I have been writing on a regular basis for four months now. Writing is a form of self examination, a way to express the ideas and thoughts that matter to you the most. Given enough time, you will start noticing reoccurring thoughts and ideas, which will eventually form patterns.

I would like to share one pattern that, I believe, is the root cause for people’s unhappiness in their life. It is a simple, yet powerful observation. I am not trying praise myself here. I truly believe that the following observation holds a lot of weight if fully understood.

People lead unhappy lives because they cannot tell the difference between the means and the ends.

To be more exact, people think that some means are the ends. If we were to understand things for what they are, our lives would be much simpler. To make things clear, let us define means and ends.

I look at means as tools, which help you achieve your ends or goals. Let us assume we are building a house. House is our end, it is our goal. It is something that we want to accomplish. In order to do that, we are going to need a variety of tools: bricks, cement, wood, hammers, nails, glass, etc. Pretty simple stuff.

However, for some reason, when it comes to our personal lives, we are in the fog as to what the tools are and what the goals are. Actually, most of us are in the fog because we have no clear set goals of what we want to accomplish in our lives. That is why misinterpret some of the tools to be our goals. Only if we took the time to figure out what it is that we want to accomplish in our lives, then the distinction between means and ends would be clear.

Ends would be something that we have defined ourselves as a specific measurable and objective goal  that we want to achieve and means would be everything else.

I know it all sounds a bit complex, but let us look at two of the most common misinterpretations that people make.

“Being happy is my goal”. I disagree. Being happy should never be anyone’s goal. Happiness is just an emotion. It is an important emotion, which only tells us that whatever we are doing now is good for us and it is important to us. I believe it is a mistake to chase “being happy” as the purpose of life. Happiness is a side effect of achieving your goals that you have set for yourself. Happiness is a side effect of following your life’s purpose. That is all. If we confuse happiness to be something that we must achieve, then we automatically doom ourselves for unhappiness. Do not make this mistake. Remember and repeat the following: Happiness is a side effect of me following my life’s purpose.

“I want to be rich”. I disagree. Being rich should never be anybody’s goal. Money is just a tool that can be used to accomplish our goals. Simultaneously, it is a side effect of achieving your goals and following your life’s passion. That is where true wealth lies: in becoming what you have always dreamed of becoming. If you make being rich as one of your goals, then once you achieve this “goal”, you will feel empty and betrayed. Please do not make this mistake.  Remember and repeat the following: Wealth is side effect of me following my life’s purpose.

I can promise you that if you understand and differentiate between means and ends, you will be able to lead a rich and fulfilling life. However, if you mistake means for ends, be prepared for the unpleasant.

Which road do you want to take? Which road are you on right now?

“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder…”– Thoreau

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Image: thefost

“Money is anything that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts.^[1][2] The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value, and occasionally, a standard of deferred payment. – Wikipedia

Sure. Money is all of those things and it is great! Back in the day people used to barter, use rice, rare items such as silver, gold, ivory as money. Today, even the cash is going extinct: all we need is a credit card to carry out a transaction. But do you really understand what money is and what it is for? Anybody can read the above definition and claim that they understand, but can you explain it your own terms?

Maybe you can and I am happy for you if you do, but if you cannot then it is time to get serious. It is time to get serious if you want to create wealth in your life; it is time to get serious if you want to lead a rich life.

First things first – money is not real. That is why anything was and can be used as money: you could use Monopoly money as money if everybody agreed to it. The dollar bills that you see every day have no intrinsic value. That is to say that billions upon billions of notes that pass through people’s hands every day are actually worthless. It has about as much value as a blank piece of paper. So why is it that we use these notes as money and nothing else?

Because the government agreed that this what we are going to use to carry out transactions. That’s it.

Now, we have a society that has a certain item they can trade for goods and services – we call it money. If you want to buy or sell something, you must pay a certain price for it. What exactly is a price? It is an expression of value which is determined by supply and demand. The more there is of a certain item the less valuable it will be. The more demand there is for an item the more valuable it will be. If we follow this logic then high prices should represent high value products and cheap prices should represent low value products.

Yes and no. It is people who create the demand and supply and therefore price is somewhat random and irrational. Actually it can be what we want it to be. If enough people decided that something is awesome and very value adding, then that item will get a big price tag to come along with it: think diamonds, paintings, antiques. That is why supply and demand forces are not entirely rational -because people are not entirely rational.

Now, you might say that I have not told you anything new, but let us reexamine the facts:

• Money is not real
• Price should reflect the value of an item (in theory)
• Prices which we pay are determined by not entirely rational supply and demand forces

If you truly realize this, your thinking will change dramatically.You might actually get some answers that you were not looking for.

What exactly does this have to with becoming wealthy and leading a rich life? Everything!

If you start to truly understand the above ideas, the concept of money should disappear form your life entirely!

Being rich and being poor are actually just states of mind. Nothing else.

