How To Instantaneously Become More Wealthy
Your money stretches to the length of your desires.
The shorter your desires, the longer your money stretches.
“Wealth exists not to those who want more, but to those who desire less”
When you tame desires you reduce financial anxiety, feel more in control, and increase financial flexibility and freedom.
So how does one tame desire?
You can begin by taking a comprehensive view of events as they happen, examining your impressions, and focusing on events that are within your control (more on this later).
To understand desire, we first need to understand how impressions shape our desires.
When judging external events, there’s a four-step process we go through either consciously or unconsciously:
Impression = viewing an external event
Assent = our agreement or disagreement to external events
Desire = our attraction towards an external event
Active impulse = our action or human will
We do not control impressions (someone cutting us off in traffic, spilling your coffee, receiving an email or call, etc.) but we do control our assent to that impression.
Consider this sequence played out in action:
You attend a gathering where someone is describing their most recent tropical vacation.
This is an impression.
This is accompanied with a conscious value judgment:
“That vacation sounds amazing”
We fantasize as the impression turns into a craving.
This desire evokes your will to act (impulse) to take a vacation of your own.
How you assend to external events will either cause you psychological anger and distress or peace and freedom.
“We suffer more often in imagination than reality”
Becoming less impacted by things outside our control may sound easy, but it is hard work.
Epictetus offers a powerful paradigm shift through the dichotomy of control, which divides events into two categories.
Events that are up to us = our assent, impulse, desire/aversion, actions
Events that are not up to us = body, property & possessions, reputation, status
When it comes to your wealth and health, it may be hard to wrap your head around the idea that these events are not up to you.
For your health, you may say:
“I go to the gym 6x/wk, eat foods from the ground, sleep 8+ hours, drink half my body weight in water daily, and get sunlight daily”
But you do not control whether you get cancer & have 6 months left to live or you get into an accident and are now a quadriplegic.
For your wealth, you may say:
“I focused on studying instead of partying for my whole life to get good grades, networked well, started from the bottom, worked relentlessly to grow my skills to earn more income in my business or role, and diligently have saved over an extended period of time.”
But you do not control whether a global pandemic hits and your business or job is lost, whether your rental properties catch fire, or the stock market crashes.
You control your effort, you do not control the outcome.
While harsh, there’s a silver lining of freedom in recognizing you can’t control everything.
Equipped with the power of controlling your assent & value judgment, the discipline of desire is the glue to your journey for happiness and financial freedom.
The discipline of desire is also called Amor Fati - which is a latin phrase for love of fate.
Fate, in stoicism, is an important concept which helps guide our human nature into alignment with acceptance of what will happen instead of desiring what may happen.
The analogy of a dog tied to a cart is frequently used to describe fate.
The cart is your life from start to finish and you are the dog, which is tied to this cart.
You have two options here.
Option one = you lament life has dealt you a poor hand and resist the pull of the cart.
Option two = you use the space between your rope and the cart to navigate within your constraints.
You either discover your unique freedom through creating slack in the rope or get dragged through life kicking and screaming the whole way.
This analogy can be applied to your wealth.
Option one = you lament life has dealt you a poor income, ability to save, or knowledge about financial topics and resist the pull of the cart.
Option two = you use the space between your rope and the cart to learn a new skill to provide more value in your role, create a side hustle, save your first $1, and commit to reading more about financial topics to navigate within your constraints.
Correct, you’re not Jeff Bezos and you don’t get to purchase a $400 million dollar yacht.
But do you really believe he’s any happier than you could be?
Truth is:
If you’re not happy making $50k, you won’t be happy making $500k.
In the same way:
If you make $50k but spend $30k, you’re rich.
If you make $500k but spend $500k, you’re broke.
Earning more is not a silver bullet to happiness or freedom.
Your desires can either hold you back or propel you forward.
Own less, live more.