Made A Million Dollars But Was Still Empty Inside - Here's What I Learned

And just the experience that I've overall had so far because I think so many people get misled in this industry and in a lot of industries when it comes to business and the idea of money because at the end of the day, we all want that money freedom. But people think that money fixes every single problem. And Naval, who's somebody I look up to, he's wrote a lot of books and just a great, great thinker. He said money fixes all of the money problems. And it's true. Money can help me provide for my family. I don't have to worry about bills anymore. I don't have to worry about this and that. But a rich man who is sad is the same as a poor man who's sad. And money will not change who we are as individuals deep down when it comes to our ability to truly have fulfillment in the work that we do or the life that we live and how we think about the world around us. You can either be stressed and anxious and poor or you can be stressed and anxious and rich. And the money does not affect our heart, our soul, and our mind. It just simply fixes money problems. Now, once those money problems are out of the way and a little bit of background on me, I started trading when I was a freshman in high school. And I ended up dropping out of college my freshman year once I started making money. And the more money I made, the more that I was at that point in my life a couple of years ago, I had everything that I could have wanted. I reached my initial financial goals. I had the nice car. I had the nice apartment. And after having and achieving these things, I realized that it doesn't mean really anything. And the more that I realize and I work more in my business and I make more money, the more I realize that wealth is truly not the idea of materialism when it comes to money. And so in this video, one of the things that I want to talk about and convey and keep in mind, I have no script for this, more so just sitting down and sharing some of my experience. There's many people that I would hang out with when I was in high school or college that I could immediately know these people are moving me off track, right? We all have quote, I call them like energy vampires, right? There's people in our life that will affect our energy and drain the energy out of us and keep us from being positive or keep us from being lighthearted in specific ways. When we chase the idea of money and I look at scripture and I look at the Bible and the story of Solomon and Solomon goes to God and asks for wisdom and that wisdom he realizes is more valuable than the money. When we plant the idea of money in our mind, we are constantly chasing the idea of money because we have to understand there's this paradoxical thing that happens in our life when it comes to our success. So it's almost like purposeful suffering until we then achieve it. And we don't really realize that this is what we're doing because we have given value to something materialistic, something that is of this world. And we must focus on building up spiritual gifts and spiritual fruitfulness. And, you know, we want to work together when we're in this money driven mindset. It almost makes us weak. It makes us, you know, almost fragile when it comes to things that get in the way of that. And I think our ability to navigate life is almost our ability to be in our higher state. Now, what I mean by that is I think of it as like game theory. I grew up playing video games and the way that I treated video games is I wanted to be the best. Right. In a video game is I want to level up and level up and level up and be be the best at whatever I'm doing. And so I treat I treat life the same way. And when certain situations or circumstances come where it leads to possible failure or it leads to a win, I'm able to analyze that and not just analyze it from the level of what the outcome was. Of monetary value or possible emotional value, but spiritual value and the way in which it's affecting me. So an example of this. Right. I started business and something goes wrong. Now, I have the perception in that moment I had the decision. If I am focused on money, if I'm weighing and resting my heart and my mind on worldly things, which is of money, and I'm thinking that money is the only thing that is sustaining my fulfillment. The way in which I'm going to navigate that situation is going to be completely different than the way that I would navigate that situation if I was operating from a spiritual higher state. Now, what we end up finding is that when we are resting in worldly things, we will always go down a path that leads to worldly problems, stress, anxiety, failure, restlessness. And we never actually achieve that full sense of fulfillment and what we're looking for. And so when we can intertwine our spiritual connection with business and with trading and operate out of a ways in which money is not the sense of the fulfillment that we're seeking, it's just a byproduct of it. And that's what I've always wanted and always have worked towards. Not always, actually. Recently, I'm starting to grow in my relationship with God and grow in my business. And before, I would make money and get so excited and so joyful about the idea of money. And then I'd go spend it