It has little to do with how much money you have in your bank account, it has much more to do with how much value you can create. So next time you think money, I say think value.

You want more money? Create more value.

After-all, money is just a tool or a resource which can be used to acquire different types of resources.All you are really doing is exchanging your intellect, your time and your energy in exchange for this powerful yet very illusive tool called money.

Are you broke? Then think: “How can I create value for others?” If you continuously create lasting value for others, you will lead an abundant life.

Sure, you could trick others to perceive you as being more valuable than you really are, but people tend to figure those things out quickly. So, in the long run you would be actually be shooting yourself in the foot if you were to cheat or misrepresent yourself.

Creating value includes being honest and truthful about your actions and intentions. This way your price will always stay high and people will be willing to pay for it. If you want financial freedom, do not look anywhere else but within yourself and unleash your inner genius to create value for others which will in turn allow you to live a rich and wealthy life.

Basic Premise

It has been drilled into the people’s mind in America that capitalism is the way of life. That money is the answer to all of the lives problems. The main reason why it happened is  because people are so easily programmable and they seldom test the “truths” presented by others. And that is very unfortunate.

Wealth and Happiness

Acquisition of wealth as A PURPOSE OF LIFE is a terrible terrible thing to believe in. Acquisition of wealth as a means to and end to achieve something bigger than yourself in life is more understandable. At least to me. Money is just one of many resources in your life. Just one, and concentrating on acquisition of one resource and neglecting other areas of your life is ignorant at the very least. And that ignorance is costing us lives, lost hope, health and self-respect.

The System

With the risk of sounds like a conspiracy believe, I am going to say the following - America is run by very few smart individuals who don’t buy into the things that they they sell to the public. Those individuals  can see the bigger picture, while everybody else carries their load by working a 9-5 fulfilling other people’s dreams in life. Those few smart individuals/groups of individuals have been able to set up this amazing network of businesses that feed of each other and generate wealth for each other while abusing people in the process.

The  Network

That network is huge and expansive, it is so big that sometimes it is difficult to step far away enough to recognize it. The chase of profits has turned people away from themselves and made them slaves to everybody else in the system.

Where does this network exist? It exists in almost every industry you could possibly imagine: Education, Health, Food, Pharmacy, Lawyers, Accountants, Military. But let us not forget the obvious ones such as Pornography, Illegal Drugs, Guns and Human Trafficking.

How Does the System Function?

How does the system work? It is quite clever. FIRST, you start with brainwashing people by telling them that by pursuing YOUR OWN interests, you will maximize the society’s interests. THEN, you convince people that money is equivalent to happiness. After that is accomplished, most of the work is done. People go off chasing money, chasing an illusion, which leads them to ignore basic needs as family, love, health, exercise, good nutrition, rest and spirituality. You are so busy making money and pursuing an illusion that will eventually destroy you, there is no way you can have to really relax, there is no way there is time for you to take of your body, there is no way you can have normal relationships, there is no way you have to run away and spend time with yourself, there is no way you have to for any of those things – simply because you are too busy making money for everybody else.

Then, you have fashion and modeling industry and the rest of the society telling you that you are not good enough and that money leads to happiness. That makes you have a reduced sense of self worth, your confidence drops, but since you have no time for anything else, but making money, here are couple of things for you to satisfy those basic needs of self-love.

The Quick Fix

Here are the solutions for most today’s problems:

• If you feel sad or depressed – go eat some junk food, see a doctor and get and some pills.
• If you feel not pretty – we have make up/ plastic surgery to cover your “defects”
• If you feel lonely and you can’t seem to find a long lasting romantic relationship – here is porn for you.
• If you feel sick – take a pill.
• Etc.

Take A Pill

And once you finally develop some sort of mental disease because of your reduced self worth, but yet, since you don’t have time to take care of it on your own, go see a doctor, who will give your pills. And eventually after developing some disease from eating that fast food because you are busy chasing money, you go see a doctor who can charge you even more money and give you more pills. If you are overly obese, just take a pill, don’t worry about exercising, just take a pill!

That’s that cancer of America – easy quick fix, because making money for others is more important than ever and there is just not enough time for taking care of yourself.

The Epidemic

And there you have it. Since young age people are bombarded with with crappy food, self-worth reducing magazines until you eventually develop mental and health issues for which America never really provides any real solution. They always treat the symptoms not the disease. Food industry feeds pharmaceutical industry, alienation feeds the porn and alcohol industry as well as internet and so on and so forth until you start to realize that nobody really cares to help others since they are so concerned about their own issues and getting the money to solve those problems.

The Solution

How do you get out of this cycle? I do not know the exact answer, but I do know that it starts with self-awareness and recognizing things for what they are. The next step is to education yourself about making the right choices and looking past advertisement, past illusions to find the real solutions for the problems that you might be facing.

Yet, one thing a person must understand is that taking care of yourself in the long term will not be easy. It will require a lot of effort, self discipline and hard work.