Your Work Is Not Your Life

At the beginning of each year, my wife and I make a vision board. We spread magazines across the table, cut out images, words, places, moods, and possibilities. It’s about intention setting—a simple ritual that asks an important question: What kind of life do we want to move toward this year? Usually the board is filled with things that feel alive to us: mountains, rivers, trails, forests, travel, writing, freedom, health, love, and experiences. Pictures of the kinds of days we actually want to live.

This year, however, I decided to run a little experiment. I added a number to the board. A financial number. The amount of money I wanted to make this year. Harmless enough, right? After all, I’m 53 years old. Maybe it was time to get more serious about finances. Maybe this was maturity. Maybe this was wisdom. Maybe this was simply what responsible adults do. So I cut out the number and placed it there beside the mountains and sunsets.

Then the year began.

By April, my mental state had become a mess. What’s strange is that so many of the other things on the board were already happening. I was hiking, kayaking, skiing, mountain biking—living days many people would dream of. The lifestyle goals were unfolding all around me. But because I wasn’t “there yet” financially, none of it felt like enough. My mind had latched onto the number, and once the mind grabs hold of something, it can turn life into a tunnel. Suddenly there is only the target, only the gap, only what is missing.

I became obsessed. Yes, me too. I know the language of freedom. I’ve written books about not worshipping the system, about designing a life around what matters, about refusing to confuse success with status. And still, there I was—checking, measuring, thinking about work constantly, wondering how to make more, wondering why it wasn’t happening faster. Mornings became strategy sessions. Evenings became silent stress. It’s amazing how quickly the mind can recruit you into a life you never meant to live.

I stopped noticing the beauty already present in my life. I stopped feeling grateful for the things I once prayed for. I was surrounded by abundance and somehow feeling poor. Eventually, I hit a wall. Depression crept in. Anxiety shot through the roof. I reached that familiar inner breaking point where something inside you finally says, I can’t keep doing this anymore.

And then, in the middle of that low moment, clarity arrived. Simple and undeniable.

Your work is not your life.

THIS is your life.

This breath. This morning light on the floor. This hike. This conversation. This body that still moves. This person beside you. This chance to be here at all.

I saw how far I had drifted. I thought about how many people live this way all the time—believing life is somewhere on the other side of achievement. Somewhere after the next raise, next sale, next number, next milestone. And I thought about what a hypocrite I’d become.

Money is a tool. Lifestyle is the point. Freedom is the point. Peace is the point. Presence is the point.

I had stopped living in alignment with my own book, I Don’t Want To Grow Up. So I let the number go. I took “my life is work” off the throne and replaced it with a much truer sentence: THIS is my life.

Almost immediately, everything changed. I noticed the beauty around me again. I felt love again. I enjoyed simple things again. My nervous system calmed down. My mind softened. Ironically, my income has actually increased since that shift, but that’s not the real victory.

The real victory is that my quality of life returned. My peace of mind returned. My joy returned. Sometimes chasing money creates less of it. Sometimes relaxing into alignment creates more. And sometimes the wisest teacher is the version of yourself who already knew better.

Sometimes the best thing to do is read your own books.