Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Chasing money vs. Creating value

This is such a cliche topic, but I don't care, I want to write about it anyways. It seems these days that a lot of people do not differentiate between value and money, and this leads to problems.

A young person my age should focus on creating value, that is, something that is useful to other people. This thing of value that is being created should be something that is more valuable to the person buying it than to the person selling it. So for example, as a young strapping lad, doing physical labor is something that is easy and rewarding for me. As long as my belly is full, and I am hydrated, I can go for hours and it is a great stress relieving workout. But to an older person, digging a hole is tantamount to digging their own grave!

Other people can create value through other avenues. One person might be a really good artist, another person might be a great teacher, whatever. The most important thing is to create things, whether tangible or intangible, that benefit the lives of other people. If you can figure out what exactly you can do to improve other peoples' lives, the money will chase you instead of the other way around.

This is because money is simply a measure of value on an imperfect "ruler" or "scale". By chasing money you are essentially grasping at the ethereal and abstract versus the worldly and concrete. In chasing money, your thoughts and energy are focused on the measurement of value instead of value itself, which is something that I believe is not very fruitful in the long run.

So to summarize: Focus on creating something that will improve the lives of other people. Whether this is through making artwork, providing entertainment through athletic ability, mathematical acuity, interpersonal skills, or anything really, as long as it improves people's lives, and as long as you can do it consistently, you will not have an issue with money. That is because money follows value. By focusing on creating value, you create a sort of gravity field that will pull money towards you....

I am still a young buck, and I have not accumulated enough wealth so that I can let it speak for itself yet. But hopefully in a couple of years I will be able to read this post and say to myself "you were right!"

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