Last week I was walking around town in a stroller with my wife and son. We ran into a former high school classmate. We were both surprised to see each other after so many years.
He looked at my wife and said, “He was always the cool guy at school.”
I laughed because it reminded me how much I cared about my appearance and what people thought of me.
This is normal for a sixteen-year-old boy. But at some point you have to stop living like this.
The thing is, most people don’t stop. They just trade one obsession for another.
From coldness to obsession with money
When I was in university, my father’s friend, a very successful businessman, asked me what I wanted to do after graduation.
“Work in a bank,” I said, “and eventually become a CEO.”
I wasn’t kidding. I’ve always been in finance and read about CEO compensation at big banks. The numbers were crazy and I thought: that’s the goal!
I didn’t know what it really needed. Grinding for decades. Office politics, luck, compromise.
I just saw the number and decided that this is what success looks like. In retrospect, I find it very awkward. But my head was there.
So I did everything I thought would get me rich. I started a business with my father.
When that didn’t bring in the money I wanted, I tried the corporate route. I moved to London. I worked hard. I chased the career.
And I was unhappy.
Why do we squeeze this kind of money?
Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, spent a lot of time thinking about people losing their sense of purpose.
In his book The will of meaninghe described exactly what happens when he takes possession of the money:
“Once the will to money takes over, the pursuit of meaning is replaced by the pursuit of means. Instead of being a means, money becomes an end. It ceases to serve an end.”
That’s it. This is a trap. Money was always meant to be a tool. But at some point most people change it.
The tool becomes the goal.
Frankl also noticed something about what kind of person it makes. He wrote:
“For people who see money as an end in itself, ‘time is money.'” They exhibit a need for speed.
For them, driving a fast car becomes a goal in itself. It is a defense mechanism, an attempt to avoid confrontation with the existential vacuum.
They rush into everything. Not because they need to, but because slowing down means confronting the void they’ve fled.
I recognized myself in that description.
It takes real work to become a deep person. And I say this as someone who has had to do it myself. I was not a student. I didn’t journal. I did not reflect. To be honest, I was a bit of a meat person.
In high school, I wanted to be cool. In university I wanted to be rich. All my life I chased external things without ever asking why.
Being aware of my interest in money
When my corporate career fell through and I moved back in with my parents, I hit a wall. I didn’t know what to do. So I turned to books.
Not self-help books, but real philosophy. Books that challenge your ideas and don’t tell you what to do.
Stoics. Schopenhauer. Viktor Frankl. Will Durant. Then Eastern philosophy. Krishnamurti. Anthony de Mello.
Bhante Gunarathan Mindfulness in Plain Englishwritten by a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk who has been meditating since the age of twelve.
I read everything I could get my hands onand something inside me shifted. I was informed. The only word for it.
I knew what I was doing, why and where it was leading.
I gave up chasing money.
I started writing with no expectations because I loved ideas and wanted to think more clearly.
This decision changed the entire course of my life.
What I actually learned
The Stoics didn’t tell me to want money less. They told me to look where my wish came true. And when you look at it honestly, the obsession loses its power.
He stops feeling ambitious and starts feeling like he’s afraid to wear a suit.
One of the most profound and profound thoughts I have ever read comes from Epictetus. The following quote is taken from A guide to living:
“Open your eyes: see things as they really are, thereby saving yourself from the pain of false associations and avoidable destruction.”
Let me break it down because there’s a lot to it.
- Open your eyes: Most of us go through life following others without question. We absorb the values of the culture around us and call them our own.
- See things for what they really are: Look beneath the surface. What really drives people. What they want is underneath what they want. If you’re honest, most of what we’re chasing is performance. We would like see we were more successful than we wanted to be to be successful.
- So, save yourself from miscommunications and avoidable devastation: When you see human nature clearly, you stop attaching yourself to things that cannot give you what you are looking for. And you’ll avoid a lot of pain that is completely preventable.
What is the biggest fake attachment? This money will make you happy.
It won’t happen. Not by itself. Not above a certain point. And, of course, if this becomes the only thing that interests you.
Money is not the enemy
I want to make one thing clear. Wealth and money are not the same thing and I’m not saying both are not important.
Money buys freedom, opportunity and security. Pretending otherwise is another way to lie to yourself.
That’s what changed for me relationship.
Seneca, one of the wealthiest men of ancient Rome, described it better than any I have ever read. He wrote:
“He does not love riches, but prefers them; he receives them into his house, not into his heart.”
Seneca was honest. He preferred wealth, because who doesn’t? Anyone who claims otherwise is lying.
It is better to have more than none. But Seneca keeps it out of the essential part of it.
Money lives at home. Not in the heart.
This is the whole shift.
You don’t have to hate money to stop managing it. You have to put it in the right room.
I don’t care about looks anymore. All I care about now is depth, good work and people in my life.
And the money?
He follows. Not always immediately and not always in the way you expect. But he follows.
Philosophy did not impoverish me. It set me free. And it turned out to be more expensive than the numbers I was chasing.
