We make a lot of money, but we know deep down we don’t need it all. We just don’t know how to better spend it to achieve what we call happiness.
What we’re really after is satisfying our psychological needs and wants with as little money as possible. It doesn’t matter how rich you are – everyone is looking for a bargain on how to buy happiness for as little as possible. Some people just think that their psychological needs are so deep, or that they need to buy so much happiness to actually feel good, that they end up spending boatloads of cash for very little felt aliveness and peace in return.
We’re also after spending our time the way we want to. This can naturally result in making money, but it’s not working because we have to, but rather because we want to. Regardless, pretty much everyone is after the feeling of freedom, which I define as getting to do whatever you want, whenever you want.
The problem is that we need money to do the things we want, which means we have to adhere to someone else’s schedule, or conditions that we didn’t pick, all because we don’t have enough money.
But there is a way to have enough.
The way around this is to learn to be deeply honest with yourself around what you need to spend to be genuinely happy. This is achieved through self-realization of what drives you and what your desires are.
Once you have these insights, you can call bullshit on whatever dumb purchase you feel compelled to make but will lead to a bunch of hard-earned money essentially disappearing. You may use money to lease a really nice car to fill some void that exists, but it’s a very ineffective way to achieve feeling full.
Most ways to feeling full, or whole, are inexpensive in terms of money, but expensive in terms of thoughtfulness. Using Google Maps to figure out a running loop that will make you pass through a lot of tree-lined streets and parks takes a lot of time.
Why don’t we have the time to do this? That’s the wrong question. We do have the time. We don’t know how to use the time. We are missing the patience, or the sustained attention to not be distracted for more than 30 seconds.
So it comes down to how we allocate time, energy, which is time brought to life. How can we get better at spending our energy such that it multiplies our resources? If we have one unit of energy, how can we spend it so effectively that it turns into 5 units of energy after [x] activity, or after 1 day/week/month?
How can we better identify the activities and behaviors that lead to energy multiplication? How do we get better at spending our time with a specific group of people that turn our “relationship energy” into even more energy than we gave to the relationship during a given hangout?
Money is a representation of our energy, more specifically our value-creating energy: we spend our energy in a specific way to create an amount of value that is swapped for money. Money captures our spent energy.
So how we spend our energy is not just about what we spend our time on and who we spend our time with, but how we spend our creative energy, and how we spend the money we receive every paycheck in return for the value we create.