A couple weeks back, I wrote about the idea that another million dollars isn’t going to fix your marriage.
This week, I want to look at the other side of that same coin.
Because there’s another trap I see all the time with high performers, entrepreneurs, and executives—and I’ve absolutely been guilty of it myself.
We hit the number.
We get the outcome.
We achieve the thing we thought would finally create the experience we were looking for.
And then something strange happens.
It’s not enough.
So we move the mark.
For me, money is probably the easiest place to see this.
I grew up with pretty modest means. We were lower middle class, and we had everything we needed, but there really weren’t extras. We didn’t go on vacations. We weren’t staying in three-star hotels. That just wasn’t the way I grew up.
Here’s one of Caitlyn’s favorite finds from a trip down memory lane at my dad’s house before we got married. The lady at Sears made me strike that pose. Clearly.
So when I started making a little money and my business started working, I remember thinking, Wow, if I had a million dollars invested and it was kicking off $100,000 a year, I’d be financially free and good for the rest of my life.
That was the number.
Then I got to a million.
And the number became five.
Then I got to five.
And the number became ten.
Ten became twenty.
And eventually, you have to catch yourself and go...
Wait a minute.
The last four marks weren’t enough.
Why would I assume the next one will be?
So many of us get trapped in the idea of something instead of paying attention to what it actually means in our lives.
We decide that when we hit a certain financial benchmark, sell the company, get the promotion, reach a particular net worth, or achieve whatever mark we’ve set for ourselves, then we’ll feel the way we’ve been trying to feel.
Then we’ll relax.
Then we’ll be secure.
Then we’ll spend more time with the kids.
Then we’ll take care of our health.
Then we’ll travel.
Then we’ll actually enjoy everything we’ve spent all this time creating.
But when the number arrives, the experience often doesn’t.
I remember doing an internal stock of my own life at one point. I had five million dollars invested, an eight-figure net worth, and a business making seven figures a year.
By almost any external financial measure, things were going extraordinarily well.
And my anxiety level was higher than it had ever been.
I felt more overwhelmed than I ever had.
Fundamentally, I was less fulfilled than I had ever been.
What made that especially interesting was what happened when I compared it to an earlier chapter of my life.
I thought back to living in Los Angeles. I had my condo, I could comfortably pay my rent, and I had maybe $10,000 in the bank.
And I was so happy.
I was passionate about life. I loved what I was doing. My happiness level was through the roof. My fulfillment level was through the roof. My concerns were basically zero.
So I had to ask myself:
What happened?
I had substantially more of the thing I thought would create fulfillment.
And I was substantially less fulfilled.
When I looked closely, the answer became pretty obvious.
Back then, I had a vision for what I wanted to do and how I wanted to live my life.
And I was fulfilling it.
I wanted to do martial arts.
I wanted to study an art.
I wanted to hone my skills.
I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives.
And I was doing all of those things.
That’s what we can lose sight of when we start chasing arbitrary benchmarks.
A real vision isn’t simply a number.
If I ask you to close your eyes and imagine the life you genuinely want, your mind probably doesn’t naturally go to a spreadsheet with your net worth printed at the bottom.
You imagine living.
You think about engaging activities.
You think about doing things with people who share your interests and values.
You think about experiences you want to have.
You imagine watching your kids grow up.
You think about the people you love and the way you spend time together.
You imagine how you feel while you’re living that life.
That’s vision.
It’s the architecture of how you’re living and the experience you’re having while you live it.
The financial resources matter only to the extent that they support that architecture.
But somewhere along the way, it’s very easy to stop focusing on the life and start focusing on the number.
Twenty million.
Thirty million.
Fifty, a hundred million.
Or maybe for you it’s one million.
The particular number doesn’t matter.
What matters is that it becomes a fantasy idea of what’s finally going to make everything okay.
And the number was never going to be enough.
This is why so much of what we do inside Inner Matrix Systems starts with the pyramid going the right direction.
Not upside down.
You don’t start at the top with the financial outcome, the title, the business benchmark, or some other external mark and assume that attaining it will somehow create the internal experience you want.
You build from the bottom up. Kate sketched this while I was recording this issue (her handwriting may be a tiny bit better than mine).
First: What is the experience of myself I want to have?
What emotions do I want to drive with?
What energy do I want to wake up to each day?
Happiness?
Joy?
Love?
Connection?
Faith?
Whatever those are for you, start there.
