What do you consider to be the ultimate return on investment? It differs from person to person, and as Gee Bryant is telling us, the ultimate return on investment is happiness and good physical and mental well-being. Now, Gee is not discrediting all the other returns, he is expressing his views on it.
As an influence in the digital media industry, a fitness expert and an entrepreneur, Gee has made numerous investments over the years, and he has realized that it’s not just about building wealth and growing your business, but also about the well-being that comes along. He says that if you’re wealthy and not healthy, your investments haven’t truly paid off.
Bryant also mentions that wealth is not a measure of happiness. If you think being wealthy is the rescue to all your problems, your outlook might be fragile for anchoring yourself in the industry for a long time. So, what’s Gee’s argument on happiness as the ultimate return on investment?
Let’s paint a picture here; you keep working on your goals without giving a thought about your mental and physical well-being. According to Gee, working tenaciously on your goals might bring results too, however it can exhaust one’s mind and energy after some time and might affect productivity and rigour to peddle ahead. It is not wrong if you want to have the best of everything globally, but does that mean you compromise your health?
“The ultimate measure of success is the fulfilment and not money. You should love what you do enough but don’t fail to ignore your happiness and health amidst the hustle of the work.” Gee stresses the importance of a happy life over a wealthy life.
Not to say that wealth isn’t good to have, but don’t peg your life on materialism. Gee also specifies that people who are building their dreams often fail to acknowledge the support of people around them. If you possess a roadmap to success that’s just a remarkable one, you must also leverage its advantages by bringing good to people around you. Gee takes pride in celebrating his philanthropic endeavours by offering free sessions to people and making donations in different areas of society, which he calls, “adorning aims with happiness.”
To further explain this, Bryant mentions the common assumption that pleasure is happiness. Most people are lost in momentary pleasure and mistake that for happiness. Bryant clarifies that pleasure is short-lived; you will feel relieved or even excited for a short while, and then it’ll go away, leaving a void that you’ll try to fill with more material items.
To add to this, Bryant says that happiness grants you the freedom to decide what you want to achieve each day. Small ordinary things can bring you the contentment you dream of, and instead of dreaming, you should try ceasing it.
The ultimate payoff that all your efforts in life can grant you is true happiness in what you’ve built, who you’ve become and where you’re going.