Real Wealth Is An Abundance of What is Truly Valuable — Time And Freedom (2024)

Hello,

Quick update: my latest books are now available on Amazon.

Over the last two years, I’ve spent thousands of hours gathering successful habits, practical routines, timeless wisdom, and mental tools of high achievers.These books are the records of my intellectual quest to make sense of our modern world.

Now onto this week's issue.

“Wealth” can mean different things for many people.

But real wealth is an abundance of time and freedom to be who you truly are.

Allow me to explain.

Most people thinkmoneyis the ultimate wealth.

They do everything in their power to make more of it and sacrifice time and freedom to make even more of it and later find out that they don’t have the “time”to spend it on what’s really important for happiness — experiences.

“For most people, it is likely that wealth has to improve in order for their happiness level to remain constant; if their wealth were to decline, so would their happiness,”writesA C Grayling of The Telegraph.

Money is a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value.

No matter how much you have, make or intend to make, money will always be a tool for trading your time. Once you have it, at some point you have to trade it for something else you want that can give you deeper fulfilment.

It’s like economic energy ready to be deployed when you are ready.

We don’t make money for the sake of having it — we store if for use at some point in life. No one sacrifice time to make money and then decides to keep it away for good. Everyone plans on using it for comfortable tools, housing, food, experiences, a new life, privacy, security or freedom.

My point is if you have a trillion dollars and it had no purchasing power (you couldn’t trade for what you need or want) it won’t be of value to you. The only purpose of money in modern society is to exchange it for anything you want in the near or far future.

In the end, money is only a means, not an end. “Wealth is not so much what one has, but what one does with it, argues A C.

True wealth is greater thanmoney

“Remember that your real wealth can be measured not by what you have, but by what you are.”NapoleonHill said.

Money as a tool can support your true wealth —but it can also take it away.

Real wealth is the abundance of time and freedom to be who you are or want to be. It's the freedom to be yourself, to make an impact in someone's life and the opportunity to make a change that matters to you.

Real wealth is, “not having to go to meetings, not having to spend time with jerks, not being locked into status games, not feeling like you have to say “yes”, not worrying about others claiming your time and energy,”saysJamesClear.

If money becomes the ultimate end, it can take away what’s truly valuable in life: time and freedom to fully experience life.

Freedom to think for yourself, the freedom over your time and what you can do with it and the freedom to express yourself invest in something meaningful to you as a person.

The passionate pursuit of money for its own end has a massive price tag. Many people pay the price and later realise the price has also cost them the precious time they could have invested in memorable experiences.

“Yesterday, I was clever, I wanted to be rich. Today, I am wise, I want to be happy,” says Matshona Dhliwayo, a philosopher.

He believes, “The richest people in life are the ones with the happiest memories.”

Ultimately, wealth is about having the optionsyouwant in life.

Not the options that society, your peers or anyone elsewantyou to have; but the ones that inspire you to live your best life.

True wealth is the ability to choose how you live and spend your time on things you “want to” do rather than things that you “have to”do.

It’s about having complete control over your life, your own actions and the reactions to all things outside of your control.

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life, ” says Henry David Thoreau.

“Obviously, having enough money to provide a roof over our heads, secure sufficient food and clothing and other basic essentials, and raise healthy and happy families frees us from a lot of anxiety,”writesNeha Kariyaniya.

“But what most enlightened people consider as wealth has nothing to do with money. Seeking true wealth may mean seeking deeper relationships, more personal growth, or ways to create more meaning in life. Achieving true wealth means possessing the ability to enjoy the small, ordinary pleasures of life. Each precious, present moment can be enjoyed,” she adds.

Real wealth is real freedom and the luxury of time. It’s the courage tobe who you are, rather than what is expected of you. It’s creative and purposeful energy in action.

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Recent Essays

Inversion helps you flip how you make decisions and think about everything in the opposite direction. Charlie Munger explains it beautifully,“It is not enough to think problems through forward. You must also think in reverse, much like the rustic who wanted to know where he was going to die so that he’d never go there.”

True understanding requires active reading.“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you,”says Mortimer Adler, the author ofHow to Read a Book.

To our common journey,

Until next week,

Be Epic!

Thomas