Beginning at a young age, you are taught a load of bogus lies that are repeated over and over hundreds and thousands of times as you progress through formal education. Let’s dispel the main lies by going over some of the most controversial truths that have either been intentionally ignored or portrayed as false time and again by the mainstream.
Truth #1 – Money Buys Happiness: How many times have you heard the saying “money doesn’t buy happiness”? Think back to the people who made this claim. Notice the common denominator? Yep, you guessed it, none of them have any money! The truth is that money DOES buy happiness. If you are currently reading this post from an office cubicle, just ask yourself the following questions:
- Is there anything you could do right this moment to make yourself feel a whole lot happier?
- If so, why aren’t you doing it?
We predict that you gave the following answers to the above questions:
- Yes
- Because I’m at work and don’t have the freedom.
There, we just proved it, money buys you happiness because it buys you time and freedom. If you had enough money, you wouldn’t be working a job that you don’t like. Instead, you could be pursuing hobbies, new experiences, travel, exercise, etc. You will feel immensely happier as your quality of life goes up thanks to elimination of stress, increases in testosterone, decreases in cortisol levels, higher quality & healthier food, greater sex life/dating options, etc. Not to mention that money can literally prolong and save your life by enabling you to seek higher quality medical treatment that is unaffordable to everyone else.
With that said, money is often linked to the repetitive acquisition of new material possessions, which does not buy you happiness. Acquisition of material possessions that you can enjoy is a good thing but should be approached in a sensible and sustainable way. Obsessively accumulating new purchases purely to flaunt and boost your own ego will quickly turn into an addictive zero-sum game, where in order to maintain the same level of dopamine boost you need to keep on buying new items that are progressively more expensive. This is unsustainable and can lead you to financial ruin, kind of like a drug addict who needs to constantly up his dosage in order to feel the same high.
Sure, you only hear about the rich people who become drawn into a combination of lifestyle inflation, drugs and substantial divorce settlements. They are just a very small minority who got rich too fast and lack the right financial education. The rest? Trust us, they couldn’t be happier.
Truth #2 – Don’t Give Freebies To The Poor: If you are still in high school and trying to accumulate community service hours for your college application, volunteer at an orphanage or a shelter that helps animals. The typical healthy person who claims to be suffering financial desperation and has no other options is almost always lying: he has options but they just involve “work”. It is neither your responsibility nor moral obligation, and doing so will just prolong that person’s short-term dependency on handouts. Rather, a great thing to do would be to help him find a job if he doesn’t already have one. If he claims to already have a regular job then help him find a second part-time job on top of that one. If he is jobless and complains about a job being too menial and “below his level”, then he deserves to be in the crappy predicament he is in.
Likewise, the same should apply to those friends of yours who are unproven. By unproven we are referring to the ones who have not demonstrated sufficient drive or made it yet. For those who lack drive, you should consider cutting them from your life, although it may be in your interest to keep them if they are fun to be around and/or have a certain network you want to tap into. Whenever they ask for your help in financial form, make them work for it. You are doing them a favor here because if they never learn to work for something they desire then they will only grow more dependent on others and never venture outside their own comfort zone and take risks.
Truth #3 – Formal Education Does Not Translate Into Real-Life Success: By the time you turn 20 you have already been indoctrinated into believing that the key to earning a boatload of money is having five masters degrees and three PhDs. Not true. If you are still in college just look at your professors- how many of them are actually wealthy and happy? Very very few.
Do you really need a college degree? Yes, if you are aspiring to be a dentist, heart surgeon, lawyer or architect. But for 99% of conceivable careers, being one of hundreds of students reading the same textbook and going to the same lectures taught by professors that have never worked a single day in the industry won’t help you get ahead and will most likely set you back by 6+ figures before you have even worked a single day in a full-time job.
Remember, the only two things that matter in determining success are skills and behavior. Your behavior is entirely determined by yourself, and skills can be acquired more cheaply and effectively online than from a traditional four-year college that is unable to keep up with changing realities in the world of business.
Education is crucial. Formal education (college) is not.
Truth #4 – More Likely Than Not, Your Family Will Hold You Back: Before we begin to tell you how to deal with your family members, we will start by saying that many of our family members are total idiots and losers. Had we listened to them or taken their advice seriously when we were younger, we would not have made it to where we are today. Yes, if you are lucky then you will have a good set of parents who will support you in the right way, but even then the odds are that you will have toxic siblings/uncles/aunts who will be in the picture either feeding you garbage advice or intentionally trying to sabotage you. Since you can’t pick your family and relatives, why should you compel yourself to spend time with someone who is toxic and an impediment to your future success and happiness?
The answer: You shouldn’t. If your mom endlessly criticized you about your lack of work ethic but refused to ever drive you to the school gym at 5 am so you could get some shots up before class, then you have no obligation to go with her to shop for groceries when that adds no intellectual/physical challenge to your life. Likewise, if your dad was an alcoholic who beat the crap out of you when you were a child then you shouldn’t waste time caring for him when he is suffering health problems later on. In fact, him dying would be a net positive to your life. Yes, we just said it. You should breathe a sigh of relief whenever a shitty family member can no longer be a burden on your life.
As for the good family members who gave you a hand and helped you grow, hold onto them tight and always be willing to help them as long as it does not involve severely holding yourself back. In most cases though this won’t be true. Most family members won’t be that bad, but they will be a time suck. While you can’t pick your family members, you can certainly decide how you allow them to influence you. If they are holding you back or draining away your precious time, cut the cord and build a wall.
Truth #5 – Nothing Lasts Forever, And That’s A Good Thing: Everything has a time limit on it. Your joy is temporary. Your frustration is temporary. Your youth is temporary. Your life is temporary.
You will die one day, but depending on how you choose to view this inevitability, it can be a good thing. Death is the single most powerful driving force for taking action as well as the single most meaningful component in life that gives value and meaning to our days. Because your life is finite, you should be driven to go out and achieve new feats and undergo new experiences. This will give you a sense of purpose and a feeling of growth. Most people who are unhappy feel that way because they lack both. As usual, the majority of people will see things differently and constantly wish they could evade death while never actually doing anything to improve how they live, but that should no longer come as a surprise to you. As one of our close friends once said, if the average human lifespan increased to 200 years, most people would waste an additional 100 years.