As some of you know, I started out in life with relatively little. It’s one of the reasons I don’t tend to be the most sympathetic person towards people who spend their entire lives being poor.
Americans who are chronically poor, in most cases, can look at their own poor choices as being why they’re in the state they’re in. The remaining are people who are physically more mentally disabled and those people I have endless compassion for.
Being wealthy doesn’t mean you’re better than others. It just means that you have managed to adapt yourself to the social/economic conditions of your environment. That happens to be a skill I’m reasonably good at.
For me, wealth has never been a goal. Freedom is the goal. I want to be free to do what I want which requires a threshold of wealth to be obtained. Beyond that, I don’t care. I’m not heavily motivated to build empires of wealth just for the sake of building empires – particularly if it results in some loss of personal freedom.
Different people have different levers that motivate them. Some people crave respect. Other people crave adulation. Still others use wealth as a score card to live a life of achievement. And there are of course people who crave material wealth because that’s what makes them happy. For me, it’s what I said, freedom. I want to do what I want to do.
I’d argue that I have a form of narcissism. Not the self-love kind but rather excessive self-ego. I do care about other people and how what I do will affect other people but I relentlessly pursue my own personal agenda.
A normal company of our size wouldn’t have its CEO out on the forums mixing it up with customers. And for good reason – I’m pretty rude and unprofessional. When I get into the mud with some disgruntled customer, it makes me and my company look amateurish and it costs us money in terms of business. Clearly, since I know those things and will still continue to hang out on the chat channels and the forums chatting with other users rather than using an alias or having “handlers” do that sort of thing I must have other priorities and I do – being able to do what I want.
In my experience, most people who are wealthy are people who have become extremely adept at doing what they are doing. And what they are doing produces wealth that enriches them. What happens, in many cases, is that the means becomes the end – their ambition becomes the goal rather than the means to a concrete objective. It’s a path that I think leads many people to have regret later in life.
Some people, which we’ll generally call “losers”, look at the most successful people and think they’re greedy. If only that were the case. The most successful people are often people who are achieving for achievement’s sake with money being the scorecard. That is what I am trying to avoid.
Sometimes, when I get busy, I will nearly forget why I’m working so hard. Because I happen to be so good at what I do, new opportunities arise to do even more – the ambition starts to become an ends unto itself. So I have to remind myself why I do this – freedom. The freedom to live my life as I see fit. To able to be the husband I want to be for my wife and the father I want to be for my children without having to compromise. It’s often a delicate balance between sticking to ones goals and controlling the urge to let ambition take over.