The Three Keys to Living a Happy Life

Daniel Crosby explains why true wealth is about far more than money.

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If you were dealing with, uh, a group of, say, twenty-five to thirty-five-year-olds, and you only had three minutes, and you had to deliver one message from all of your learnings, what would it be?

My last book was called “The Soul of Wealth,” and this was all lessons on money and meaning and happiness because, the US will turn 250 years old this year, uh, when this country was founded, 89% of the world lived in poverty 250 years ago, $2 or less a day, 250 years ago. Today, that number is under 10%. It’s this incredible explosion of wealth, and yet we’re sadder, we’re more depressed, we’re more isolated, more suicidal.

And so the, the question I tried to answer was: How is it that we’ve had this explosion of material prosperity and it hasn’t translated to anything that matters in life? And the three things that I walked away with, that, that are sort of the hallmarks of a good life are believing, belonging, and becoming.

Okay? So people who have a good life, they believe in something. They have a philosophy, they have a moral framework, they have some map for making sense of the world, some sort of personal credo that tells them what right and wrong looks like. That’s important, right? You need to, you need to believe in something.

Belonging is the most important. You need a tribe. You need to give love, and you need to receive love, and you need to prioritize relationships. And then becoming, you need a bright sense of who you could be one day, and this is true for retirees as well, right? You need something to aspire to. Could be, you know, running a faster mile time, getting better at guitar, making more money, leveling up at work, being a better spouse.

A million things, right? But we need a tribe, we need a, a personal belief system, and we need to be on a path to somewhere better. And that’s what I would tell them. I would say, “Get those three things and you’re set.”