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Billionaires on antidepressants
Unhappy Founders
Chetan Bhagat went to IIT Delhi, where some of the biggest Indian tech companies were created by his friends and acquaintances, and he later ran a podcast series called Deep Talk interviewing founders and entrepreneurs. A lot of them were not happy, and some were miserable and negative. In San Francisco, the talk is about who raised money and who sold a company, and in Mumbai it is about who signed or funded a film.
The Billion-Dollar Prize
From childhood these founders knew the prize was more money. Then they reached a billion and ended up on antidepressants, while people living in slums were partying on. The game is not that whoever has the biggest sand pile in the end wins.
What Fills The Gap
Fame and money sit in the same category of external validation, and both create an emptiness that more of them does not fill. What fills it is real relationships: five friends who genuinely care. The love of strangers who enjoyed the entertainment is fleeting, and a flop movie is enough for it to turn away.
Why does money stop satisfying so quickly?
Psychologists Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell described the hedonic treadmill in 1971, the tendency of people to return to a baseline level of happiness after good or bad events. A 1978 study by Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman compared lottery winners with a control group and found the winners were not significantly happier. Gains become the new normal, which is why the same lift needs a bigger gain next time.
Why do close relationships outweigh fame?
The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938 and has followed its participants and their families for more than eighty years. Directors Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz have reported that the participants most satisfied with their relationships at fifty were the healthiest at eighty. Fame and wealth did not predict well-being in the same way.
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