As soon as I returned to work full-time in April 2020, my brain snapped back into its old survival mode, the safety-seeking behaviors I had always relied on. But not long after, something happened that made me feel exposed, like an addict meddling with his own addiction.
It happened in mid-June of that year. I arranged a meeting with a prospective client whom I had known for many years. She wanted to learn more about financial planning for retirement. It was a warm summer day, and we met in a well-lit conference room. Sitting across from me were my colleagues: two female financial advisors from the same company. My friend is sitting on my right: she is a successful artist in her sixties, with neat short brown hair and a pair of fashionable red-rimmed reading glasses.
Because she was very private and refused to reveal her financial situation exactly, that day I decided to try a different approach: I would bare my financial resources and let my consultant colleagues analyze my financial situation on the spot. In this way, we can respect her privacy and fully demonstrate what we can do for her.
After diligently pursuing wealth and freedom, what next?
So, during that hour, my colleague took me through my personal and professional history. I talked about my first real job: minimum wage at seventeen, working the cash register at a Shell 69 gas station in Columbus, Indiana, and pumping gas for full-service customers. I said I was sincerely grateful that my parents could (and wanted to) pay for all of my higher education. And how after I graduated from college, I borrowed two thousand dollars from them to pay the rent for the first and last two months of the apartment I shared with two girlfriends in New York. Then he added that I paid back the money within six months and have not borrowed a dime from them since then - his words revealed a lot of pride.
We traveled through thirty years of career transitions, investment decisions, and a post-divorce move to Portland, Ore., all while a consultant analyzed my finances with a slide on a screen. Based on my retirement goals, we looked at how much I could spend on average each year if my investment account didn't grow another dime in the future, and the likelihood that I would run out of money if I lived to a different age. How high.
When those financial data points kept flashing on the whiteboard, I suddenly remembered that these numbers were not unfamiliar to me - I had done analysis for myself. And, I've actually done it many times. However, I had never thought about these financial figures in the context of my personal life story. As we moved through those decades, I saw up close how my life was driven by numbers, or more specifically: by reaching a certain retirement number that I thought would give me security.
All the way to today, the fruits of my labor are obvious: I will turn fifty in two months, and I can already retire if I want to. I have achieved my goal. At this moment, tears began to slide down his cheeks.
My friend turned to me and said, "You told me this process was powerful, but I didn't realize it would make you cry."
I have worked my whole life for this moment, for this magic number. Getting here is no small feat, and I know I should celebrate it. But after I apologized and wiped away my tears so we could get back to my friend and her needs, I felt like I was slowly sinking into some kind of existential crisis.
As the advisor returned to the briefing and the conversation turned to interest rates, trusts, and living wills, I felt a wave of nausea spread through me. Seeing those numbers on the whiteboard─this was the first time I truly felt that I was financially secure. But the price for safety was too high, and it literally cost me my life. In other words, I was a model of financial health, but I had no emotional wealth to speak of.
Knowing this feels like a slap in the face. How many of my aggressive experiences were driven by the pursuit of more work, more money, more fame? How do I get that time back?
I understand that the fact is that I can't get it back. I'm approaching my fiftieth birthday, half my life has gone forever, and I have nothing to show for it except the privilege of retiring early—a situation that scares me because if I stop working now, it means I will no longer be able to work. I can no longer hide behind my work. I had to figure out how to start living after all. To start living, that's what I wanted, but also what I feared the most.
There are countless reasons why we get stuck on the "never enough" wheel. As we saw in Chapter 5, even our biology can drag us toward the playing field. But now that we've explored the many reasons that may lead us to develop toxic relationships with money, work, and achievement, in Chapters 6 and 7, I want to change gears and begin to examine the elements of a new mindset—one that can enthusiastically accept what we do. Having the mentality that who we are is enough.
In my case, this mindset was not possible until I let go of the long-internalized belief that self-worth = net worth.
In the past, I firmly believed that the more I earned, the higher my value as a human being would be. I focused on this formula to make my life perfect. I believed that once I reached my magic retirement number, I would feel safe and strong and no one could hurt me anymore. Of course, when I wrote the previous sentence, I already knew how absurd this belief was. No amount of money can protect anyone from the pain that is inevitable in life.
Financial health is as important as emotional wealth
"If you're still fighting against ‘enough,' no amount of money is going to solve that problem. It's the wrong tool," friend Carl. Richards once told me. "This is because 'enough' is not a question of money, it is a question of emotion, of contentment, of needing therapy, and we give money a job it was not intended to do."
When I told Richards about my own experience of reaching, at forty-nine, that magic retirement number that would bring me peace of mind and ensure that I finally had "enough," he smiled and asked me, "So what? Is it useful?"
"No."
"That's because 'enough' is a problem on a different level. It's a problem of loneliness, it's a problem of connection, it's a problem of giving up. These are deeper problems."
He's right. It's not money's job to make us feel whole. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying (and Richards certainly doesn't) that money doesn't matter, or that love is all you need. It's an indisputable fact that financial stability is essential to our health and happiness. But as someone who has spent a lifetime figuring out how to make money, only to pay a heavy price in terms of relationships and health, I can categorically say that being rich alone is not enough to describe a fulfilling life.
Money alone cannot get us to a place where we feel safe or adequate. Money is like a car without gas. It's nice to have a car, but without the emotional fuel of curiosity, connection, and creative pursuits—where can you go? Woolen cloth?
I know this now, for sure: emotional wealth is just as important, if not more important than financial wealth.
In fact, I would argue that it's time to completely flip the narrative on the role of money in our lives. Let us stop using "busy badges" to cover up "trauma with a lower case t"; let us resist the unsustainable demands of "pseudo-financial culture"; let us refuse to bow to the pressure of "struggle culture"; let us take back our biological Take control, redirect primal impulses to help us, not hurt us. The culprits above caused me to work harder and harder at the unachievable net worth = self-worth equation—and they may also have caused you to harbor unrealistic ideas about the role of money in your life.
So why don't we think about work, money, accomplishments, and praise in a whole new way? Why not stop pursuing this endless equation that requires us to always strive for more, more, more (self-worth = net worth) and set our goals in a new equation─
Financial Health + Emotional Wealth = Spiritual Wealth
