I said, “Money doesn't buy happiness, but…”

And before I could finish, one of the people in the meeting said, “That’s bullshit!”

And he was right.

First off, money doesn’t buy happiness.

I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and (cliché time), some of the happiest times of my life have been when I was the poorest.

In 1994–96, I was happy because I had no responsibilities.

I had nobody who depended on me.

I was young enough to be not so serious about my goals.

When people say, “You get health from having friends,” I believe it. Because that’s the last time I had friends that were not work-related.

I’m pretty happy now. I’m satisfied. I’m content. I’m pleased with where I am.

I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to afford another 60 years of life. Maybe I have to afford another 30 years of life.

So, when my friend said, “That’s bullshit!” in the middle of this meeting, that was the first thing that came to mind.

But of course, I then realized he was right.

Money doesn’t buy happiness, but as you get older and have more responsibilities, money buys you freedom, time and convenience to take care of those responsibilities.

The texture of happiness changes.

And as I get older, not only do my responsibilities change, but my passions become more insistent.

And always the question:

But what do I want to do?

Responsibilities and passions.

Money helps with those things.

Well-being has three components:

- Relationships

- Mastery

- Freedom.

A) Relationships

These are the people you have in your life: friends, family, colleagues and romantic relationships.

I think this has been the hardest part for me.

Sometimes you learn through negative experiences what’s good in your life and what’s not so good.

And just because someone is not good for me doesn’t mean they aren’t “good.”

Often when one of my friends breaks up with someone they say, “Oh, that person was a narcissist.” “Narcissist” is, like, the word to go with in a breakup.

But sometimes two people just don’t get along.

I don’t know.

I can go on and on.

Ultimately, there’s an insecure 13-year-old boy inside of me who every day is struggling to get people to like him.

I can’t stop him.

But I can contain him and try to remember every day that I am no longer that 13-year-old.

It’s a task!

B) Mastery

Probably the part I have the least trouble with.

Learning how to learn has been really important to me.

It’s the secret underlying purpose of my podcast.

I’ve spent many years getting good at a variety of skills.

From chess when I was a kid, to software programming, to writing, to business, to web development, to investing in about 20 different investment strategies, to starting a business, to negotiating, to selling, to all sorts of games from poker to backgammon to Scrabble, to public speaking, to stand-up comedy, etc.

I love that feeling of riding the steepening learning curve.

It’s both painful and beautiful.

It has to be painful.

Because when you start to learn any skill, that means two things:

• You love the skill enough to want to devote serious time to it.

• You suck at it. Because you haven’t done it yet.

So you have to love the suck enough to get good at it.

Then, to get good at something, anything, you have to break the macro-skill (e.g., “business”) into all of its micro-skills (e.g., negotiation, sales, having ideas, execution, management, leadership, branding, marketing, etc., etc.).

And every day you have to deliberately practice each micro-skill in order to get better.

Deliberate practice means trying something a little out of your comfort zone, probably failing, finding a mentor to help you analyze, and repeat.

Over and over and over and over.

Do that for each micro-skill every day.

For years.

Pick something you want to do this with.

Do it.

It feels good.

That’s why mastery is part of well-being.

C) Freedom

What does freedom really mean?

I don’t know.

I debate this definition.

But my current definition of it is:

Every day I make a greater percentage of choices for myself than the amount someone else makes (a boss, a parent, a school, a government, etc.) for me.

And I suppose one way to do this is to not care so much about making too many choices.

Some combination of the two lines above is freedom.

Money doesn’t equal freedom.

But it helps.

If you don’t understand the power of money, it can enslave you.

But if you do understand it, you can use money to get more freedom.

And that’s full circle what went through my head when my friend said, “That’s bullshit.”