There Are a Lot of Very Successful, Very Miserable People Out There

You may envy them but they also may envy you.

Link That Made Me Think

There Are a Lot of Very Successful, Very Miserable People Out There by Whitney Goodman, LMFT.

These people hate each other.

My closest guy friend is gorgeous. Alpha male, silver fox, effortlessly confident. He owns multiple businesses. He runs triathlons. He flies planes.

He’s THAT guy.

I once discovered Billy Joel was playing at the new stadium in Las Vegas and asked my buddy if he wanted to go.

The next thing I knew, he’d purchased second-row tickets for $1500 each.

As I said, he’s THAT guy.

Yet nobody I know embodies the pain of having it all and not being happy.

He had an abusive childhood which impacted his view of relationships.

He had kids with two gorgeous women who were both unfaithful alcoholics.

He is happily engaged now but didn’t get his act together until he was 59.

If you ask him directly: everyone he knows is rich and unhappy.

This isn’t my projection. This is what he said to me after our weekend in Vegas, eating steak, playing golf, and shooting guns.

“Evan, you’re the only guy I could have gone to Vegas with. Every other man I know, the moment they got here, would have asked where the escorts were.”

Seriously, I did this.

I am not sharing this to brag about being loyal to my wife; fidelity is the basic job description of being a husband.

If anything, I’m sharing this to illustrate that the top .01% often has extraordinary wealth - and little else. No close friends. No core values. Just consumption for the sake of consumption. Doing what feels good in the moment without thinking of consequences. Never hearing the word no.

These are people who think rules don’t apply to them. They are generally seen as role models. Politicians. Celebrities. Tech founders. Kardashians.