Does accumulation trump genuine achievement?
Is accumulation the most important goal/mission of your life. Money and net worth, together with financial health, are critically important life variables. Many FPs either neglect, avoid and/or are unaware of their inner life. Creating blend and balance is the greatest achievement. Having ‘enough’ money, warm shelter, peace of mind, fulfilling relationships, and passions are truly the ‘stuff’ of life.
A successful career in the financial services industry can have a dramatic impact on your value system, and you may not even be aware of who you have become. Money has the potential to dramatically alter value, self and belief structures. The individual may be blinded by money and subsequently values must be re-configured. In my practice, I have seen first-hand how this value-system warping results in many FPs developing a callousness that ultimately damages their psyche and their core sense of self.
My patients often do not even comprehend the impact, because it is a gradual transformation, often driven by incremental change. As time wears on and the environments wears them down, their exploits (i.e., sexual conquests, alcoholism, substance abuse, insider trading) slowly degenerate with each twisted episode a bit more outrageous than the last.
They are drawn into this constant game of one-upmanship, where fleeting victories are short-lived and shallow, often not based on true, tangible value, but rather on comparisons to others.
When they become accustomed to always comparing everything relative to what someone else has or does, they can lose sight of how they value things and lose sight of what is important for their core sense of self.
They tend to look down on frugality. Many become incredibly self-indulgent, and obsessed with brands, trophies, and status symbols. They judge others by labels, assign categories, assume superiority, and they can get to a point where they take everyone’s financial inventory.
They become so warped that they feel they are worthless unless their production (however it’s measured) is soaring. They fantasize themselves as “moneyed people,” they may start to collect art or other extravagant items, and make irresponsible business decisions and retail purchases. They often become pathologically competitive with their colleagues and contemporaries.
They may even get into that “gambler’s head” and start to brag subtly, or not so subtly, about how much money they have lost or made. Since many FPs usually do not come from affluent backgrounds, an interesting trend in the financial services industry, they are all that more impressionable and easily seduced. They start to identify with their wealthy clients, and they can fawn over them and denigrate themselves, orchestrating petty tactics all geared to generate business.
There is, as I have found, a fine line between servility and Machiavellian teachings.