We like to think that if we become rich, our lives will be easier and we will be less stressed out. It is a reasonable assumption, given the fact that anyone who has been short of money has felt how stressful that can be. Yet anyone who has ever had money, as Seneca did, as Marcus Aurelius did, quickly finds that it too brings its own kind of stress.
You’re stressed because you’re keeping up with the Joneses’. You’re stressed, as many rich people are, because despite your ample income, it’s still easy to live beyond your means. You’re stressed even if you do have a surplus of funds…because you always wonder if you’re putting it to work effectively enough. Or, you’re worried that someone is going to steal it from you, or mismanage it for you.
What does it mean, then, to discover that you’ll be stressed either way? Stressed that you have too little. Stressed that you have too much. Stressed that you could have more. It means the same thing Marcus Aurelius discovered when it came to his anxiety. “I escaped anxiety today,” he writes, before correcting himself. “No, I discarded it,” he says, “because it is within me.”
The stress is always there because no matter the situation, there is always one commonality: YOU. It’s your mind that’s doing this. The wanting, comparing, catastrophizing, worrying, scheming, striving. That’s your mind at work. That’s you who is choosing not to be happy, to torture yourself, to waste time on what you don’t control.
Plenty of people with less have been content, plenty of people with a lot more have been miserable. You can lead a good life anywhere, the Stoics remind us. You can be stress-free and self-contained—or at least, not a mess—on any bank balance…because those things have nothing to do with money and everything to do with you.
P.S. If stress is clouding your judgment and interfering with your life more than ever before, you’re not alone—and we can help. Join the hundreds of others who have fought back against stress and anxiety by taking our 14-day Slay Your Stress challenge. Each day features a new tactic that you can use to find calmness and serenity wherever you are. Sign up here.
