Your 8-Year-Old Self Would Be Disgusted With You

Your eight-year-old self would be disgusted with you because you have everything they ever wanted and you're still complaining. Let me paint a picture of actual wealth. You're sitting in a temperature-controlled room. You're typing on a device that gives you access to all human knowledge ever while music from every artist who ever lived plays in the background. You can order food from 47 different countries and have it delivered to your door. You can video chat with somebody in Tokyo while ordering toilet paper that gets there tomorrow morning from your phone. Your eight-year-old self would think that you've become some sort of wizard king but current you is scrolling on Instagram feeling like a failure because someone your age just bought their third rental property. This isn't a podcast about gratitude. This is an intervention because here's what nobody tells you about success. Every level you reach becomes a new zero. Remember when having a thousand dollars in your bank account meaning that you weren't living paycheck to paycheck felt like infinite money. Remember when getting your own bedroom felt like a luxury your own condo you didn't have to have roommates. Remember when going to a restaurant that wasn't McDonald's felt fancy. You probably have 100 times more wealth, space and options than eight-year-old you ever imagined possible but instead of feeling 100x richer you feel about the same. Maybe worse. Now this isn't an accident it's how the game is rigged. Society has convinced you that satisfaction comes from having more than other people not from having enough for yourself. So every time you level up everyone around you levels up too and you're back to feeling behind. You're running on a treadmill that speeds up every time you get faster but here's the thing that's gonna piss you off. You chose to get on this treadmill and you can choose to get off because your current life contains luxuries that would have made you the envy of royalty 200 years ago that is definitely gonna make your eight-year-old self wonder how they were successful and is making you the envy of tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people who are alive today. You wake up whenever you want no roosters required you have access to fresh food from every continent year round you can travel hundreds of miles and a few hours while watching movies and eating snacks. You have a rectangle in your pocket that contains every song book and movie ever created and you live better than 99.9% of all humans who have ever existed but you don't feel it because you're measuring your wealth against people who also live better than 99.9% of all humans who have ever existed instead of against actual reality. It's like being in the 1% of the 1% and feeling poor because you're not in the 0.1% of the 1% this is insane and it's making you miserable for no reason. Now your brain was not designed for modern day society when your eight-year-old self wanted to feel successful they compared themselves to maybe 20 families that they knew personally right the richest person in their world that eight-year-old's world was probably the family with the biggest house in the neighborhood and two cars it was achievable it was visible it was real now your unconsciously comparing yourself to every highlight reel on every single social media platform from every successful person who's ever posted anything you're comparing your behind the scenes to everyone else's highlight reel but it's worse than that you're actually comparing your reality to millions of people's curated fiction and it's not your fault social media companies have weaponized your natural comparison instincts to keep you scrolling the more nadaquate you feel the more you engage the more you engage the more money they make you're not weak for falling for it but you are choosing to stay trapped in it now you have to reset this is how you do it this is how you break free from the wealth delusion first stop playing other people's games every time you feel behind ask yourself behind according to who your eight-year-old self your parents some influencer who post pictures of their rented Lamborghini next practice time travel gratitude once a week do something that would have blown your child mind take a hot shower and remember that most humans in history never experienced hot water on demand order sushi and remember when exotic food meant pizza use GPS and remember when getting lost meant staying lost practice a little bit of gratitude just remember where you came from and not only where you came from the reality of a lot of people today is not as great as your current reality third i want you to audit your inputs unfollow anyone who makes you feel inadequate about things that don't actually matter to your life i'm not saying you don't have to have aspirations in your life it's good to get to the next level but if you are seeing content that makes you question your own success they're not adding value they're stealing it and lastly i need you to redefine wealth accurately what does rich mean rich means that you can handle unexpected expenses rich means that you choose how to spend your time rich means that you have people who care about you rich means that you have enough comfort and safety to focus on things beyond survival and by that definition the only definition that actually impacts your happiness you're probably already rich now the uncomfortable truth is that your dissatisfaction with your life it's not about your circumstances it's about your standards and i know that social media is setting some of those standards but those standards are not yours they are a cocktail of marketing messages and social media algorithms and cultural programming that is designed to keep you consuming comparing and never feeling satisfied you have outsourced your personal definition of enough the people who profit from you never reaching it and this is why people who achieve their quote-unquote dream lives they usually feel empty after they climb the mountain everyone told them the climb they reached the top and then they realized it was the wrong mountain meanwhile your eight year old self would look at your current life and think you've already won the game and maybe they're right so you have a choice you have two options you can keep playing the infinite game of comparison chasing moving goalposts until you die never allowing yourself to feel successful no matter what you achieve or can declare victory based on what you've already accomplished you can feel wealthy with what you have you can build don't stop building but you can build from a place of abundance instead of scarcity now most people choose option one because they think gratitude means settling it doesn't it means having a realistic baseline for what constitutes winning so you can actually experience winning when it happens you can appreciate what you have and want more you can feel successful with your current life and work towards bigger goals and you can be grateful for your wealth and continue building wealth but if you can't feel successful with what you have now you won't feel successful with what you have later either the treadmill doesn't stop it just speeds up because your eight year old self is inside you somewhere and they're confused about why you're not happy you have everything they've dreamed of and things they couldn't even imagine you've won the lottery of being born in the wealthiest period in human history in a country with unprecedented opportunities with access to technology that gives you superpowers but you are so busy looking at what you don't have that you can't see what you do have this isn't about settling for less it's about being honest about how much you already have so you can build from strength instead of weakness your childhood self would be proud of how far you've come stop disappointing them by pretending you're not successful enough yet you are you just forgot how to see it