# Don't Become the Richest Person in the Graveyard

An episode of [The Daily Mastery Podcast by Robin Sharma](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1521068608), 20 Oct 2026, 6:54.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1182776/episodes/19978504-don-t-become-the-richest-person-in-the-graveyard.mp3

Our culture has pushed and trained and brainwashed so many of us to chase money and watches and things so we become “rich.” It’s sad. Because people get hurt (by getting nice things and losing their soul along the way). And this brainwashing is designed to make us think that if we exhaust our energy and spend our lifeforce on this pursuit, we’ll get to a place where we wake up happy. It’ll never happen. Never. Ever. I’ve seen it time and time again with the billionaire clients that I’ve mentored for decades. They feel happy for a week and then the scientific phenomenon of hedonic adaptation takes effect, they normalize the new rewards and, of course, they want more. A great life may have financial independence in it and if that’s important to you then win in this area, please. But without wellness, love, craft and the other forms of wealth (along with my specific tools that optimize each one) a person ends up as the richest person in the graveyard. I'm truly super excited over the upcoming release of my new book The Robot and the Gardener: Being Fully Human in an Artificial Age (Penguin Random House). It's a parable and it's different (by far!) from any book I've ever written. You can join the list here if you'd like to be among the first to receive any updates. FOLLOW ROBIN SHARMA: Instagram Facebook YouTube

## Transcript

In this episode, I'm not going to talk about The 5AM Club, and I'm not going to talk about
turning your digital devices off. I'm not going to talk about the type bubble of total focus
structure that I've been talking about for so many years, and I'm not going to talk about
how the great artists and how the great industrialists and how the great humanitarians
start their mornings, or end their evenings, or navigate their days. What I want to talk
about is something a little off the beaten track when it comes to productivity, and it is
about healing yourself to multiply how much you get done. So where I'm really going
here is a concept called hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation. The first time I read it was in a book called The How of Happiness by the preeminent researcher, Sonia Lyubomirsky. She's one of the brightest lights in the field of positive psychology, and the concept is hedonism adaptation, which, as I understand it, simply speaks to the idea that what is initially new over time becomes familiar. It's sort of a bias or a phenomenon of the human psychology. So let's say you buy a new car and it's the car you've always wanted to have, or you buy a new handbag, or a new watch or a new phone, and you've longed for it. And for the first days and weeks, it's a shiny toy. It provides you with great joy. You look at it, tears come to your eyes or you feel elated. But here's what happens if you're a human being over time. What was once a shiny toy or what once, once excited you now becomes familiar and it becomes normal. And that's hedonism adaptation. And it really speaks to why so many people keep on buying and keep on purchasing and keep on acquiring. Now I'm trying to link the time and energy that you invest or that someone invests acquiring, being a consumer with the fact that that takes up a lot of time and energy that's stolen from you, producing your masterwork and you being productive. So by becoming aware of this idea of adaptation and by shifting from being a consumer to being a creator, that is a fundamental leap. Shifting from being a consumer of goods and services and trinkets and things to being a world class creator, provider, value deliverer that people consume. That is a way for you to start to own your game. Now, how do you get there? Well, first of all, I'd have to say it's a balance. There's nothing wrong with acquiring things. It gives you a
feeling of progress. It makes your life better. It rewards you on achieving things. That's
actually a good thing. But in moderation, it's a good thing. What a lot of people fall into
is the nature of never ending buying. Nothing is ever enough. It's a great way to deplete
your bank account, and it's a great way to be always thinking of and spending time online
or offline buying things, which again, is time taken away from a monomaniacal focus on
that masterwork, or that magic, or that music that will give you a beautiful life and make
the world a better place. So some ideas to think about. Number one, journaling. Just
becoming more aware through journaling. You know you want to be less acquisitive.
You want to be more. You want to live more simply. Secondly, restructuring your life so
that you get rid of the clutter. You get rid of the things that you don't need simplification
or minimization. Third thing meditation. Meditation helps me a lot, grounds me. When I
meditate, I often visualize or recite words like simplicity, simplicity or I am simplifying
my life, I am peaceful. That kind of a meditation will allow you to overtime rewire your
neural circuitry so you need less. And I think the final thing is just emotional healing. I've
talked a lot about Mindset Heartset, that Healthset and Soulset, and so doing the Heartset
work, whether it's working with a therapist or through prayer or through energy healing,
navigating and discovering where in your own emotional life you might have a whole.
Maybe you never got enough love from your caregivers. Those could be your parents,
your grandparents, whoever it is, and starting to fill those holes with self-love through
talk therapy or through energy therapy or other forms of healing. And this is a powerful
idea I propose to you. You will stop needing things on the outside to fill those inner
holes. And the the snare is really we try to buy things to make us feel emotionally better
and emotionally more whole. But those outer things can never fill an inner hole. So we
keep on buying and buying and buying and buying. And once you fill that inner hole with
self-love and self appreciation, then you won't need outer things as much. And it's a great
way to help you in terms of your productivity.

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