Do You Really Want to Be a Billionaire… or Do You Just Want Enough?
Updated: Oct 4
By QueenB.Divine
Notice this. Everybody wants to be a millionaire, a billionaire, a trillionaire. We’re supposed to wake up ready to grind, build, scale, make more, own more and become some financial creature with a whole bunch of zeros behind our name. But I was sitting here thinking—and I’ve got to be honest, I’ve had a little wobbly juice, so apparently my inner philosopher has decided to come out and play—what about just being rich enough to breathe? What about becoming an air-ionaire? Yeah, I made that up. Rich enough to wake up, fill your lungs with this divine, miraculous air none of us created, and actually have enough time, health and peace to notice that you’re alive.
Sometimes I look at my life and think, I want this, I want that, I want more money, I want to travel, I want security, I want comfort. But lately I’ve been asking myself a different question: Where did this want come from? Where was the seed planted? Because when I look back, I don’t think I always knew what I wanted. I knew what I had been programmed to want. A house. A car. Kids. A husband. Something respectable. Something that matched whatever my cultural beliefs, religious beliefs or family expectations told me a successful life was supposed to look like.
But let’s say you get everything you were programmed to want. You get the house, the car, the relationship, the money, the followers and whatever else you were told would make you complete. Then what? Do you sit down and say, “Wonderful. Life complete”? Probably not. Five minutes later we’ll be looking at somebody else’s kitchen thinking ours needs a freaking island.
That’s what fascinates me about being human. We are these never-ending stomachs of want. And I’m not even saying wanting is bad. Wanting can move us. Wanting can make us create. Wanting can take us places we never imagined. But I think there is a difference between wanting something because it belongs to your spirit and wanting something because it was advertised to you long enough that you started believing it belonged to you.
Sometimes I think we're a little like the technology we've created. We arrive with some basic programming, and then life starts adding updates. Education changes us. Experience changes us. Pain definitely changes us. Love changes us. Failure changes us. Age changes us. Conversation changes us. That’s one reason I keep saying the cure is the conversation. Sometimes I don’t even know what I think until I hear myself say it. I can sit down, start talking, record the thought and suddenly something that was floating around in my head has somewhere to live. Conversation can do that. It gives thoughts an address.
And today the thought sitting in my head is this: Why the hell do we all need to be billionaires?
Now, I’m not against money. Let me clear that up before somebody thinks QueenB.Divine wants everybody to move into the woods and start paying the hydro bill with acorns. I like money. Money has changed my life—not because I’ve always had a bunch of it, but because I’ve learned to understand it differently. Money creates options. Money can buy good food. Money can help you travel. Money can give you time. Money can help you leave situations you don’t belong in. Money can help you take care of yourself and sometimes help somebody else.
What I keep coming back to, though, is how much is enough? Not according to Instagram. Not according to some billionaire. Not according to your parents. Not according to your neighbour who suddenly bought something shiny and now you’re standing at the window questioning every financial decision you’ve made since 1997. How much is enough for you?
I don’t know if I actually want to be a billionaire. I want enough money to live the life I believe I was given. I want to go to Hawaii and actually enjoy Hawaii instead of spending the entire vacation calculating what every coconut just cost me in Canadian dollars. I want good food. I want to walk through the woods wearing something comfortable enough that my feet aren’t filing a complaint. I want to take care of my body. I want choices. I want independence. I want enough money that money doesn’t have to be the centre of every freaking decision I make.
And yes, mama didn’t raise no fool. If somebody wants to give me some extra money, I’m not running away screaming. I’m just questioning this idea that more automatically means better.
Because we are constantly being shown what we don’t have. Scroll. Somebody has a better house. Scroll. Somebody is travelling. Scroll. Somebody apparently made six figures while sleeping. Scroll. Somebody bought a car. Scroll. Somebody retired at 32. Meanwhile, you were having a perfectly good Tuesday until you picked up your phone, and now you’re wondering what the hell you’ve done with your life.
That’s what we have to watch. Wanting doesn’t always begin inside us anymore. Sometimes wanting is delivered to us. And if you never stop long enough to ask where that want came from, you can spend your entire life chasing somebody else’s definition of enough.
Someone will always have more. More money. A bigger house. More followers. More Bitcoin. More success. More whatever. If happiness requires eventually having more than everybody else, that is a race with no damn finish line.
