You look at your bank account and a tired smile creeps to your lips. The amount used to be small but now it has grown so big. Your smiles and your eyes grow tired in trying to count how much you have. Your office has become your own kingdom where people defer to you and give you the respect you deserve. You deserve it, don't you? You have worked so hard in achieving what you now have.

Yet, you might wake up one day and realize that the people around you see only the professional, the boss, the leader, and the rich man in you. Why don't they see the real you? But when you seek yourself for who you truly are, what would you find? Who are you really? What is your purpose? Perhaps when you ask these questions, you might not have to wonder why people could not see who you truly are.

Perhaps in your drive to achieve everything you want, you have forgotten who you are.

Wealth and success are good things. They enable you to gain fame, power, and even prestige. They are means to fulfillment but not the fulfillment themselves. If the means have become the actual source of fulfillment, then something has gone wrong along the process.

If a person becomes obsessed with wealth and success, he will sacrifice other areas of his life such as life, family, friends, and even loved ones. He becomes an absentee lover, father, and family member, and he starts losing out on the simple joys of life. Routine, especially a very busy one, can make a person function like a robot.

Wealth and success can be used to maximize purpose, not diminish it.

Take a look at your situation. You may have achieved the zenith of your career and are enjoying a very good salary level. But if you knew your purpose, you would learn how to use your wealth and your success in helping other people and ensuring that your fulfillment is in the long term and not only in the short term.

While there are some people who are so puritan that they consider wealth and success as inimical to finding purpose in life, you have the choice not to take such an extreme position. Rather, you just have to balance the pursuit of wealth and success, with that of your purpose. If you knew your purpose, you would not have to worry about your success competing with your own pursuit of purpose in your life.