Excerpt from The book  The Hero with a Million Dollars

Return to the Ordinary World

Having a million dollars as an outcome can be a great boon for you and your family. When the financial rewards are aligned with your values you have abundance. Even then, having a million dollars is usually not what you would expect. In fact, many people with high levels of financial wealth spend more effort worrying about protecting their money than enjoying it. They are stressed and unhappy. Others reach the million dollar mark with very little fanfare. They look at their portfolio and notice their net worth is over $1,000,000. Occasionally, we even hear anecdotal stories about the day I reached a million dollar net worth that are not ceremonies but rather just business as usual. Joy rarely comes from reaching a financial milestone but rather in the fulfillment you receive in reaching it with your values intact and your goals in?line with your purpose.

Money can be a benchmark. A measuring stick that compares your success to others. If that is all it is however, the frustration you may feel will unlikely end. There will always be someone with more capital. Even if you manage to reach the pinnacle, there will always be a pack of eager, money?motivated people striving to replace you. Instead, use money as a tool for good or a weapon for positive change. As we learned earlier, money is simply a measure of value. Use the money you earn to assert and support your values.
If you think I’ll quit my job when I have a million dollars why wait? Follow your bliss and you will never work another day in your life.

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Or put another way…

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper,

he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,

or Beethoven played music,

or Shakespeare wrote poetry.

He should sweep streets so well that all

the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say,

here lived a great streetsweeper

who did his job well.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

From what we have learned so far it is not surprising that the word vocation comes from the Latin word for voice (vocare or “to call”). Your vocation is your personal call to adventure and it comes from within.

When you adopt the habits of thrift and discipline while pursuing your vocation, you can become rich. Millions have before you and many are becoming rich with this exact strategy right now. It is when you add the elixir of charity and contribution that you become wealthy.

The Greatest Reward

The hero’s greatest reward and what helps make every life worthwhile is contribution. Within each one of us is the need to leverage the unique talents we are born with and skills we develop in the short time we have on this planet to serve others. We must contribute. We must give. Only when we contribute to our family, community, country and world do we expand ourselves and grow.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

—Eleanor Roosevelt

One of the most important vehicles for our contribution is charity. Helping those who need it. For some people there is a tendency to put off charity until they’ve ‘made it’, until they have reached a certain level of success. Unlike some of the other habits that delay our gratification, charity gives us instant feedback.
Charity enriches us and the community the second we engage in it and as with all habits that serve you, start where you are.

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one.

—Mother Teresa