Yes, you read that right. I’m here to break the bad news to you. You aren’t ever going to make enough money! You simply can’t ever make enough money. It’s the trap of entrepreneurship. But understanding the reasons for it, and knowing the alternative to what you should pursue, can help spare you a lot of time, stress and chasing.

You’ll never make enough money because, as you climb the mountain of financial success, you can see farther and farther. And what you see is that there are many other mountains that are way taller, and people are climbing on them. So, no matter how good a job you do at getting to the top of the mountain, you will still feel as though you haven’t reached the top, and you may just drive yourself crazy by continuously trying to reach the highest summit.

Here are some of the reasons why you aren’t ever going to make enough money:

Keeping up with the Joneses. This is probably the biggest problem that people face when it comes to financial issues. For every step of the ladder that you climb, you find there are people a step ahead. So you will continuously try to keep up and be more like them. It’s like a cat chasing its tail: you will keep going, but never feel like you have been successful at reaching what you are after.
Your odds are 7 billion to one. The planet’s population recently hit 7 billion people. Sure, you want to be the richest person in the world. But let’s be honest, there is only one richest person in the world, so out of 7 billion people you have a lot of competition to be number one. There is always going to be someone more successful and someone with a lot more money.

More financial success equals more financial stress. If you think about it, you can probably relate to this scenario right now, no matter where you are financially. The more you make, the more you buy, which means the more stuff you need to maintain. It becomes a circular trap. If you make more, you will need to maintain more, which will amount to a whole lot of stress and pressure to keep making more.

You have probably read a lot of articles in the past that pump you up to believe that, when it comes to financial success, the sky is the limit. That’s because the author probably knows it is what you want to hear. But the truth of the matter, after going over the reasons above of why it’s not possible, is that it’s a pursuit you should stop focusing so much on. You will get more enjoyment out of life when you take the focus off of making ‘enough’ money and put it on what you should be pursuing, which is happiness.

Being happy is about being content and satisfied. When you have that, you will not have the stress and the feeling that you are a rat on a wheel, just running and running, never reaching that financial destination you were after. Happiness comes from within, and the more you are grateful for what you have, and derive contentment and enjoyment from it, the more good things will come to you. So set your sites on the pursuit of happiness, rather than on making enough money. And don’t just say you want happiness. Define it, by thinking about what elements bring it to you. Know what it is, so that you can seek it out, recognize it, and be grateful once you have attained it.

Like Aristotle once said, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”