Have you ever read those stories about people winning at lottery and then, 2 or 3 years after, coming back to where they were? Or even lower? Like losing everything they won and then something?
I'm sure you did. It's a very common story.
On a very small scale, I experimented this too. At some point in my life, after a successful exit of a business I started and managed for about nine years, I found myself in the middle of a lifestyle I never experienced before. Like I said, the exit was successful. Financially, I was better than I was ever been, in my entire life.
But on a personal level, something was off. Yes, I was indulging in a new, bigger house, I was driving a big four-wheeler and, overall, I was living "the good life".
Only that life wasn't that good, to be honest.
It took me a few years, a lot of financial loss and some very transformative experiences to realize I was making the same confusion lottery winners are making: treating money as if it was meaning.
We live in a world which puts a lot of emphasis on money. I'm not trying to minimize its role, money is still a very necessary ingredient in our current level of samsara, but there is a lot of social pressure to perceive money as the universal cure to all our problems.
You don't have to be a genius to realize money isn't the universal cure to anything, and yet, we act like it is.
I also think that, deep down, we know very well money won't solve all our problems, but we choose to believe so, because it's simpler.
In many situations it's simpler to just pay for affection than to get it genuinely and unconditionally. Because that would require a lot of work, a lot of time and a lot of implication. It would require care and understanding and patience.
It's simpler to just eat some chocolate instead of facing the internal void and understanding from where it comes and how to manage it.
It's a shortcut.
And so we roll our lives taking shortcut after shortcut, pursuing money, whereas, in fact, we're longing for meaning. We're longing for authenticity, for honesty and for a sense of order in this uninterrupted chaos, unfolding constantly, day after day, second by second. Money gives us the illusion that we can control it.
And, to some extent, money will control it. But money will not stop it, it will not transform it. Money may put some (much needed) food on the table, it may pay the rent and it may allow for better education, but it won't fill that inner void.
Money will help us survive, but we won't thrive.
And so I realized that, although I was having significantly more money than I was having when building the business, I was barely surviving. Of course, I lost pretty much everything I made in this process.
But, as poor as I got again, at the end of the process, I was a much happier being.
I made this detour about my personal ups and downs with a very clear goal in mind: namely, the rewards you get here, on Steemit. The money. The "precious" STEEM and SBD.
Having more of it won't make you happier. It may pay the rent, and that's great. It may bring you some more food on the table, and, yes, I know how hard in some places of the planet this can be. It may give you the opportunity to travel and I think that's amazing.
But, in and by itself, all the STEEM in the world won't make you a better person. It won't make you a happier person.
It's not about the destination, folks, it never was.
It is always about the journey.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me 
Wanna know when you're getting paid?
|
I know the feeling. That's why I created steem.supply, an easy to use and accurate tool for calculating your Steemit rewards |