Wealth, Fame, and a Perfect Life

Wouldn’t you agree with me that most of us, at one time or another, especially when we were young, had thoughts of being rich and famous? And maybe those thoughts were followed by, “If I was rich and famous, my life would be perfect!”

If you were at all like me, you certainly had those thoughts. Most people I’ve talked with over the years have mentioned that they had those thoughts run through their minds at some point. But I’m here to tell you that a perfect life does not necessarily follow fame or wealth. Yes, wealth can make a lot of things in your life easier, but if you think that tons of money and fame will automatically bring you happiness and contentment, you’re dead wrong. I think you will find that early death and addiction rates are higher in the rich and famous than in the middle class. I think that says something about how imperfect life can be with wealth and fame.

Riches and fame can give you a lot more choices, but you do need to be extremely careful of what choices you make. For example, gifting your wealth to charitable causes can bring far greater and longer lasting satisfaction than feeding a cocaine or alcohol addiction with all that money.

Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not putting down money and fame or going after great and lofty financial goals. Those are motivating, lots of fun, and can be very satisfying to carry out but be sure you enjoy each hour and day of your life as well as your pursuits and be aware that whatever the end results of your journey, it won’t make your life perfect.

Nobody’s life is perfect. I would even say it shouldn’t be perfect since a perfect life would mean there’s no need for improvement, no goals to reach for, and nothing left to really accomplish. And when you realize this and accept that as fact, your satisfaction and contentment can begin to really soar. Trust me on this; I’ve been there and back and learned that lesson the hard way. In fact, I have to remind myself of that on an almost daily basis. I have found that it is better to “live in the now” where I can recognize what I have and enjoy all the happiness I find on this journey we’re on.

I want to remind you that recognizing that money doesn’t create a perfect life doesn’t mean that money is not important. It is important and it can do so many good things for you and your family and the way you get to live your life. And when you have lots of wealth, you can also help out a lot of other people.

So, you don’t need to set aside your dreams of being wealthy or famous. Just know that those things don’t make your life perfect. It’s the good things that you do with that fame and fortune that will help you lift your life and the lives of the people around you and give you the happiness you want.

Questioning Social Media

In today’s world, so dominated by social media, we may find ourselves under the impression that a lot of other people out there have near perfect lives.  I mean look at virtually anyone’s Facebook or Instagram and you’ll see all these fun pictures, pretty faces, amazing talent, and supportive comments. Much of what we see is the good stuff, and of course, there is nothing wrong with that, but it sure can make a lot of people feel and believe that their own lives, filled with challenges, big ups and downs, and stress inducing problems are really messed up, which can result in self-pity, depression and, in the worst cases, even suicide.

The fact is, nobody’s life is perfect or even close, but when you’re looking from the outside you might be tricked into thinking that other people are doing tons better than you because of the limited view you get. If you take time to look and probe on a deeper level, you will see that the surface view can be very misleading since people don’t tend to post about their failures and problems, preferring to show just their successes and fun times. But very often these positive posts hide troubled lives and minds.

So, if you really want to know the truth and gain insight into a person’s actual and complete life, so you have a realistic view and can be ready and open to help them, you need to dig deeper.  One easy way to do this is by simply asking the right questions.  For example, pick a friend or relative that seems to be doing well according to their social media postings and ask questions like these:

1.  What are the biggest challenges you are having in life right now?

2.  Do you ever get down or depressed? (If they say yes, ask how often and what causes it.)

3.  What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?

4.  Do you think much about your own mortality?

5.  What in your life scares you the most?

6.  Have you experienced any great tragedy in your life? If so, what happened?

7.  Do you worry and think about tragedy striking you in the future?

If you take a little time, you certainly can add your own probing questions to this list.

I’m pretty sure if you question those who you think have “the perfect life” you will find, as I have, that no matter how rich and famous or easy their lives look from the outside, they too have their problems and challenges and many times much larger problems that you would have ever guessed.

Asking questions can help you see and understand, not just these other people, but also yourself. It can get rid of those feelings of self-pity or not being good enough. It can even lift you out of a state of depression, not just because you’ll see that your life is no worse, and sometimes better than other peoples’, but because looking outside yourself and looking for ways to help others can really lift your spirits and your life.

