Last week, my wife and son and I were pushing a stroller through town. We met a former high school classmate. We were all very surprised to see each other again after so many years.
He looked at my wife and said, “He’s always been the coolest guy in school.”
I laughed because it reminded me of how much I cared about my appearance and what people thought of me.
To a sixteen-year-old, this might be normal. But at some point, you have to stop living like this.
The problem is, most people don’t really stop. They just trade one obsession for another.
From coolness to money obsession
When I was in college, a friend of my father’s, a very successful businessman, asked me what I wanted to do after graduation.
“Work in a bank,” I said, “and eventually become CEO.”
I’m not kidding. I have always been fascinated by finance and have been reading about CEO compensation at major banks. Those numbers were crazy and I thought: this is the goal!
I don’t know what this actually entails. Decades of hard work. Office politics, luck, compromise.
I just saw that number and decided that this is what success looks like. Looking back, I feel embarrassed. But that’s what I think.
So I did everything I thought would make me rich. My dad and I started a business together.
When that didn’t generate the money I wanted, I tried the corporate route. I moved to London. I work hard. I pursue a career.
I’m in pain.
Why do we focus so narrowly on money?
Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, spent a lot of time thinking about why people lose their sense of purpose.
in his book will to meaningwho describes exactly what happens when money takes over:
“Once the will to money takes over, the pursuit of meaning is replaced by the pursuit of means. Money is no longer a means, but an end. It no longer has a purpose.”
That’s it. This is the trap. Money has always been considered a tool. But at some point, most people flip it.
Tools become targets.
Frankl also noticed the kind of people this created. He wrote:
“For those who are eager to make money and regard money as their purpose, ‘time is money.'” They show a need for speed.
For them, driving fast is an end in itself. It is a defense mechanism, an attempt to escape confrontation with the existential vacuum. “
They rush through everything. Not because they need to, but because slowing down means facing the emptiness they’ve been avoiding.
I recognized myself in that description.
Becoming a person of depth takes real effort. I say this as someone who has had to do this work myself. I’m not a reader. I didn’t keep a diary. I didn’t reflect. To be honest, I’m a bit of a dork.
In high school I wanted to be cool. In college I wanted to be rich. I spent my whole life chasing external things without ever asking why.
Realizing my obsession with money
When my corporate career fell apart and I moved back in with my parents, I hit a rough patch. I don’t know what to do. So I turned to books.
Not a self-help book, but real philosophy. Books that challenge your thinking but don’t necessarily tell you what to do.
Stoicism. Schopenhauer. Viktor Frankl. Will Durant. And then there’s Eastern philosophy. Krishnamurti. Anthony DeMello.
Lord Gunaratana Express mindfulness in simple EnglishIt was written by a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk who began meditating at the age of twelve.
I read everything I could get my hands onsomething changed in me. I became aware. This is the only word.
I woke up to what I had been doing, why I was doing it, and where it was headed.
I gave up chasing money.
I started writing without any expectations, simply because I liked the ideas and wanted to think more clearly.
This decision changed the entire direction of my life.
what did i actually learn
The Stoics didn’t tell me to spend less. they told me to look Where My wants come from. Once you look at this honestly, this obsession goes away.
It stopped feeling ambitious and started feeling scary in a suit.
One of the most profound thoughts I have ever read comes from Epictetus. The following quotes are from life manual:
“Open your eyes: see things as they really are, thereby saving yourself from the pain and avoidable destruction of false attachments.”
Let me break it down because there’s a lot in there.
- Open your eyes: Most of us go through life following others without questioning it. 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. Behind what they say they want lies what they want. If you look honestly, a lot of what we pursue is performance. we want look more successful than we wanted yes Successful.
- Thereby saving yourself from the pain and avoidable destruction of misplaced attachment: Once you see human nature clearly, you stop clinging to things that don’t give you what you really want. And you avoid a lot of completely avoidable pain.
What is the biggest false attachment? This money will make you happy.
No. Not on its own. Not beyond a certain point. If it becomes the only thing you care about, absolutely not.
money is not the enemy
I want to clarify one thing. wealth and money It’s not the same thing, and I’m not saying either one isn’t important.
Money buys freedom, choice and security. Pretending otherwise is just another way of lying to yourself.
What changed for me is relation.
Seneca, one of the richest men in ancient Rome, described this better than anyone I have ever read. He wrote:
“He does not love money, but loves it; he does not keep it in his heart, but in his house.”
Seneca was honest. He prefers wealth, because who doesn’t? Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
We would rather have a lot of money than have nothing. But Seneca kept it outside of the really important part of him.
The money lives in the house. But not in my heart.
That’s the whole transformation.
You don’t have to hate money to stop being controlled by it. You just need to put it in the right room.
I no longer care about appearance. What I care about now is depth, good work, and the people in my life.
Where’s the money?
as follows. It doesn’t always happen immediately, and it doesn’t always happen in the way you expect. But it comes with it.
Philosophy does not make me poorer. It sets me free. That number proved to be more valuable than any number I had ever chased.
