As described in the last post, your life’s mission revolves around growing true wealth and giving true worth. Growing true wealth and giving true worth are intertwined life-time partners that define your overarching purpose in life, set boundaries on what you live for, serve as the priorities in your life, and encompass both your own self and others in the world. Growing true wealth and giving true worth occur when you do deeds of goodness. Your mission in life, in essence, creates true value (wealth and worth) for yourself and others.
Let's delve deeper in what is meant by your true wealth.
True Wealth
Wealth refers to your valuable possessions. Many people think of money and material objects as a person’s valuable possessions and an indication of a person’s wealth. That belief is short-sighted and discounts your true wealth: the riches within you.
Wealth from money and material objects can be collected and stored, invested and converted. But it also can be lost and destroyed, misplaced and devalued, stolen and spent, worn out and left behind. It can be acquired without working for it and obtained by taking it from others. Its value is often based on what others judge it, not what you deem it. This is a false measure of wealth and can create a wealth of worries.
True wealth is the goodness of your true self, stripped of all monetary and material possessions you may have. It is the value you carry around within you. Your true wealth includes valuables such as your wisdom, your skills, your belief in yourself, and your joys.
True wealth refers to the valuable possessions of goodness you earn, keep, and carry with you in your mind, your heart, your spirit, and your whole being. Unlike material wealth, true wealth cannot be stolen, left behind, and devalued.
Henry David Thoreau captured part of this thought in his Letters to Various Persons:
“O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.”
Your true wealth comes from doing deeds of goodness (LRN LAF LUV LIV) that enrich yourself. Improving yourself, enjoying yourself, valuing yourself, and realizing yourself all contribute to your true wealth.
Although inward focused, growing true wealth does not mean to be selfish. Growing true wealth benefits you, but it is a means to giving true worth to others. You need wisdom to share wisdom with others. You need positivity in spirit to be able to uplift others. True wealth is selfish only if it is not given as true worth to others.
You can also think of true wealth as potential worth. Worth never materializes until given. It is like pure water collected in a container. It is the giving of the water to plants that makes the water truly worthy. True wealth never shared dies with you; its potential is forever lost.
Growing true wealth does not mean that everything you do for yourself should immediately translate into giving true worth. It does, however, serve as a litmus test on whether an action you consider growing true wealth will give you an opportunity, now or in the future, to give true worth.
True wealth is shared, not spent, as it can be shared without loss of your wealth and shared multiple times. Just as a candle shares its flame and still burns as bright, you can share your knowledge, wisdom, joys, and zest for life without losing them.
It does not take much true wealth to give true worth to others. Sharing a smile, lending a listening ear, showing kindness, and saying thank you are all worthy.
The ability to grow and maintain true wealth is a measure of a person’s quality of life.
In the next post we will discuss true worth––the other, and equally important, half of your life's mission.
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