But I think, most importantly, knowing the challenges and problems that your relatives and friends are dealing with puts you in the perfect position to step up and help them overcome some of their problems, challenges, and obstacles.  This makes it a real win-win for you both. And all it took was asking a few questions!

Our Healing Brain

Our brains are so powerful. They can make physical changes in our bodies beyond what we would normally give them credit for or even really realize. There is a book that I’ve talked about many times before called Super Brain by Depak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi that is so full of great insight into the power of our brains. I read it again and again and often find things I missed the first time.

I’ve always been particularly intrigued by their thoughts on the placebo effect. The authors point out that any of us can, if we so chose, set up or create our own placebo effect at any time and without a sugar pill or any other kind of pill, because as they say, “anything you believe in can act as a placebo.”

This works because the body really believes what it has been told — that medicine it has been given is real. This goes to show that the mind can and does control healing of all kinds including pain, disease, and wounds that our bodies deal with from time to time.

“Being your own placebo is the same as freeing up the healing system through messages from the brain,” the authors write. “All healing is, in the end, self-healing. Physicians aid the body’s intricate healing system (which coordinates immune cells, inflammation, hormones, genes and much else), but the actual healing takes place in an unknown way.”

That’s a very powerful thought and one that could, if we take time to think about it and make use of it, do some pretty amazing things to help us take care of ourselves.

“In serious illness, doubts and fears play a marked role, which is why a practice like meditation or going to group counseling has been shown to help,” the authors conclude. That is certainly worth trying for most, if not all of us, whenever we want to treat our pain, disorders, or disease.

The authors suggest that there is a method through which anyone can apply their own placebo effect. It requires the same conditions as in a classic placebo response:
1. You trust what is happening.
2. You deal with doubt and fear.
3. You don’t send conflicting messages that get tangled with each other.
4. You have opened the channels of mind-body communications.
5. You let go of your intention and allow the healing system to do its work.

Our bodies have this amazing ability to heal themselves. When we get a cut on our finger or knee, we slap on a band aid and know that it will heal itself. In doing that, we’ve just let our brain send a positive message to our cells to do their job. But when we get a serious disease, we let our minds jump into the mix with all kinds of worry and negative thoughts doing pretty much the opposite of the list above. That is something you would need to change in order to take advantage of all the healing our minds can do for us.

If we are going to benefit from our own built-in ‘placebo effect’ we’ve got to, at a minimum, follow the list of 5 conditions above. If you can do that, you are supporting your body’s ability to take care of you, just as it is supposed to do.

A Kindness Lesson from Investing

All of us can spread kindness and other good stuff around and many people do but where do they usually start? I think they start right at home with family and friends. But if you want to spread good works and good words beyond that, you probably need to use something I learned about in my many, many years of investing in real estate. That thing is compounding.

Let me try to motivate you with numbers showing how a great idea, a good deed, and/or motivating words can spread and become huge. Let’s call it “good message compounding”.

If any one of us passed on a helpful message or did a kind deed and encouraged the recipients of our kindnesses to “pay it forward” to, say, ten other people and then asked that they also request their recipients to keep it going by passing it along to ten more and everyone kept that going, what potentially could be the results?

Shockingly, if everyone in the chain were to do this and that passing it on continued 6 times or through 6 levels of people, your message or deed could affect more than one million people! If it went through 9 levels of people, you could influence or help more than one billion people!

Of course, not all those first 10 people would follow through and pass it on and even if the first ten people did, we can be pretty certain that not everyone down the line would pass it on. But the point I want to make is that it is possible to end up with huge numbers of people getting your message or being impacted by your good deed because of compounding. If you keep that “huge potential” in mind, it can really be such a super motivator for you and for all of us to push ourselves to do and say more to help others.

So, I would encourage you to keep firmly in mind all those people, up through the 9th level, and the potential of over a billion people that you could potentially help. Even though this “good message compounding might not multiply into a billion, it could certainly multiply into hundreds of good messages and deeds and probably even more than that. And that ain’t too bad coming from one little human on this planet of more than 7 billion people.

In my world, that’s pretty exciting, knowing you, as just one person, can have that big of an impact for good in the world. And it all comes back to you in the great feeling brought on by the happiness you see your efforts bring to other people’s lives.