and be like, oh. And then a week later, it'd be like, why do I have this? Why did I do this? And it's just this everlasting loop where we realize that money needs to be secondary. The foundation of a good entrepreneur, the foundation of a good businessman, somebody who wants to navigate life at the highest level is constantly evaluating and asking more questions, constantly asking why. And I think the people that don't ask why enough don't end up proving, don't end up improving and end up running into the same problems. Ever since I was young, even before I made money, I asked myself why. Why am I here? Why am I doing this? Why does it even matter? And I would go a level deeper. And I would ask, well, if it doesn't matter, then why do anything? Well, why do anything if there's a reason for this and that? And I don't think a lot of us let ourselves fully chew on these deep ideas. And true fulfillment comes with hardship through these understandings. When we allow ourselves to fully chew and rest in our heart these really deep and profound ideas of why am I doing this? Why am I deciding to trade and make money? Why am I deciding to make this type of business? What do I want? Why am I here? Why am I whatever it is? We do not take enough time to let these questions simmer within our heart. And when we do let these questions simmer within our heart, and it's not just, oh, I gotta grind towards money. We're able to navigate and understand that and see money for what it is. Money is just a materialistic fairy dust. Money really has no relationship to the soul and to us actually as individuals. Our flesh and the universe and the world that we're around is just simply the… There was a quote that I saw the other day, and I'm trying to remember if I remember it. But it's like the universe or we are the universe watching itself almost. But our flesh is a part of the outside perspective, meaning my body and myself is really not me. What is truly me at the deepest layer of the onion is my soul. And when we realize that that soul is actually not of this world, it's of spiritual. It's of the spiritual world. It's of the heavenly world. And we have to learn to separate the two. And when we rest our soul, our heart, and our minds on worldly things, it will always end up leading to problems. It will lead us to be stressed. It will lead us to be anxious. It will lead us to never be fulfilled. We'll constantly be chasing more. When we truly dig deeper and ask those questions, that is when we start to separate the two. We start to realize and we start to pull the curtains back. And we get to go beyond the veil. And we get to really see everything else for what it is. I think success in business and success in life… You keep in mind, success in which we're talking about here isn't monetary. But deeper than that, success is our ability to understand truth and rest in it. And something I always ask myself on a day-to-day basis, right? Sometimes we fall short and we fall into bad habits and we know that we're not operating our higher self. And I have to ask myself, what do I care more about? Operating out of truth or being out of what I think in this world? In scripture, Christ says, do not rely on your own understanding. And I believe the more that I make money, the more that I live life, the more I realize how foolish I am. The more that I realize how foolish we are as human beings to think that we know and can navigate these things in our life with precision. And with more so not just precision, but with the foundation of knowing what's best for us at a true heartfelt level. And our ability to admit this is an act of strength. When we surrender to the idea that we are foolish, we don't know everything. And we're constantly looking to seek and learn and ask for wisdom from God. Can we fully gain strength and clarity and stillness in the not knowing? Because the not knowing itself is the fulfillment. The not knowing itself is the mystery, right? And the mystery is the most exciting part of it. It's us, when we go a layer deeper, when we ask another question, that is when we start to really realize that there's more to this. There's more to life. There's more to what we think that we might have known. And I just don't think enough people in today's world realize this or even want to really necessarily go down this route. Also, I believe it's the narrow path. In the world that we live in right now, it's so easy for us to be distracted and overcome with the ways in which other people live their life. And monetary value and all these things that are constantly shoved in our face through social media to say, I'm happy, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, and you're not doing that. Then we look at ourselves and say, wait a second. We immediately start comparing ourselves. We immediately start operating out of lack. And when we operate out of lack, that means we are operating out of worldly things. So anytime that we feel stressed, anxious, that is not of spiritual. That is not of godly things. God does not make us feel stress. He is actually the Prince of Peace. And when we align our spiritual life with our business and with our trading or with anything that we're doing, we're going to see such massive improvement in control and fulfillment