Why Do You Want To Become Rich?

About thirteen years ago, I visited a friend of mine in his flat. He was about 25 years old and worked in the hospitality industry as a PR Manager. When I walked into his bedroom, I noticed a big picture which took almost one side of the entire wall of his bedroom. In the picture there was a red Ferrari, very posh, very showy, very... thought provoking.

I asked him why he chose this picture. He told me that this picture would remind him everyday about his dreams and goals in life. There I saw a very ambitious young man, who understood the power of visualisation.

I have long lost touch with him. These days I sometimes wonder if he has become rich and has owned that Ferrari which used to inspire him; I also wonder what his inspiration would be these days.

While thirteen years ago such an enthusiastic young man was an inspiration for me, it’s clearly not the case any more. I have learnt that, life is not about becoming rich and acquiring luxury materials. Becoming rich is not the end; it is just the beginning of bigger things.

Last Saturday someone in my neighbourhood won a 15 million lottery. People have been talking about it. Of all the versions, over and over again I could hear only one message, which is: what they are going to buy and how they are going to spend on THEMSELVES. It reminds me of a survey that’s been done on the effect of lottery winning to people’s lives. According to the survey, over half of these winners’ lives are ruined by money one way or the other. They either die early, become drug addicts, unable to sustain relationships, suffer from ill physical health or mental disorders etc.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those people who condemn that money is evil. What’s evil, is our deviation from life’s purpose once we have acquired it. We stop working hard and appreciating the ordinary things in life. We stop dreaming the dreams which used to inspire us. We lose in touch with self-discipline and are unsure how to utilise the newly acquired financial freedom. You can easily see that this happens when we treat money as if it’s the end, but not the means to our goals. There is still one important question to answer: what is the purpose of all?

It’s important to define what the purpose is behind money acquiring. Is it happiness? If happiness is the purpose, one must know that the determining factor in our happiness lies not in how much money we have and how we acquire it, but in the MOTIVATION behind it. Is it for satisfying our ego and greed? Or is it for bringing out our best self and sharing our journey, wisdom and wealth with others? If our motivation is the former, we will never be fully satisfied because our ego and greed is endless; but if our motivation is the latter, we will enjoy every minute of the journey as every minute we live we are achieving that goal.

Real happiness is not about becoming rich and keeping it all to ourselves. Rather, it is about enriching the world by sharing our resources and richness with the rest of the world.

Don’t link lottery winning or becoming rich to the car you want to drive or the mansion you want to live in. Visualise the happiness you can bring to this world because of your wealth. There are many things you can do with your money apart from spending on yourself. This world would not exist without sharing.

Attachment to money is harmful to ourselves; yet using the right motivation to create more of it to enrich the world makes this life journey worthwhile.