Getting Everything You Ever Wanted
The two tragedies in life
When I was 20, I came across an Oscar Wilde quote that has stuck with me til this day.
It goes like this:
“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
At the time, it struck me as quite poignant, but I couldn’t comprehend the second part of the quote. Why was it such a tragedy to get what you wanted?
But now, I finally do.
When I started my poker career, I fell in love with the idea of reaching high stakes and being able to boast that I won or lost someone’s annual salary in a hand (writing that now sounds so stupid and cringe). I also fantasised about what it would be like to live a glamorous lifestyle: Jet setting abroad, 5* resorts, sipping cocktails on private beaches, fine dining, penthouses, rooftop bars, VIP tables, members clubs, and so on. That had to be awesome, right?
Over my eight professional years, I became part of the fortunate few that were good enough to make a living from poker. And by 2019, I had accomplished all that I desired – reaching the echelons of high stakes and living an indulgent lifestyle.
So how does it feel to have achieved everything I thought I ever wanted?
I can tell you it feels like nothing.
I remember the feeling so clearly. It was late 2019. I was sitting in the VIP area of an exclusive rooftop bar in Nha Trang, Vietnam, looking out at the ocean and thinking, what now?
I had spent countless hours at my laptop or at the casino – sacrificing personal relationships – to accomplish a moonshot dream, thinking it would finally make me happy.
And when the success came flooding in, I thought the high would last forever. I expected it to feel wonderful and exciting. It did for about a day or two, but then it stopped. In fact, I went back to feeling nothing at all. And I’d argue that maybe it feels worse than nothing because I expected something different.
Now I understand Oscar Wilde’s quote. I understand the existential angst of getting what you want and not knowing if you’ll ever be happy again.
I thought achieving some external accomplishment would change everything — foolishly tying my self-worth to my net worth. I thought it would change how I felt, how I saw myself, and how I went through the world. But it didn’t. I was still the low self-esteem and insecure Jason — only with more money and more possessions.
From an evolutionary psychology point of view, it makes sense why we would believe that achievement will make life better – that everything will be worth the sacrifice and pain, that it will transform the shit part of our lives into something good. It’s that drive that leads individuals to explore and innovate. But just because something is good for progression doesn’t mean it’s good for a person.
We all seek to be happy. But many of us, myself included, confuse wealth and status with happiness. Causing a misguided focus, leading us further away from a happy life. It’s an “If I accomplish X, then I’ll be happy” mentality.
In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt explains why having this mentality doesn’t lead to happiness. Pleasure comes from the journey, which is often the struggle towards the goal, not from actually achieving the goal. Arriving at the destination doesn’t bring us more pleasure than we get by overcoming struggles during the journey itself.
Haidt continues to explain that “the human mind is extraordinarily sensitive to changes in conditions, but not so sensitive to absolute levels.” In other words, for better and for worse, we adapt to the environment around us.
I didn’t know what my values were, so I looked around and saw that mainstream media and society worshipped money and pleasure — defaulting to them as core values.
When pleasure is a core value, it leads to more unhappiness because your mind adapts to each new absolute level of pleasure. In turn, you then need more pleasure to stay happy. But with each increasing level of pleasure, it results in less of a high.
Psychologists call this hedonic adaptation. And this has the power to make your life miserable. When we attach our happiness to an external reward, such as money, we experience a temporary feeling of happiness. We keep chasing this fleeting happiness and soon find ourselves in hedonic adaptation hell.
Last year, a friend tried to get me to join his little success pact. The idea behind it was for us both to earn a shit ton of money – me in business, him in foreign exchange day trading – and in a few years for us to be sitting in some exclusive rooftop bar in Miami, popping bottles and celebrating our success.
I told him I didn’t want any of that. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I explained to my friend his definition of success doesn’t align with my values and why I won’t be sipping Dom Pérignon in some god-forsaken establishment.
All of that shit my friend aspires to have isn’t valuable. It’s just difficult to get.
I’ll let Joe Rogan explain:
“Look at the car he’s driving, look at the watch he’s wearing, look at the girl he’s with.
That’s unattainable to many people, so it seems like it’s valuable, but then you attained it.
And then you realised, oh, this is not valuable; this is just difficult to get.
And there’s a difference. There’s a big difference.”
To me, if something is valuable it cannot be bought. It has to be earned.
You can’t buy love. You can’t buy health. You can’t buy wealth. You have to build it brick by brick and spend the rest of your life working on them.
Pursuing big goals is difficult. But just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it will be worthwhile.
Nothing about poker was worthwhile. Sure, it gave me some great skills that I value: decision-making, critical thinking, strategy, game theory, risk-taking and so on.
But, as odd as this sounds, I never once felt a sense of achievement or accomplishment. Today, I have far less money, air miles and possessions, but I have felt so much more personal growth and fulfilment in my first two years of business and writing.
Don’t get me wrong; I want to be wealthy and successful. However, I’m optimising for more of a holistic type of success: Living a fulfilling life, following my curiosity, travelling, staying fit and healthy, and having wonderful relationships with friends and family.
A part of me acknowledges there may have been a possibility that I purposely sabotaged myself – walking away from my poker career, relationships, and old life just so I could feel the struggle and chase again. To have a why to live for.
But in starting over again, I’m trying to approach this from a place of wisdom and not fall into the same hedonic hellhole.
In The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, author Alice Schroeder writes about a time when Buffett gave a presentation at The University of Georgia. The students asked him about his definition of success.
Buffett replies:
“When you’re nearing your end of life, your only measure of success should be the number of people you want to have love you actually do love you.
I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them.
But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them.
If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.”
A billionaire says that the amount you are loved — not your wealth or accomplishments — is the ultimate measure of success in life.
You may be thinking it’s so easy for a billionaire investor to say that. But the reason why I have an obsession with investors (specifically value investors) and how they look at the world is because they have a stack of undeniable proof of being great long-term decision makers. The results of their decisions and thinking take years and even decades to come to fruition. And as far as I can tell, they’ve led fulfilling lives.
But I get it. The idea of someone telling you your dreams and aspirations could be meaningless and won’t change how you feel about yourself is unsettling to hear. Even 20-year-old me would’ve scoffed at these remarks.
I’d be lying to you if I said I’ve renounced all material possessions. I do have some materialistic goals. The biggest is owning three houses in the UK: One each in Birmingham, Northampton and London. This isn’t to flex but to provide a warm place for friends and family to stay when they need it most. Business is the vehicle to get me there.
I leave you with one of my favourite stories I often recall when I catch myself daydreaming about a more materialistic future.
It goes like this:
Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut were at a party hosted by a billionaire. Vonnegut turns to Heller and says, “How does it feel that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel (Catch-22) has earned in its entire history?”
“I’ve got something he can never have,” Heller replied.
Puzzled by Heller’s reply, Vonnegut asked, “And what on earth could that be?”
“The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