in what we do. Not just, and again, maybe possibly through the money, but the money becomes then a tool to fulfill this higher purpose. And so I think life with business and in general is about asking that next question. It's about digging a layer deeper and truly wrestling with ourselves and being almost a little bit restless until we can rest. I like to think of it like it's restlessness until we rest. And that rest that we find after the restlessness is from asking those questions. It's when we get to that deep understanding that when we put our faith in worldly things, when we put our faith in money, when we put our heart and rest it into how much I own, how much I have, what are my accomplishments, that is when we're constantly chasing. We're not operating out of abundance. We're operating out of lack. And when we operate out of lack, it is never fulfilled. When we operate from heavenly things and when we work on our spiritual connection, when we work on our spiritual relationship, that is when we can operate out of abundance. And when we operate out of abundance, we realize that everything that we could possibly ever need is right now. And when we realize that everything that we could possibly ever need is right now, the world becomes something completely different. We look at it at a completely different perspective. Money means nothing. Cars mean nothing. Anything means nothing. The things that are fulfilled in actual value are spiritual and deeper things. It's connection. It's connection with other people in our life. It's the fulfillment through purpose and a deeper purpose. It's a fulfillment through our relationship with spiritual things. And we're able to see all of these fake facades for what it truly is. And it really is like the idea of the matrix. I know everybody uses that term like escape the matrix nowadays. But when we truly think of the idea of the fleshly world and our fleshly desires versus our spiritual desires and our spiritual perspective of the world, it truly is a breaking of the matrix. It's a breaking of our normal ways in which we view the world. And we then see it from this bird's eye point of view and say, wow, I'm so foolish. And that's the strength. The strength is seeing our foolishness. And when we see our foolishness, we're able to realize how much we overtop pride, ego, fake confidence onto that foolishness to hide it because we're scared. When we're resting in our flesh, we're scared to admit we're foolish. We're scared to admit maybe we don't. And so then we add more stress, anxiety, pride, ego, all of these other things on top of that to hide it. And when we truly kill ourselves, kill our flesh, kill our desires, kill our worldly ideas, can we fully get to that center core of the onion of life and the onion of spirituality and see everything clearly? And in that clarity, can we truly have fulfillment, stillness, abundance, and know what is truly right and wrong through the foundation of how we were designed? And around a year ago, I was going through a very rough patch in my life, and I was also growing in my faith. And during that time, I completely died to myself, and I realized how much of myself was built upon ego, pride of accomplishments. Like I could act a certain way or do certain things, not because of the gift of it or the ability to do it out of purpose or reasoning, but because of more so I just could do it. And just the fact of me knowing I could do it was the foundation of why I did it. And I realized that that doesn't lead to anything fruitful. And then we end up getting to a point in the road where we say, who am I? And I got to that point, and I got to that point, and I said, who am I? And after that point of asking who am I, that is when I completely killed myself spiritually and in the flesh. I let go of all, I let my guard down completely. I let my guard down completely. And in the process of doing that, God revealed the truth to me. God had more room to enter me. God had more room to show me and reveal wisdom to me because my ego wasn't in the way of it. My pride wasn't in the way of it. Money wasn't in the way of it. Nothing was in the way. I was a complete blank slate, and it was scary. But then God showed me how much he loves me and revealed wisdom to me in that state. So that I could be built again and reborn in the foundation of truth, in the foundation of abundance. So when it comes to money, when it comes to life, we must always prioritize our spirituality. We must always prioritize and always catch ourselves in our foolishness and admit that we are foolish. And through admission of that foolishness do we truly gain strength in truth. Because we can decide to live in truth and be foolish, or we can decide to be even more foolish and completely turn away from truth. And end up leading our life towards damnation and struggle and problems and constant chasing in a cycle over and over and over again. Money does not fix those problems. Money can fix money problems. But after that, that is where we truly have to ask ourselves those deep questions. And when we start asking those deep questions is when the truth starts to be revealed to us, but only through seeking. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. And I'll see you guys in the next one.