endless comparison with others.
Our understanding of wealth is highly influenced by images we are surrounded with on social media. We compare ourselves to the airbrushed and curated images others want to portray. We see the inflated lifestyles of others, and so our own expectations rise for what we deem a meaningful life looks like, our expectations rise for what we deem will make us happy and content.
We must attempt to control these inflated expectations. An exercise for us to think about is describing our own definition of enough. For maybe what is enough for us, is a roof over our head, food in our cupboards, a life filled with love and friendship, a healthy mind and body, and a work that gives us a form of purpose. When we go through this exercise of what is enough for us, we may see we are closer to it than we think.
The comparison around wealth never stops. The person who makes us feel bad about our current situation, there will be a person who in turn makes them feel bad about their situation. The goal is to not begin playing this comparison game, to accept that we might have and be enough as we are, even if it’s less than those around us. Wealth is relative to our expectations and desires, in shifting them to be grateful for what we have and changing our wants towards a life of connection and contentment over accumulating external desires, we may see that we are living a rich life already.
“For a critical element of our society, including many of the wealthiest and most powerful among us, there seems to be no limit today on what enough entails.” - John Bogle
True wealth lies in what we don’t see, in what we can’t measure. We rely too much on external appearances in an attempt to understand wealth. True wealth is relative to our needs and wants.
Who is the wealthy individual? The person who lives below their means, removes themselves from the constant longing for more, has a calm mind, loving relationships and time with those around him? Or the individual whose bank account is bursting at the seams, yet they have an insatiable appetite for more, their mind is consumed, their conversations fickle, their relationships meaningless.
What life do you want?
