Understanding your value is very important and if you followed our article two weeks ago on how we define one person’s value over another, you’ll understand the differentiators between what distinguishes one person’s power over another. Being powerful as a result of understanding your own value and holding control over your emotions is important but how do we keep score of what matters most and how well we are using our abilities?
Should you have asked me this question 4 years ago, I would have certainly told you that money is one way of keeping score and an important one, but that certainly doesn’t hold true anymore. Over the past few years, I got the privilege of getting to know some very wealthy but unaccomplished individuals. From millionaires who never earned a dime, to young and privileged kids who partied their life away using their parent’s trust funds; I got the pleasure of knowing and interacting on several occasions with people that I felt were somewhat accomplished based on their stature and bank accounts and got to discover that money is not a good measure of success at all as it can be very deceiving. I used to think people with money, their lifestyles, and the extravagance was to be admired but after understanding and getting close to the very simple minded millionaires, my perspective changed quite a bit.
When someone doesn’t understand how to make money as they never had to, then their perspective is very different from those that understand how to. Those that do are driven by the chase, the hard work, and the intelligence it requires to make nothing into something even if their ultimate goal is to make money but this new crowd of high ego, no merit individuals simply look at money as an evaluation of who holds more power. The reality is that all of them simply try to make up for their inabilities by leveraging something they hold more of than most people, but ultimately it is something that was never earned. With vast amounts of money comes a great sense of responsibility and one that certainly isn’t sensed by those individuals. Their belief is that money solves everything and that their contribution to society is based solely on their donations to charity. This leads me to this next point.
Making money and having money are certainly two very distinct characteristics in life and having money certainly doesn’t make you anymore valuable than others but it is rather how you impact those around you that ultimately makes you either of very high value to the world or not worth knowing. We as individuals are only as good as the actions we take and certainly don’t have to spend our lives making people feel good but rather create value for society and those around us. Before you feel intimidated by the next person who has a lot more money than you and give praise to the next exotic car driver you see, then perhaps you might want to ask yourself if the praise is with merit and find out if you are considering money as the means to keep score.
We at Secret Entourage believe that keeping score of your value in life should be defined by the impact you make on others, rather than the one you make on your self. You have to ultimately be able to make a positive impact on yourself in order to make one on others but not everyone has the selflessness within them to keep going past themselves, and while others believe that giving a few bucks to charity makes you care, they are misguided.
