The Greatest Paradox of Becoming Wealthy

Lukas Schwekendiek
4 min readNov 6, 2024

Socrates once said: “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”

He went around talking to experts of all professions, asking them questions that they ought to know as a professional but could not answer.

When he then confronted them about the fact that they could not answer such a simple question they became arrogant, defensive and did not accept that they had no idea, which sprung forth his quote above.

The wealthy follows a similar premise, for they often understand that money is not the answer.

They act like they are happy in the public eye, because it sells, but often still have thousands of struggles on their own.

And while they know this, we believe that, due to their wealth, they must be happy. We are like the professional too arrogant to see the truth.

Take a look at the suicide and depression statistics among the wealthy and studies regarding their happiness and you will see that money cannot be a cause for happiness, else those statistics would be vastly different.

And the studies that have been done by researchers for decades support this point, including the very discussed Princeton study in 2010 that found well-being only to rise until an income point of about $86,000.

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Lukas Schwekendiek
Lukas Schwekendiek

Written by Lukas Schwekendiek

Life Coach, Speaker, Writer. Published on TIME, Inc & Huffington Post. Coaching available again! Email: Lukas.schwekendiek@gmail.com with the word "Coaching"

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