Rich

"If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it." - John D. Rockefeller

Money is probably the most stressful word we have. We all want money, yet we are terrified of not having enough of it. We want a large and growing bank account. But we usually can't put our finger on exactly how much money we want or even why we want it. If we had a million dollars, most of us wouldn't really know what to do with it. All we know, all we have thought about, is that we want to have the money.

But money isn't real. At most, it is just a peice of paper. It is a symbol of a promise between 2 people that if I give you something that is valuable to you, you will give me something that is of equivalent value to me. It is just a sophisticated form of bartering. What we really want when we want money is the knowledge that we are valuable to other people, and the security of being able to always have everything we think we need.

We often use money as a means of competition; keeping up with the Jones's because the person with the most "toys" is seen as the most successful. But having more of the things money can buy is not an indication of true riches. Money-grubbing people are not looked upon kindly. Our true richness comes from the quality of our relationships with those people who matter most to us. If your only goal is to become rich by getting a lot of money, you will never achieve it. Because competing for money takes your attention off of the richness what really matters; and hinders or destroys the relationships that matter most to you. And because you have failed to give to them the love they wanted, they fail to give us the riches you wanted.