The Misery of Wealth

In my work as a psychotherapist, I've met people who made millions of dollars, and I honestly can't think of one who is really happy. How many people do we all know who think that a lottery win is going to solve all of their problems? But when they did a study on big lottery winners, they found that most of the time, the 'big win' just buried the 'lucky winners' under a pile of emotional, and even financial, problems.  They didn't pray for the money and as a result, it didn't come with a blessing. They had just as many problems as before, maybe even more.
 
Earning happiness
 
This brings us to a very important point, that people need to work, earn, and sweat a bit to get vitality and a delicious feeling from their accomplishments. And 'work' isn't only what we do in the office from 9 to 5. Primarily, it's the work that we all need to do on ourselves, to create the spiritual vessels we need to hold all the abundance that G-d wants to give us. And we can only do this key, spiritual work if we are using the right tools and methodology for the job, that's being transmitted to us straight from our Sages.
 
Secular psychology has some great methodology, but by itself, that's not enough. Apart from all the physical tangibles and status symbols, we also need to know what to focus on in our lives to be really successful and fulfilled, and that wisdom we can only get from our Torah sages. Oftentimes, the things our rabbis will tell us to focus on are exactly those things that many of us sacrifice in our pursuit of financial or career success. Things like enjoying our lives and living passionately; or having a good, solid, loving relationship with our spouse; or being a good parent – all these things can be dropped by the wayside, in our mad dash after bigger homes, bigger bank accounts and fancier vacations than the neighbors.
 
Who do we want to be successful for?
 
Really, we can sum up the formula for success and fulfillment in one sentence: who do we want  to be successful for?
 
One hard and fast rule that emerged from dealing with all these 'successful' people is that none of them felt fulfilled when they were only working for their own success and gratification. I'm not talking about lazy people here, or people who achieved their wealth the easy way, via a lottery win or windfall. These people put in an awful lot of effort; they slogged away for long days and nights of hard work, and they were super-organized and very efficient.  Even so, if they were only working for their own self-aggrandizement, honor or wealth, they still didn't feel fulfilled, even when they reached and even surpassed the financial or career milestones they'd set for themselves.
 
In some cases, not only did they not feel fulfilled, they even felt more sad and broken than when they'd started out. Here they were, they'd reached the peak of success and they still didn't feel so great. So then, they'd fall into depression and start asking themselves what was the point of it all? What else was there to live for? What was left to strive for, or to achieve?
 
Tony Robbins is a very popular, successful and famous motivational speaker. He once said that he was in the middle of giving one of his motivational seminars, when during a break, his stock broker called him and told him that his investments had just made him $400 million. That's a tremendous amount of money, more than most of us could ever hope to make in a lifetime. Robbins said that it felt good to hear that he made so much money but not as good as you might expect. He said that what was really giving him a lift was being at his seminar, and seeing how he was inspiring and helping other people. He went home that night, and he explains that his marriage was going through a very rough time. When he and his wife got into yet another conflict, he explained, all the remaining good feeling from the $400 million practically evaporated.
 
Money, even a lot of it, is not the panacea for happiness and fulfillment that so many of us believe it to be. So if money is not going to make us fulfilled, what is?
 
Ego-nullification
 
We Jews hopefully already know that the purpose of life is not just to make money. As Jews, we serve a Higher Authority, and we want more out of life than a big, fat bank account. Life ticks by, and before we know it, it's over. We can't put 'life' on hold until we've retired, or made our first million or billion, or whatever milestone we're aiming for. In order for us to really feel happy, fulfilled and alive every single day, we need to squeeze all the juice, all the passion out of our lives.
 
How can we do this? By focusing on something called 'ego nullification'. Once I nullify my ego, I'm not going to work for 'me' any more, I'm going to work for 'you' instead. It's no longer about me, it's about 'we'. I'm going to make a decision to focus on other people, particularly my loved ones, and I'm also going to focus on my relationship to G-d.
 
We can all make this sort of firm decision to completely change and reshape our priorities in a second.  In a second, we can decide to start living our lives in a way that includes other people and G-d. If we can make a promise to ourselves and to G-d to start living a life of 'we, not me', that's even better. If we have the strength of a promise behind our decision, then it's going to set a bell off every time we get to a fork in the road, where we have to choose between 'me' or 'we', and then we'll remind ourselves what our real priorities are now. If we choose this path, we'll get Heavenly help to stop living only for ourselves and to gratify our own desires, but to also live for others.  Even if we forget momentarily, Heaven will remind us where we're really trying to get to in our lives, and we'll come back on track.