Modern life is a disease. You want to succeed, so why do you always feel behind? You want to be useful, so why do you feel unnoticed? The problem is not yours. Modern life is like a Trojan horse that arrives as a gift and then takes over everything from the inside. I've lived as a monk, as a Wall Street banker, as a CEO, and I've found the same pattern everywhere. There are four symptoms, but one of them is likely to rule your life or even ruin it. So, by the end of this video, you will learn about all four symptoms and what to do about each of them. Let's begin.

The hardest thing about modern life is that everyone wants to make your life easier. We have an endless news feed, endless calories, endless content, but somehow we become the ones being consumed. I will give my own example. In my youth, I had a clear vision of success. I leave Penn Station in New York, wearing an impeccable suit, and I enter the marble lobby of a leading investment bank. And I achieved this. You know, it was the right suit, the right hall. But today, all I remember is sitting at a desk for 18 hours, eating takeout, staring at numbers at 1 a.m., sleeping 4-5 hours, and so on every day. I rarely saw my friends. I rarely saw the sun. And therein lies the irony of modern life. We are surrounded by comfort, but we feel restless. We are running faster than ever, but we still feel like we are lagging behind. We are connected, but we feel alone. We ask ourselves if everything we do matters. These are four symptoms that I see everywhere I go: Restlessness, feeling left behind, loneliness, invisibility. The real irony of modern life is that a dream and an illness look the same. And to understand why this is happening, we must start with these symptoms and understand the root causes of each of them from within.

The first symptom is our feeling of restlessness and anxiety. We all live in this culture of constant rush and exhaustion. No one believes that we need to stop or at least slow down. In 2018, Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton conducted a study involving over 2,000 people. Each of them had a fortune of at least a million dollars. Lucky ones. Many of them had even much more. And he asked each of them two questions: How happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? And how much more money do you need to raise your happiness level to 10? The second question received the most interesting answer. The person with 1 million said she only needed 3 million to reach 10 happiness points. But the man with 3 million wanted 10 million. And the person with 10 million wanted 30. Regardless of wealth level, everyone wanted about three times as much. So it's never about the number itself. Wherever you are, there will always be a larger number.

About a month ago, I was talking to a 24-year-old guy and asked him, "What do you want to be?" His answer was: "Rich." This answer really surprised me. Because I told him, "You know, being rich is not a profession." But it's interesting that this is precisely the main goal of many people. First chase the numbers, and then hope that the meaning will somehow appear later. Our careers, our companies, our relationships—we all do it. We don't know how to be happy with what we have or with those around us. We feel anxious when we don't know the reason behind our actions. So, here's what to do: Take what you are chasing now. And ask yourself, "What was this supposed to give you?" What is the purpose behind this number? Is this necessary to retire and not work? Is this a security issue? Does it relate to a certain lifestyle you dream of? Is this an opportunity to give your family and children something you didn't have? These are great reasons, and when you have that clarity, you become calmer.

But there is another reason why money can make us anxious: When you don't know exactly what your financial situation looks like. I had this problem. My finances were scattered everywhere: Old retirement accounts, bank cards, investments, credit cards. At no point did I have a clear picture of my monthly expenses, balance, or even net worth. So my accountant recommended Monarch. I started using this program and was delighted. Monarch has consolidated my bank accounts, investments, cards, and loans into one easy-to-understand dashboard. So instead of switching between 10 different apps, I see the full financial picture in one place. This gives me real zen. If you know what you have, how much you spend, and what you owe, the financial fog begins to clear. And this is important, because clarity breeds prudence. Monarch is private and ad-free, connects to over 13,000 institutions, so you can have a clear overview of your accounts, expenses, assets, and financial goals.

Now let's move on to the second symptom—the feeling that you are being left behind. In 2019, an Instagram research team found that their app worsens body image issues in one in three teenage girls. In 2020, Instagram also found that these teens are particularly vulnerable to using the app for rewards, and have a hard time stopping even when they want to. So what did Instagram do? Almost nothing. The company did not fundamentally change the product or even publicly disclose the results until they were leaked in 2021 thanks to a whistleblower. The problem was that teenage girls with body image issues constantly saw ideal figures. But this is a competition that these teenagers could never win. To be ahead of all the living is a crazy state. And, like those teenagers, there is no version of your life or mine where no one looks or does better than us. This is a game we can never win.

So we tell ourselves stories about falling behind because we're not good enough. I did this for many years. My father and aunts constantly humiliated me when I was little. They didn't like the way I wore glasses, I was too skinny, they made fun of my nose. So I grew up with serious body image issues. But you know what? My nose and I are fine. And you're fine too. You are neither falling behind nor getting ahead. You are exactly where you need to be. This is what I realized later. We forget that success requires effort, and yes, you have to run fast. But the people ahead of you know that there are those ahead of them. Someone faster or smarter will always find someone even faster and smarter. That's how life is. You didn't choose who to compare yourself to, just like I didn't choose my nose. I've had it since birth. This is what you inherited.

