What True Wealth Looks Like (and How I Forgot It for a Minute)
For the past month, I’ve been doing something I swore I wouldn’t: keeping Get Out on life support while I buried myself in my day job and my own routines. I still showed up - posted the events, replied to messages, paid the bills - but the spark was dim. I told myself I was protecting my mental and physical health (which I was), but somewhere along the way I lost sight of why I started this in the first place.
It wasn’t to build a content machine. It was to help people find each other - in real rooms, with real laughter - because loneliness doesn’t negotiate and community saves lives. I let the “what” crowd out the “why,” and the work started to feel like a chore.
Then I read something that nudged me back.
The surprisingly simple route back to happy
A Cornell research project gave small, no-strings contributions to young people with one instruction: use this to do something that matters to you - for your family, your community, or yourself. Six to eight weeks later, compared with a control group, the folks who followed through reported higher well-being, stronger purpose, a clearer sense of being needed, and better mood. Not because $400 fixes life, but because acting on purpose rearranges the nervous system. Contribution isn’t just noble; it’s neurologically useful.
Around the same time, Arthur C. Brooks wrote about money and meaning in a way that landed for me: money can support happiness, but not when it becomes the point. The paradox is that wealth, like calm, tends to arrive when you stop chasing the appearance of it and start investing in what’s quietly valuable - relationships, experiences, time, and causes beyond yourself. In short: spend less on display, more on belonging. Give more than you think you can. Watch your life feel bigger, not smaller.
Put those ideas together and you get a simple, slightly unsexy recipe: clarify your purpose, make one small contribution toward it this week, repeat. Happiness shows up as a by-product, not a prize.
The month I drifted (and what it taught me)
If I’m honest, I drifted into the satisfaction trap: optimising tasks, not meaning. I tightened my life - earlier nights, steadier training, better food, ruthless boundaries - and that helped. But I stopped asking the most important question: What am I building that’s good for more than me? When that question goes quiet, the same calendar can feel empty, even when it’s full.
Reading the Cornell findings felt like someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey. Your purpose isn’t gone. You just haven’t fed it lately.” So I sat down with a notebook and asked three blunt questions:
What gap in the world bugs me enough to do something about?
What can I contribute this month that’s small and real?
Who benefits if I follow through?
My answers were not grand. They didn’t require a rebrand or a sabbatical. They required reps: more engagement with members, a standing call with a local partner who quietly keeps people safe, a small fund to cover tickets for those who can’t afford them, and one piece of writing (like this) that’s more than a promo - it’s a hand outstretched.
Immediately, the work felt different. Same actions, different fuel.
Money, meaning, and the point of building anything
A confession: I used to bristle when people said “money doesn’t matter.” It does. Try renting a hall, paying artists fairly, buying insurance, or comping tickets without it. But money untethered from meaning is a treadmill; money attached to contribution is a tool. The difference is motive.
If your motive is status, the goalpost sprints away. If your motive is care, enough becomes possible. You can buy objects that advertise you, or you can buy time, experiences, and access that include others. One shrinks your life to a mirror. The other opens your life like a door.
So yes: I want Get Out to be healthy financially - not to flex, but to fund. To lower the cost of saying yes. To give a ride. To pay the DJ, the Auslan interpreter, the counsellor who sits in the corner quietly making it safer to be human. True wealth looks like more people inside the circle.
Contribution as mental hygiene
Here’s the other shift: contribution is not just moral work; it’s mental hygiene. When I slide inward - anxious, moody, over-indexed on my own story - service pulls me back into proportion. It doesn’t erase my problems. It right-sizes them. Do one meaningful thing for someone else and your nervous system gets a memo: We are useful. We are connected. We matter. It’s hard to ruminate and show up simultaneously.
That doesn’t mean self-abandonment. Taking care of my body is part of the job. Sleep, running, food - those keep my mind clear enough to contribute. The trick is refusing the false choice between “me” and “we.” Purpose is the bridge between them. When I’m aligned, the same hour does double duty: it steadies me and strengthens us.
What I’m changing (quietly, immediately)
Re-centring the “why.” Every event we list needs a connection outcome: “Who meets whom here? What support is easier because this exists?”
Access fund. A small, ongoing pot to comp tickets/transport/coffee where money is the barrier.
Fewer, better rooms. Not more noise, more rhythm. Places you can return to weekly so hellos become habits.
Give it away. A fixed percentage of any surplus goes to partners doing frontline care. No press releases; just receipts. The mechanics? Watch this space…
None of this is flashy. That’s the point. Flash fades. Rhythm forms people.
Start here (steal my prompts)
If you’ve felt a little unmoored too, try this for six weeks:
Name one contribution. Finish the sentence: “The world around me is missing ______, and this week I can do ______ about it.” Keep it to something a Tuesday version of you can actually do.
Budget a quiet tithe. Pick a percent (time or money) and commit it to others without announcement. See how your mood changes.
Switch your spend. This month, buy one shared experience instead of one status object. Leave your phone in your pocket.
Close one loop in public. Tell a friend when you followed through - not for claps, for identity. You’re casting a vote for the person you say you are.
Where I’ve landed
I started Get Out to help us belong to each other. Somewhere between meetings and meal prep, I forgot. Not entirely - just enough that the edges dulled. Purpose brought the colour back. Not because I thought about it harder, but because I did one small thing that helped someone else.
Happiness, it turns out, isn’t hiding behind a bigger audience or a better dashboard. It’s embedded in contribution - in the unglamorous work of making life lighter for the people near you. Money helps when it fuels that. Time helps when it’s shared. And meaning shows up when you give it somewhere to land.
I don’t need fireworks. I need rooms where people find each other and leave a little stronger than they arrived. That’s wealth I can believe in. That’s what I’m building - again - starting now.