Money has also taught me something else: your energy has value. Behind most money is somebody’s time, work, creativity, knowledge or effort. You traded a piece of your life for it somehow. That makes me increasingly careful about where my energy goes, because financial wealth isn’t the only wealth your energy can create. You can invest your energy into your health. Your marriage. Your friendships. Your creativity. Your peace. Your knowledge. Your spiritual life. Your relationship with yourself.
And here's the part that doesn’t show up on a financial statement: you can become financially richer while becoming bankrupt somewhere else. You can build an impressive bank account while your body is begging you to stop. You can chase success while your marriage slowly becomes two people passing each other in a hallway. You can build a huge online audience while becoming completely disconnected from yourself. So maybe the question isn’t only, “How much money am I making?” Maybe we also need to ask, “What is my life becoming while I’m making it?”
Creators know this feeling particularly well. You create. You record. You edit. You upload. You write. You post. You make thumbnails. You learn algorithms. You answer comments. You try again. And sometimes after all that work, the financial return is approximately enough to purchase half a grape. I don’t need everything I create to turn me into a millionaire, but I also don’t believe creativity should automatically mean working forever for nothing. My thoughts have value. My time has value. My creativity has value. Yours does too.
Money actually helped teach me something about self-love. How I feel about myself affects what I believe I’m allowed to have. If somewhere inside me I believe I’m worthless, how am I going to confidently build something valuable? That doesn’t mean repeating “I love myself” three times in the mirror is going to make money fall out of the ceiling. God, wouldn’t that be convenient. It means I had to start seeing my own time differently. My creativity differently. My body differently. My ideas differently. My energy differently. Myself differently.
And somehow, full freaking circle, I end up right back at self-love.
Self-love isn’t just standing in front of a mirror telling yourself you’re fabulous. Sometimes self-love is saying, “My life is worth more than endlessly proving that I’m successful.”
So maybe you really do want to be a billionaire. Fine. But before you start chasing it, ask yourself why. What do you believe the billion dollars will give you? Freedom? Security? Respect? Power? Peace? Love? Proof? And then ask yourself something even harder: Is there any part of that thing I can begin creating before I have the billion dollars?
Imagine spending forty years chasing money because you believed money would finally give you freedom, only to discover that you sacrificed every free moment getting there. That’s one hell of an expensive transaction.
I don’t want to wait until some imaginary financial finish line before I start living. I want to eat the good eggs now. Take the walk now. Talk to my husband now. Create now. Laugh now. Travel when I can. Rest sometimes. Build money. Build health. Build love. Build myself. And breathe the damn air.
So before you chase another dollar, ask yourself what you actually want. Not what your mother wanted for you. Not what your religion told you success should look like. Not what social media showed you this morning. Not what your boyfriend, girlfriend, sister, brother, neighbour or some stranger standing beside a rented Lamborghini says you should want. What do you want?
Maybe your version of enough is ten million dollars. Maybe it’s owning your home. Maybe it’s getting out of debt. Maybe it’s travelling twice a year. Maybe it’s working four days instead of seven. Maybe it’s being able to buy groceries without doing mathematics in aisle six. Maybe it’s growing vegetables and disappearing into the woods every weekend. Maybe it’s creating something nobody understands yet. Maybe it’s simply waking up without immediately feeling like you owe the entire world something.
Figure that out, because if you don't define enough, the world will happily define it for you. And the world’s definition seems to have a funny habit of getting more expensive every year.
I don’t know if I want to be a billionaire. I want enough. Enough money. Enough health. Enough love. Enough freedom. Enough curiosity. Enough time. Enough laughter. Enough good eggs. And enough awareness to occasionally stop chasing everything I don’t have and appreciate the ridiculous miracle happening right underneath my nose.
I’m breathing.
So are you.
Before you become a billionaire, trillionaire or gazillionaire, maybe become an air-ionaire first. Know what you want. Know why you want it. Build wealth, but don’t let the chase consume the human being you're supposedly building the wealth for. Your energy is valuable. Your time is valuable. Your life is valuable.
And you are enough.
I really freaking mean that, because I had to learn it too.
Self-love and self-care will get you there.
— QueenB.Divine
Notice This… Keep Going
If money, habits or the emotional side of spending has been on your mind, continue with ARE YOU BROKE? from the QueenB.Divine digital-read series.
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