So many people wonder how it feels to be rich or how it feels to be a billionaire. It’s something plenty of people ask and even pursue at all costs.

There’s something you need to know about that mindset, and I’m going to tell you an important story about the mindset of pursuing extreme wealth and what it means for your wealth-building journey.

Now, I’d been mentoring TJ, the son of one of my partners, for about a year. I was helping him develop a small business I’d started the year before. His initial motivation had lagged a bit, so I asked him what was bothering him.

“I’m not sure this business is for me,” he said.

I asked him why.

“I just don’t see any way I’ll be a billionaire.”

“A billionaire? Why would you even want to be a billionaire?”

TJ shrugged and evaded at first. Eventually, he told me why: He felt he had to be extremely wealthy, wealthier than his father, whose wealth was in the hundreds of millions at the time.

I felt he was making a serious mistake on several levels and told him so.

“First and most importantly,” I said, “you don’t want your motivation to be to outdo your dad. It’s a fundamentally negative objective. Goals based on negatives can be very motivating, but they will make your experience cheaper and any success you have less satisfying.”

I’m pretty sure he did not understand that. He was just too young.

“Secondly,” I said, “you don’t want a specific number to be a primary goal. I know most self-improvement pundits say the opposite, that setting very specific numerical targets is essential. But like negative motivations, numerical goals will give you only the briefest satisfaction if you achieve them, followed by another long, frustrating period of chasing some new, more ambitious number.

“The third reason I don’t like the goal you set is because it is crazily unrealistic. You can certainly become a millionaire  multimillionaire, or even a decamillionaire if you are persistent and get a great mentor and follow his path. But being a billionaire is something that comes only with a great deal of luck.”

(Editor’s Note: We get it – who doesn’t want to be a billionaire. But on any wealth-building journey, realistic goals are crucial. Why not find out what it takes to become a millionaire first, and eventually a decamillionaire?)

Setting numerical objectives can be very helpful in trying to achieve (or motivating others to achieve) specific short-term objectives. But for the big things — like life satisfaction — they are useless and even counterproductive.

I gave TJ this example: When I was in my early 30s, I had a specific numerical target in mind — a cool $1 million. I hit that in a few years. Got a bigger house, more cars, all the rest. 

But was that the end? Hardly. In less than 24 hours I had a new goal — a net worth of $10 million. And the moment that became a goal, the pleasure and calm I could have had from being worth a million was replaced by the stress and anxiety of feeling I had to increase my wealth tenfold.

I hit that number when I was 39 years old and did “retire” for about 18 months. But the feeling of being wealthy was never quite there. And my family’s “wealthy” lifestyle was so expensive it was actually giving me stress. 

So I went back to work once again...

“Wealthy” Is Not a Number

There I was in my forties, having hit my numerical goal twice. I was still leaving home early and coming home late in pursuit of yet another crazy number. And the motivating idea was still the same: that this monomaniacal effort would one day give me the feeling of being wealthy. 

But the emotions I actually felt on a daily basis were anxiety, anger, and ultimately self-loathing and depression.

My situation wasn’t unusual. This is the experience of many, if not most, people whose idea of being wealthy is having a certain number of dollars.

Luckily for me, I had a friend who was both a martial artist and a philosopher and after opening up to him about these cycles of hope, stress, and regret I’d been going through, he gave me some very good advice.

He said, “Perhaps, rather than defining wealth as an amount of money, you should think of it as a feeling.”

I asked him what he meant.

He was ultimately asking, “how does it feel to be rich? What was that feeling like for me?

I spent a few weeks thinking about his question. I thought about the moments in my life when I did feel rich and how I felt the rest of the time, when I was chasing numbers. My numerical goals were giving me fast and hard feelings, such as anxiety, anger, fear, jealousy, and shame. 

But the feelings I had when I did feel rich were slow and soft feelings: a relaxed self-confidence, an easy-going competence, and a general sense of tranquility — even in the face of challenges.

I said all this because I was worried that TJ, in his quest to beat his dad by wanting to be a billionaire, was setting himself up for a life of meaningless disappointment... whether he hit his monetary goals or not. 

I’m not sure I got him to change his mind or whether he changed it on his own. But I’m happy to report that several years later he seemed happier and more relaxed when talking about his career. 

When talking about business plans, he talked about product development, customer satisfaction, and the thrill of finding superstar employees. His career was moving him along in the right direction. In terms of sales, he was generating money faster than was normal for a business of that size, even though he wasn’t so focused on that kind of growth.

So, How Does it Feel to Be Rich?

If you have bought into the popular notion that having specific numerical goals is the key to becoming wealthy, I hope I’ve encouraged you to question that assumption.

And if you are ready to replace numerical goals with ones that are “slower” and “softer,” you should start by thinking about the particular moments in your business and personal life where you have had these very satisfying slow and soft emotions.

Dwell on that for a while and think about how you can have more of those feelings during the time you are working. Imagine yourself feeling this way when talking to vendors and employers and customers.

Eventually, you will arrive at an idea of the sort of business/profession you want to be in and an equally good idea of all the sorts of feelings you want to avoid.

Let these ideas guide your daily decisions and I think you will find that you will be able to feel rich while you become wealthy.

For instance, you will need to make a ton of money if your idea of wealth is a 10,000-square-foot house, a half dozen super-luxury cars, yachts, private jets, and a wine cellar full of Château Haut-Brion.

But if you replace that idea with what your heart wants, with the feelings you are truly hoping to achieve from becoming wealthy, then you won’t needbe a billionaire.. You may need only a hundred million... or perhaps only 10 million... or just a single million... or even less. 

If you recalibrate your thinking to achieve the best feelings of wealth rather than the social trappings, you can reach your goal more quickly with much less stress along the way. And you can then enjoy your wealth for more than just a few minutes.

A few thoughts that might be helpful here:

• When you buy a luxury good, a large part of what you are buying is the prestige of owning it. When you are talking about big name-brand cars and watches and jewelry (to name just a few luxury items), the “status charge” can be huge — up to 90% of the cost. 

• Paying money for prestige is foolish because prestige cannot be bought. Spending extravagantly on luxuries will buy you envy and mostly unspoken resentment — pretty much the opposite of prestige.

• Prestige can be won only by doing admirable things, things like being kind and fair and wise and charitable — none of which will cause envy or resentment.

If, instead of spending on luxury items, you focus on achieving the feeling of wealth... what you will probably find is that you’ll spend your extra money on experiences that provide those feelings, not expensive status symbols that won’t increase your actual status by a single degree.

Focusing on the feeling of wealth also makes decisions easier. When I buy things now, I make an effort to identify any sort of status value and remove that from my decision-making. That’s because I know I won’t get the feeling of being rich from owning symbols of status. 

To Live a Rich Life

Here’s the thing: I don’t like rich people. Never did. The people I admire are not the millionaires and billionaires of the world. They are the people who live rich lives. 

And by that I mean lives that are rich in thought and feeling... lives that are outwardly focused. Most of the millionaires I meet are not like that at all. They are selfish and self-absorbed and care only about money. 

I don’t write for them, nor for anyone who wants to be rich in that way.

So let me sum up this piece by saying that, in the pursuit of wealth, your target should not be numerical. It should not be to “be a billionaire” nor should it be prestige.

What it should be is an ever-evolving picture in your head about what you will be doing that will yield both monetary profits and emotional profits in equal measure.

Now, I value the freedom and pleasure that my wealth gives me more than any specific number of dollars.

So keep that in mind as you progress and as you earn more (which I’m certain that you will). That way you will enjoy the journey just as much as the result.