The day I became a millionaire was one of the worst days of my life.

I know how ridiculous that sounds.

Most people spend their lives believing money is the finish line. I did too. Then I crossed it, and everything I had spent years chasing suddenly felt empty.

Writing this took more courage than I expected. But if I’m going to encourage other people to open up about their struggles, I’d be a hypocrite if I kept mine hidden.

So settle in. Maybe grab a box of tissues.

It’s about to get deep.

Those who know me know I’m an open book. I’ve never been very good at pretending everything is fine when it isn’t.

Social media is filled with people flexing their cars, houses, expensive gear and collections of pointless plastic crap. Meanwhile, I guarantee there are people living in grass huts in faraway villages who are happier than most of us will ever be.

They don’t know who the Kardashians are. They don’t have CNN or Fox News screaming at them. They aren’t constantly being told what to buy, who to hate or what success is supposed to look like.

Somewhere along the way, we became so disconnected that showing kindness to a stranger is now considered awkward. Strike up a conversation with someone in public and you might have a better chance of getting maced than meeting another kind human being.

I bought into the same bullshit.

When I became a millionaire, I thought I had made it. Instead, it marked the beginning of a mental-health spiral that nearly destroyed me.

All I could think about was losing everything.

I bought plenty of dumb shit. Boats. A big house on the water. Expensive fly-fishing gear. Things I thought would prove I was successful, both to myself and to everyone watching.

None of it made me happy.

Then one day, I donated $5,000 to a GoFundMe for a child battling cancer.

For the first time in a long time, I felt something real.

That moment changed me. I believe God spoke to me through it. Not with a voice from the clouds, but through the peace I felt after using money to help another human being instead of using it to impress people.

Over time, I began to understand that the money I was terrified of losing was just paper. Paper we trade for more things to store, insure, clean, maintain and eventually throw away.

More crap designed to convince strangers that we’ve succeeded in a world where success is measured by how much stuff you can accumulate before you die.

For the last four years, I’ve fought with myself over what my purpose really is.

It took me a long time to realize it couldn’t be measured in paper with dead presidents printed on it.

There I was, contemplating whether I even wanted to continue living because I felt absolutely no purpose.

I felt like a lost soul. Just another person standing on a spinning ball of dirt in a universe so massive we can’t begin to understand what lies beyond it.

Everyday life became filled with existential dread.

Why am I here, God?

Why did my wife and children get to enjoy everything I had built while I struggled to drag myself out of bed?

I counted the hours until I could drown the confusion with alcohol. I made random Amazon purchases at three in the morning, convincing myself that another $1,000 fly reel might fill whatever was missing inside me.

It never did.

So please, do not envy the rich.

Envy the wealthy.

Envy the man putting in overtime so he can buy his child a new pair of shoes or keep the mortgage paid.

Envy the single mother who has no idea how she will keep a roof over her children’s heads and still find a way to put Christmas presents under the tree.

Envy the people in faraway places who haven’t been brainwashed into believing they need the newest shoes, phone, truck or piece of overpriced gear to matter.

A healthy mind is wealth.

A family that loves one another is wealth.

A job that gives you purpose is wealth.

Real friendships are wealth.

Being able to look at yourself in the mirror and recognize the person staring back at you is wealth.

Tonight, I’m sitting in my office. I can hear my daughter laughing upstairs. My son’s and my relationship has never been stronger. My wife is asleep down the hall after following her dream of becoming a nurse practitioner, regardless of whether our financial situation required her to work.

My workshop sits twenty feet from my back door.

It is one of the few places where I feel a clear sense of purpose.

Some days, my work feels mundane. I wrap guides onto pieces of carbon fiber. I sand grips. I repeat the same motions over and over again.

But then I think about the hands that will someday hold what I’ve made.

I think about the person who will feel the sudden pull of the right fish taking their fly for the first time.

I think about the memories that rod might help create. Memories shared with people they love and who love them back.

Maybe that is my purpose.

Not the rod itself, but the stories it becomes part of.

So before you scroll any farther, do me one favor.

Ask yourself one honest question:

Are you actually happy?

Not successful.

Not comfortable.

Not admired.

Happy.

When your funeral comes, will there be only a handful of family members crying over your absence before fighting over what you left behind?

Or will the room be filled with people whose lives you touched?

People who stood beside you through the beautiful and ugly parts of being human?

People who will keep your memory alive through stories about the time you helped them, loved them, made them laugh or simply stayed when everyone else walked away?

