The Discovery of True Wealth

In some capacity, everyone wants to be wealthy. What does that really mean?

Wealth broadly refers to an abundance of valuable material possessions or resources. It can also refer to the state of being rich / prosperous. The metric can vary. Wealth is usually measured in money, assets, or other forms of value. Other examples include wanting to acquire a wealth of possessions, experiences, power, relationships, or even skills.

In both the above definitions, having an “abundance” or being “rich & prosperous” implies a comparison of values between one thing to another using a like metric.

Ultimately, Wealth becomes a perception. Wealth is a comparison of two or more things’s values.

Be very careful measuring wealth in the traditional ways. There will always be someone with more _______ than you.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” — Theodore Roosevelt

Humans love comparison. If you’ve ever thought the grass may be greener, you are comparing what you have (or more specifically what you lack) to something of perceived greater value. Comparison is a natural human trait and the reason why “Wealth” most often becomes relative. It becomes relative to one’s immediate environment and surroundings. This is why someone in the United States who is making 100k a year while his neighbor is making 150k may believe they lack wealth. What you compare to and surround yourself with becomes critical. Especially when factoring in the life lesson that ‘You become the sum of your 5 closest friends”.

A study by Arthur Brooks in 2019 surveyed 7,500 people and revealed that feeling truly wealthy encompassed a broader range of factors beyond just financial prosperity. The primary factors included a combination of 5 pillars (no specific order):

• Purpose
• Relationships
• Health
• Finance
• Freedom

A brief aside on Money:

According to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, as humans developed past the hunter gather stage, they began to barter. However bartering has limitations and as economies scaled, there became a need for a centralized system that could quickly compare the values of different products and services — thus began the invention of money. Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever created. Total strangers could easily agree and exchange goods using the recognized worth of the Roman denarius coin for example, because they trusted the power and integrity of the Roman empire. The name “Denarius” became a generic term for coins. The Dinar is still the official name of the currency in Jordan, Iraq, Serbia, Macedonia, Tunisia, and several other countries. Where do you think we get the English word dollar from? The intrinsic value of any currency is the consensus of what other people believe it is. Throughout history, consensus changes.

Can there be wealth outside the shifting world of others perceptions?

Can we measure wealth without comparison? We can — when pursuing True Wealth (TW)

What is True Wealth?

It’s easier to start with what True Wealth is not.

It’s not something you can quantify. It’s richness is much more subtle than that.

It’s not finances, followers, a car with more mph, square footage, or even a new personal record in a race or skill.

It’s capturing something that you have right now, in fact, the only thing you have right now. We all have nothing more than right here and now. Meaning, no matter how long you reflect on the greatness (or tragedies) of the past, the wonderful possibilities (or worries of the future) — you are not there. You will only have right here now.

True Wealth begins and ends with [capturing/claiming/seizing/savoring] the current moment.

When you claim the resource of your time, you are intentionally combining the present moment with your aspirations. True Wealth is an alignment of your time (resource) with your goals (values). It is not the value or goal itself, but the time spent in pursuit of it. It comes from the process of pursuing a good and worthwhile thing.

If you value compassion, True Wealth is not the ideal of compassion itself, but in spending time in a way that aligns with this value. Volunteering is an example of transforming your resource of time into a wealth of compassion.

You will fail in some endeavors, yet failure can create wealth in your life often more than success.

If you are training to race in a Half Iron Man, the wealth of this experience is not just the completion of the race at a certain pace, but rather the time spent dedicated to this task, because wealth is created in the process of spending time towards your goals, not the goal itself.

True Wealth can only be found in the smallest moments, when we are fully present.

There are moments that are inherently valuable to all people:

• It’s the unexpected smile you offer to someone for no reason at all.
• It’s the laughter you share with friends and family around a dinner table.
• It’s the extra drop of sweat you receive from pushing a little more than you told yourself you would on a workout, and then looking up, and seeing your teammates are enduring the same process alongside you.
• It’s the gratitude you find in the tiniest details of life, like stepping into a warm home on a cold day, or a song that inspires you on the drive home from work.
• It’s pausing to look around a lively restaurant on a Friday night and see faces of the living moment.
• It’s creating rather than consuming.
• It’s accepting the discomfort of a task you know yields a more positive future.
• It’s the acceptance that this present moment is the only thing truly own.

Our time is our most precious possession. It can not be bought, it cannot be returned, it can be wasted, and it can be well spent. It is not given to you in one lump sum, it is gifted to you frame by frame, moment by moment, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year, second by second — until it is not.

If you accept the present moment as a beautiful and fleeting resource, and align it with your values, you will be the beholder of True Wealth.

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