PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — It’s easy to get caught up in always reaching for more — a higher job title, bigger salary, or checking off the boxes of what you think you’re supposed to achieve in life. No matter how much you’ve accomplished, it can feel like it’s never enough.
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Financial wellness expert Manisha Thakor felt that way until she hit a crisis point.
“As I approached age 50, I completely face-planted,” Thakor said. “I had a very serious health incident for the second time … And while on bed rest, I had plenty of time to reflect. I realized I had spent my entire adult life trapped on the 24/7 hamster wheel of hustle culture. And my whole adult life had been passed as a human doing instead of a human being.”
Thakor says studies show that beyond a certain salary level that allows you to live comfortably, earning more money does not equate to more happiness. Yet, many people get stuck in believing they need to earn and achieve more.
She spent two years researching this phenomenon and what draws us into what she calls “the cult of never enough.” Her findings led her to write “MoneyZen: The Secret to Finding Your ‘Enough.’"
“Signals that you might be stuck in the cult of never enough,” she said, “include this feeling that no matter how much you earn, how many accomplishments you achieve, how much praise you receive, it just doesn't feel like it's ever enough, because you don't feel like you're ever enough.”
She found four core factors that drive us into this mindset: “small T traumas,” — things from childhood that we might think of as small but actually have long-term impacts — cultural norms, societal influences, and evolutionary biological factors.
“The only way to be able to move on to the steps of shedding the mindset is to first dive in and understand which of those factors is affecting you and why,” Thakor said.
She created a quiz to help people get started and find out if they’re part of “the cult of never enough.”
Thakor spoke in detail about the four contributing factors and how to break out of the “never enough” mindset on KYW Newsradio In Depth. Listen to the full conversation here.