What song will they play when they lower you six feet into the same spinning ball of dirt we all share?

Stop for a moment.

You may be in your early twenties or your late eighties. The truth is, none of us knows how the story ends.

Life is a book, and you have no idea how many pages are left.

Maybe most of them are still resting beneath your right thumb, waiting to be written.

Or maybe you’re barely holding onto the final pages, hoping something beautiful happens before the author closes the cover.

You simply don’t know.

This is the most honest I have ever been, and I’m sharing it with the world.

So sit down. Take a breath. Ask yourself:

Am I making memories with the people I love?

Am I putting energy into things that make my heart feel full?

Or am I climbing a ladder just so strangers will think I’m successful?

Am I living, or am I simply completing tasks until another day disappears?

Maybe you feel like you don’t have a choice.

Maybe you put your dreams aside because your children need full stomachs, a safe home and the feeling of being loved.

I envy you.

I truly do.

That struggle may feel unbearable at times, but it also gives you something money cannot buy: a reason to keep showing up.

You care about someone more than you care about yourself.

You may not realize it, but that gives you more power than you think.

Your presence might mean everything to another person.

They may never understand the battles you fought just to give them a fighting chance. They may never know how many nights you stared at the ceiling wondering how you would make it through another day.

But you did.

And this is the part that determines whether you live on through stories and memories or become another name carved into a tombstone:

No matter what you do for a living, no matter how much money sits in your bank account or your 401(k), take the time to show the people around you that you did it for them.

Selflessly.

Yes, struggling is hard.

Sometimes it is shitty as hell.

But maybe the struggle is part of your story.

Maybe it is the book you have been writing, one exhausted page at a time, since the day you joined the rest of us on this planet.

Struggle can be beautiful too.

It can shape you. Humble you. Strip away the lies you believed about yourself. It can show you what matters when everything that doesn’t matter finally falls apart.

There isn’t much separating the wealthy person from the person you see in the mirror.

We breathe the same air.

We feel pain, fear, love and loss.

We even sit on the same damn toilets.

The hard part is figuring out what wealth means to you.

Look into that mirror and ask yourself again:

Am I truly happy?

If your answer is, “Yes, but…” then you have already accomplished more than billions of people who lived before you.

Now turn those “buts” into “ands.”

I am happy, and I’m still growing.

I am happy, and I’m still healing.

I am happy, and I’m still figuring things out.

I am happy, and my life is not perfect.

That is more powerful than a fat 401(k), a giant house, an expensive car or a collection of pointless crap society has decided represents success.

I’ll leave you with this.

As cheesy as some people may think it is, The Notebook holds a special place in my heart. So does Big Fish. Both stories understand something most of us spend our entire lives trying to learn:

Love and stories are what remain after everything else disappears.

One of my favorite lines from The Notebook is about being an ordinary man who lived an ordinary life, left no monuments behind and would someday be forgotten, but still considered himself successful because he had loved another person with his entire heart and soul.

Big Fish asks us to consider whether thinking about death might actually help us live. If we remembered that everything ends, maybe we would understand that most of the things frightening us today are things we can survive.

And then there is the idea that a man tells his stories so many times that he eventually becomes those stories. They live on after him, and through them, he becomes immortal.

That is the kind of wealth I want.

So go ahead.

Make mistakes.

Make good choices.

Leave the house and make memories.

Fall in love.

Get your heart broken.

Laugh until you can’t breathe.

Cry when something hurts.

Just feel something.

Then let those feelings guide you toward a life that serves more than yourself.

Don’t worry so much about whether you will be paid back.

The payment may never arrive in dollars.

It may come through the people whose lives you touched.

The children who remember you showing up.

The stranger who didn’t give up because of something you said.

The friends who tell stories about you long after you’re gone.

The people you loved and helped along the same uncertain path we are all walking.

If you made it this far, thank you.

I hope these words made you stop and think about what is truly important. More than that, I hope they gave you the strength to see something valuable in yourself.

Maybe you have no idea how important you are.

Maybe you feel like you’re failing.

Maybe you’re simply exhausted from carrying a life nobody else fully understands.

But you’re still here.

And that might mean more to the people around you than you will ever know.

Knowing that something I wrote might help even one person brings peace to my mind.

I will continue writing my damn heart out for as long as this strange brain of mine feels the need to, even if the words never reach another soul.

Because for me, telling the truth, loving people and leaving behind stories that might help someone else find their way…

That is true wealth.