Which is more important, achieving your dreams or finding great wealth?
Perhaps you say that you need the wealth to achieve the dream, but first consider what if you set aside all of those things that you have imagined to be important for your leisure, for your self-comfort, yet really do nothing to the prolonging of your life? How much then money would you really need to exist? Would you not find yourself now with more wealth in order to pursue your dream?
What if you say, “great wealth is my dream?” I then would tell you that you have been betrayed by a myth that wealth brings happiness. This is often the case for the poor, or those who have less than society brags about for its richest. They dream often of the supposed happiness of those with wealth, and then in the same mental wandering, they berate and complain about their own state. They do not really notice of course that all of the imagines have actually caused them to waste time, time that could have been applied to doing something of worth, something of accomplishing one more step towards their goal.
At the same time, this sense of believing this myth, which then leads others to become discontent with their current status, is also the myth that the rich have. The world is full of stories of those with great wealth refusing to admit that they have great wealth. These people always point to another who has more, and then the first person begins to grumble or “poor mouth” their own situation, even when they have made 100s of thousands of dollars in a year, even sometimes millions in a year. They look at someone with more money than themselves, or sometimes they only look at the illusion that culture shows them that hints that there must be more money to make before true happiness will emerge, and then this rich person either grumbles towards unhappiness of their situation, or perhaps worse, they go back to work. Here, the problem isn’t so much that they don’t work hard, but often that they work too hard.
I can’t recount the number of times that I have known wealthy people who work 70-90 hours a week. I hear them talk about their work or I see them, never at home; their children grow without their real involvement, their families drift along—this person never really has time to be involved in anything but their pursuit of wealth. And, when asked, that is the reasoning—“why do you work so hard”—“because I am poor and I want to be successful, making more money.” Such a sad answer is yet more proof that more money really is not the correct view of “achieving your dreams.”
I recently was visited by a former student who was between jobs because he quickly realized the truth of what I had told him—that money is no goal worth having. The sales job that he got involved with became a 60-80 hour a week gig just in order to “make the numbers.” Those who did well, he said, were never satisfied but rather determined to work even longer hours in order to keep their “numbers up.”
In the end, you must have something deeper than mere money that is your passion, your pursuit. With that thing in your mind, then every day can be spent working towards that goal. It may take your entire life to get there, but as long as you involved with that dream, your life will be happy. Don’t let money, either the pursuit of it or the assumption that you don’t have enough, stop you from pursuing the dream.
If money is your aim, even after you reach you, history indicates that you’ll still end up disappointed.