I Quit Drinking. Now I Need to Quit Chasing Money .

Any desire can be satisfied – or addressed, anyway – in two ways. One can go after the object of the desire, or one can get to work on the other half of the problem: the opinion that produces it. Solving the equation in this way (from the right-hand side rather than the left, as we might think of it) is standard Stoic procedure.

- Ward Farnsworth, The Practicing Stoic

Desires are strange because, while they emerge internally, they aspire to be merged with externals as well as internals. You can desire a woman and money, and you can also desire confidence as well as self-reliance. The former being external, and the latter within your control, and paradoxically, the last two being the reason why most likely you’d get the first two.

And this is the tricky part, because here, it is easy to confuse what is truly valuable. What is it? Is it being able to sleep with whomever you want? And have all the money in the world? Or is the truly valuable thing confidence and self-reliance, which are free and available now?

I believe the latter, but understanding this intellectually proves difficult. Most of the time, you will realize this is true only after a large amount of suffering. The aim here is to find out if it is possible to understand this before the suffering, and quench desires that will make us suffer, but at the same time, actively desiring a different course of action, due to our philosophizing.

Let me show you how this works in real life.

I used to have a brewery when I was younger, and so I drank a lot. I used alcohol as a crutch for socializing and for dating. As many young people, I felt insecure about many things, like money, looks, and status. The beers and the drinks magically made these insecurities disappear, and I was able to interact with the hottest girls and every guy without being awkward. Until I got too drunk of course, and I wasn’t able to talk, and fell asleep anywhere, such as under a car, or on a table at a party.

I thought that the alcohol was needed, because sober, I was not going to be able to be chill and confident, but the alcohol was also the source of humiliation and loss of self-respect. The very thing I wanted, which was confidence and a sense of belonging and acceptance from other people, was being pushed away by the thing that I thought would give me that.

Years passed with me playing this game, and then, one morning, I had enough, and I simply got out of it (the increasingly painful hangover helped as well).

It took me a long time to realize that I valued self-respect more than acceptance from others. The pain showed me the true value of self-respect.

Now, what is important to note here is the judgment I had before and after, which is quite simple.

The judgment before was: Friends and social success are very important, therefore I will use alcohol to put myself in a state that will get me more of that.

The judgment after was: Friends and social success are important, but not more than my sense of self-respect, I will stop drinking and deal with this situation sober.

It is always easier to follow desire blindly before questioning it, until it is not. I just gave you the example of drinking, this is easy to understand, but please bear in mind that there are many areas where we do this as well. Money is a good example.

Money is needed for survival, and for a good life where we can eat and share dinners with friends, and have an amazing time at the amusement park with our kids, but after a point, it begins to be a craving for something else. It becomes a crutch for confidence and self-reliance, an outsourcing of worth.

In our society, it is very easy to define yourself by your bank account, or how much money there “appears” to be in your bank account, and so instead of valuing frugality and financial responsibility, you start valuing more the approval and admiration of those around you. AGAIN! It is very easy to go this way, until is not. Just like alcohol, there comes a point where you realize that your unquenchable thirst for money and approval and admiration is way less worth than a sense of self-respect and reliance.

I know people with a lot of money that are very lame and sparkless, but that still judge themselves to be above others. People make fun of them because everyone around them are not there for them, that is, for their character and personality, but for the amount of money they have. They think that money is what buys approval and human connection, but then they realize later in life that everything around them is false. Just like I realized that alcohol hurt me more than it helped me, there comes a day you realize as well that it is just the same with the excessive importance you give to money above all else.

What do I value? What’s the opposite of these hollow, money-obsessed people?

Self-reliance. Independence of thought. Trusting my own judgment over the crowd’s metrics. I’ve read Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” over a hundred times because it burns in me the idea that you trust yourself above everything else.

And here’s what I’m starting to see: chasing money to feel worthy is the opposite of self-reliance. I’ve been outsourcing my worth to society’s judgment. I’ve been asking others to tell me if I’m enough.

I can’t trust fate for my well-being and worth. I’m trusting myself for this.

The lesson here then is that changing desires is not straightforward. It is possible to change the desire from approval and admiration to self-respect and self-reliance, but the normal and most common way is very painful. If you want to save yourself this pain, you need to ask yourself when you notice a strong desire in you, if the thing you desire will give you lasting peace (self-reliance, self-respect, being friendly, in essence, being a good human being), or if it will cause you pain in the future.

I leave this to you now, are you taking what’s on your left hand, or the right hand?

Until next time.

Ricardo