The core of life depends on four pillars. Health, wealth, love and happiness. If one suffer, everything else suffer too.
A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought— they must be earned. —Naval Ravikant
If you ignore one aspect, you weaken the quality of other three.
Of all the four, relationships are the most interesting. It can either make or break your life. One can recover from being broke, one can recover from depression. But recovering from a long phase of bad relationships is quite difficult.
For example, if you have great relationship with your parents, you will grow up to be a kind and loving human being. However, a bad relationship with your parents and you will see everyone with hate and envy.
Similarly, if you have a great relationship with your partner, you will spend each day of your life with new energy. Whereas, a bad relationship with your partner and you will want to end your life. The world feels like hell.
Everything in your life depends on your relationship with people around you. Whether you spend most of your days being frustrated and angry, or being thankful and content, it's up to you.
If you are surrounded with soar relationships, even if you have skills, you won't find any meaning in making money.
Or you will be devoted to only making money. Because everything else will feel hollow and fake.
So, you need to do your best to keep the right people in and the wrong people out of your life. Maintain the balance.
Wealth and happiness
If you are surrounded with the right people, the only thing left is money. Happiness comes by itself.
Happiness has a different meaning for everyone. For me, it means growth. Certainly, it will have a different meaning for you.
For you, it may mean spending time with your loved ones. To make more money. To buy a car, or a house or something else. Every person has a different meaning of happiness.
However, a lot of people are trapped in the false meaning of happiness. The most common among them is to quit your job. Be financially free.
It sounds exciting, doesn't it? To do nothing and just enjoy. Just live to travel and enjoy.
But if it were true, why didn't people like Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Mahatama Gandhi pursued it? To make enough money and go on a never ending vacation?
Most people who are remembered for their actions and achievements, people who made a difference in this world, had gone through a lot of struggles in their life.
Like Steve Jobs worked till the end days of his life, multi billionaires, like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, even though really old, still works every day. And feel happy about it.
Do we all want to be rich? I don't think so. Every person has a different attitude towards being rich. Someone like me wants to make $100k. That's not rich, but above average money.
However, we all want to escape the survival mode. What's the survival mode?
Living paycheck to paycheck. Thinking where will the money come from in the next month. We all want to break out of this never ending cycle of debt, frustration and agony.
We want freedom. Not freedom to "not work again", but freedom to do the work we love.
But how can you achieve that freedom without resources? You can't.
So, happiness might not have to do anything with making enough money and quitting your work. It may have some meaning with the continual growth, achievement, enjoying rewards.
Imagine yourself being so much confident in your abilities that you are absolutely certain that you can achieve anything you put your mind to.
Will you focus on the wrong people around your work, your family, your friends then?
Or will you focus on yourself only, your work, your wealth? So that you can move on. Find better people to spend your life with.
You wouldn't spend your whole day thinking about what someone said to you. How someone around you is making you miserable. Or how someone is manipulating your life.
All your energy will be focused on making your life better.
If you are confident enough, you will accept that the world is unfair. But you can change things. You can change how people around you are. You can change your sadness to happiness.
You can change how much money you have. You can change everything.
Those who have a 'Why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'. — Viktor Frankl
Once you understand why you want to change yourself or the people around you, you can definitely find how.
How is never a problem. Why is. A strong why and you can definitely find out how easily.
Strong leaders throughout the history have worked on why for long enough that they were able to find how.
For example, Gandhi had his why, so he peacefully changed a whole nation. Steve Jobs had his why, so he changed how we look at computers and phones forever. Elon musk had his why, so he changed how we look at the space exploration. He has given a new meaning for space exploration to the world.
So, any problem in your life can be solved with a strong and well defined why.