Let's move on to the third symptom—feeling lonely. When I was younger, I started a band with two friends, and we played hundreds of shows in the US, even around the world, but what we looked forward to the most was what happened after the show. We would stay up until three or four in the morning and just talk. We talked about music, poetry, neuroscience, astronomy, religion, atheism—questions none of us had the answers to. There was no audience there. Just us and our stories. And those conversations are still what I miss the most from the band days. This is what modern life takes from us. It confuses us. There is nothing social about social media. It's just media platforms and algorithms that want you to stay on them so they can show you ads. In fact, social media makes you antisocial in many ways. Look around. In any elevator, in any queue, at the train station or at the ticket office—you will see that everyone has their heads down. They're just looking at their phones. We are physically present, but our minds live elsewhere, in that digital world. But later we realize that a thousand followers won't replace that one person you need to sit next to you when you're hurting.

And now the fourth symptom, familiar to each of us. It's almost existential—the feeling that you're not seen or appreciated. We all want to be needed. We all want to know that something has changed because we were here. You want your boss to appreciate your work. You want your partner to pay attention to you. You want your video or post to attract attention. You want your videos to go viral. It's all about our desire to be noticed. We all want to matter. And this is where AI causes the deepest fear. For decades, we've worked to develop our intelligence and expertise to stand out, right? To get noticed. But now AI can perform many of the skills we spent years learning, cheaper, faster, without getting tired, and it doesn't care if it's seen. It doesn't need recognition. So what happens to us when the skills we spent years developing suddenly become a commodity? Have we now become just consumables? Will our value be overvalued in the market? No one knows the answers to these questions yet. I think no one will know for the next 5 years. But that's why it feels a little more personal and existential than before. Because AI is an amplifier. So there you have it, the four symptoms: feeling restless, falling behind, lonely, and unnoticed.

What is the deep root cause of all this? There are many reasons, but one of the main ones, in my opinion, is that we tend to replace the real hero with a stand-in. And that's the problem. If you measure the wrong metric, you encourage the wrong behavior. There is a principle called Goodhart's Law. When a metric itself becomes a target for optimization, it ceases to be a good metric. Our modern life is full of such false indicators. Money is a substitute for security and freedom. A position is a substitute for being taken seriously. A company can be a surrogate for creating something that will outlive you. Of course, these stand-ins are not meaningless. Money matters. Cash flow keeps your company alive. This is all good. But some understudy roles become so convincing that we forget the existence of the real hero.

The disease called "modern life" requires a four-step treatment. And for that we will have to go back to the 70s. John Bogle founded Vanguard in the 1970s, and it became one of the largest financial institutions in the world. It remains that way. But he gave it a structure almost unheard of in finance: Vanguard will own its funds. And those funds will belong to their investors. It still works that way. He built one of the largest financial firms in history and never owned a stake in the company. He was not confused by doubles and fake indicators. He knew what was real. So how can we do the same? Here are four steps:

First, name the symptom. What do you really feel? Restlessness, lagging behind, loneliness, being unnoticed? This is important because you will often misdiagnose the real problem. For example, when you say you need a raise, do you feel left behind, anxious, unnoticed, or all of the above? You should know the difference.

Step two: Find the need that underlies this symptom. Every symptom has a deep, unspoken need. When you feel anxious, your hidden need may be for safety. When you feel like you're falling behind, your hidden need may be for sufficiency. When you feel lonely, it may be a need for belonging. When you are overlooked, your hidden need may be for significance. So take a walk, examine yourself, write it down. What do you really need?

Step three: Expose your understudy. What substitute are you pursuing instead of this real need? Because it's easier to measure a substitute. You can count the subscribers, but not the involvement. You can measure how fast you run compared to others, but your own sense of satisfaction is hard to measure. The understudy is attractive precisely because it gives you an indicator. It shows whether the number has increased or decreased, but it cannot tell whether the real need has been met.

That's why you need the fourth and final step: Replace your understudy with a real hero. Seek the real directly. If you feel anxious, write down what exactly you expected to gain from this pursuit. When you reach the top of a hill, remember that all you will see is another, bigger hill, and you can continue climbing, but have a clear understanding of why you are doing it. If you feel like you're falling behind, stop comparing yourself to the rest of the world. Compete with yourself. Determine what “good” means to you in the life you actually live.

So these are four symptoms, but you see, no matter which one you experience, the action is the same. It's the same four-step process: One clear definition of sufficiency is when you are restless; one race against yourself when you are behind; one person who really knows you; and one life that changed because you were here. If you have these four things, it's unlikely that anything else will matter much. And if they aren't—well, you still have plenty of time.

Modern life says that happiness awaits on the other side of success. It's like you see a beautiful rainbow, it's magnificent, it's somewhere far away, so you run towards it with all your might, to get closer, to reach its foot, to touch it. But you can run all day and never, ever get there, because no one can. The faster you move, the further it moves away. And the most interesting thing is that the light that created this rainbow was shining on your back the whole time. Thank you. And I love you.