Becoming Rich Is Not A Goal

What is wealth? I am not talking about the spiritual meaning, but more specifically, about the amount of money you have at your disposal.

If everybody had a million dollars, nobody would be rich. Having what everyone has does not set us apart from the masses. So are we rich if we have a million dollars, but everyone else only has, say, ten thousand?

Who are we comparing ourselves to, anyway? Our neighbors, our friends, or the average society we live in? What if we compare ourselves to the world population? If we live in a prosperous industrialized nation, the inhabitants of a developing country will certainly regard us as rich.

If we do not know how to define material wealth, how can we even aspire to it? The answer is: we cannot.

Until we know where our goal is, we cannot go there.

"I want to become rich," is not a goal, because it is not clearly defined. I want to own a million dollars, on the other hand, is very specific. But does that make this wish a real goal?

By when do we want to have achieved this goal? This question is quite important because if we do not answer it, we can achieve our goal either tomorrow or in forty years. The most likely scenario, however, is that we will never reach goals that have no definite time horizon.

If we do not define by when we want to achieve a goal, we will not be able to develop plans that will take us to that goal.

Only a timetable tells us what steps we can take to reach the goal.

It makes a difference whether I want to be in China tomorrow or in a week. If it is to be tomorrow, I have to buy a plane ticket. If I have a week, I can get on a ship.

Now it can also be that I can afford a boat trip, but not a plane ticket. Then I must assume from the outset that I cannot reach my destination within a day.

If I don't want to accept this, I have to think about how to find the extra money for a plane ticket instead.

Either, the schedule dictates the tools I have to use, or the existing tools determine the amount of time I have to spend to reach my goal.

Now I can either change my schedule, or I can try to expand my toolbox.

So we see that a goal must not only be concrete (How much money is rich) but also defined in time (When do I want to reach the goal).

"I want to become rich" is neither concrete nor time-defined.

From these two examples, we can already see that "I want to become rich" is not a goal in the sense of the SMART principle (SMART = Measurable, Achievable, Reasonable, Time-Bound).

I have chosen Measurable and Time-Bound and could also apply the other two components of SMART-Goals to the sentence "I want to become rich."

I'll spare myself that at this point, though, because there is a much stronger reason why the phrase "I want to become rich" is not a real goal.

Anyone who has ever pursued a goal knows that it requires a lot of energy and dedication.

Ambitious goals can only be achieved if we don't run out of energy along the way. Since we only have a finite amount of mental and physical energy at our disposal, we have to divide this energy.

To reach our new, ambitious goal, we must, therefore, save energy elsewhere.

Most of the time, to have enough energy available for the new goal, we also have to neglect things that are important to us. It is inconvenient to do this.

Now, at the latest, we have to ask ourselves whether our goal is worth all the effort and privation it requires of us.

Why do we want to be rich? What do we want to do with it? How exactly would this condition make our lives better, happier, more meaningful?

When we reach this point, we realize how absurd the goal of getting rich is.

We want to be rich without knowing how we define wealth when we want to reach our goal and without being able to say why we want it at all.

The missing why is the biggest hurdle. Without being able to answer the question of why we have no motivation to make the necessary sacrifices and pool our resources. If we lack this motivation, we remain inactive and achieve nothing.

"I want to become rich" is not a goal. It is a fanciful daydream.

Do not try to get rich. Become good at what you love and do it every day with dedication. Then there's even a chance you'll get rich.

Getting rich is not a goal. Wealth is a by-product of passion.