Because if you can’t manage your experience of yourself, fulfillment isn’t going to suddenly appear because the number in your bank account changed.
Then ask: Who are the people I want to spend my life with?
What relationships do I want to build and create?
What is the experience I want to have with those people?
How do I want to contribute?
What do I want my health to look like?
What do I actually want to spend my days doing?
Really design the way you’re living.
From there, everything outside of you becomes either a value-add toward creating and constructing that life or a value-negative that takes away from your ability to align with it.
Money can be an extraordinary value-add.
So can building a business.
So can pursuing ambitious goals.
So can achievement.
This isn’t an argument against any of those things.
It’s an argument for putting them in their proper place.
Here’s where I think a lot of successful people get caught.
As they acquire more resources, they never make the pivot to actually living the lifestyle they intended those resources to create.
They just keep going.
The business gets bigger, so the benchmark gets bigger.
The investment account grows, so the target grows.
They reach the mark, and instead of anchoring back into the reality of who they wanted to be and the way they wanted to live, they create another mark.
And another.
And another.
They continue sacrificing the life for the thing that was originally supposed to support the life.
That’s the inversion.
And there is no financial benchmark that is going to make your marriage okay.
There is no financial benchmark that is going to make your relationship with your children okay.
There is no financial benchmark that is going to eliminate your depression, anxiety, or overwhelm.
It fundamentally doesn’t work that way.
The solution is to take a pause and begin making alignment-based choices, decisions, and actions.
But you can only live an alignment-based life if you’ve predetermined what alignment actually means for you.
I still get caught here.
This isn’t something I figured out years ago and now execute perfectly.
One of the things we teach in our Power of Emotion curriculum is that emotions aren’t there to inform us about what’s happening.
They’re there to inform us about where we are.
So today, if I notice myself driving with anxiety, fear, or overwhelm, I pay attention.
Those emotions are my inner compass.
And when I stop and take stock, what I usually find is that my attention has gotten too focused on hitting an impact benchmark in the business or reaching an investment goal, achieving something that, at this point, may largely be arbitrary zeros.
And I realize how easy it is to get wrapped up in what it will mean if I don’t hit that goal.
What if this happens?
What if I lose that?
What if I don't get there?
My attention moves toward a benchmark, a goal, or the future—and away from the life I’m actually living.
That’s my cue to recenter.
What am I up to today?
How am I up to it?
Who am I being?
Am I showing up in a way that moves me toward the outcomes I care about while also allowing me to love my life today?
That last piece matters.
Because I’m not suggesting you stop pursuing outcomes.
I still have financial goals. I still have business goals. I still want to create extraordinary things.
The question is whether those outcomes are serving the life you intentionally chose...
Or whether your life has quietly become something you’re sacrificing in service of the outcomes.
A couple weeks back, in Issue 031 — Another Million Dollars Won’t Fix Your Marriage. But This Will , we talked about why changing the circumstances around a relationship doesn’t fix what needs to be tended within the relationship.
This is the same principle applied to the rest of your life.
Another million dollars won’t fix your marriage.
And another million dollars won’t fix you.
If the experience you’re looking for isn’t being created now, the next arbitrary benchmark isn't going to magically create it for you.
So put the pyramid back in the right direction.
Start with yourself.
Decide how you want to experience your life.
Decide who you want to be.
Decide which relationships matter.
Decide how you want to spend your time and how you want to contribute.
Then build the resources, businesses, wealth, opportunities, and achievements that support that life.
That’s alignment-based living.
The goal isn’t to become less ambitious.
It’s to make sure your ambition is building something you actually want to live inside of.
If this conversation resonated, I'd encourage you to go back to Issue 031 — Another Million Dollars Won’t Fix Your Marriage. But This Will, where we explored the other side of this same principle: why external circumstances amplify what’s already happening inside a relationship rather than fixing the foundation.
You may also want to revisit Issue 026 — The Exhaustion Myth, where we explored another version of this inside-out principle: why optimization works differently when we begin with the state we’re bringing to our lives.
And as always, you can find The Connection Fix on the Blog and The Connection Fix Podcast.
Leverage whichever format works best for you.
Before I wrap...
What number are you telling yourself will finally be enough?
And more importantly:
What do you believe that number is going to give you that you’re not giving yourself permission to experience today?
Because you can keep moving the mark.
There will always be another number.
But the number was never the vision.
Your life was.
More soon.
Have a great rest of your day, and I’ll look forward to connecting again next week.
Joey