Are We There Yet? vol. 236
I was at a conference this week, and during one of the breaks, a group of us were chatting. The discussion somehow turned to billionaires and all they have—the real estate, yachts, planes, spaceships, power, etc. A woman sitting with us jumped in and said, “You know what they don’t have?” After a brief pause, she said, “Enough. They never have enough.”
It got me thinking, not about billionaires, but about the rest of us and our pursuit of purpose, fulfillment, and perhaps happiness. Achieving these goals is not measured against a set standard but against our own expectations.
In a Harvard Business School Working Knowledge article titled “What’s Enough to Make Us Happy,” James Heskett states, “Experts say happiness is often derived by a combination of good health, financial wellbeing, and solid relationships with family and friends.” He further notes that people who don’t focus on these three factors “run the risk of chasing and acquiring things that are never enough.”
If you (or someone you love) struggle with comparisons to what others have or spend time on social media bombarded with ads about the newest things that will make you happy, focusing on health, financial wellbeing, and relationships might be challenging. But shifting your focus to what’s truly important may be life-changing.
Take care and stay safe.
BOOK:
Entitlement by Rumaan Alam
Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief? Taut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement is a riveting tale for our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession. It is a provocative, propulsive novel about the American imagination.
Learn more about Bob Len here.
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