Your net worth is not your self-worth. And if it is, you’re going to end up worth less. Worthless. That isn’t clever wordplay. That’s truth.

Every man I’ve ever worked with—good men who want to become great men—has been caught in this trap. Not the freeloaders, not the guys checked out on the couch, but the ones out there hustling, grinding, building. Even they confuse net worth with self-worth.

It starts with the second question every man gets asked. The first is your name. The second is, “What do you do?”

And we all know the answer. “I’m a paycheck.” Sure, we dress it up with job titles: I’m a doctor, I’m a lawyer, I’m a teacher, I’m a contractor. Doesn’t matter. The translation is the same: I’m a paycheck.

I wrote about this in my blog, What Do You Do. When society hears what you “do,” what it really hears is a number. That guy’s worth $80,000 a year. That one’s worth $200,000. Another’s worth $500,000. We’ve reduced men to digits.

And then we teach men the sickest game of all: Chase the Decimal. Move it one place to the right. Then another. Then another. Six figures. Seven. Eight. Just one more decimal. Just one more. That’s how you matter. That’s how you win.

Except you don’t win. Because it never ends. And even if you somehow catch it, the clock has already run out. Game over. All you’re left with are numbers in a bank account. Not even dollars anymore. Just digits. Code. Currency so abstract you can’t touch it or even explain it.

I once raised money for a start-up and got a seat at the table with a billionaire. Everyone around him whispered. I was told how to present myself to “the king.” But this was no king. We started with money. We ended with meaning—or really, the absence of it. No queen. Princes and princesses who wanted nothing to do with him. He had the Midas touch, but no meaning touch. A man buried in gold and starving for love.

That’s the decimal chase. Even when you catch it, you lose.

And some men don’t even make it that far. Some take their lives over money. My father did. A mountain of debt crushed him. But if he had turned his head, if he had looked at the mountain range of meaning right in front of him—kids who loved him, grandchildren who adored him, friends, community, respect—he would have seen he wasn’t broke at all. He was wealthy in every way that mattered. But the decimal blinded him. And it kills men every single day.

This is what Viktor Frankl understood. Men reduced to numbers are no longer men. They’re objects. And objects can be used, exploited, discarded. He knew it firsthand in Auschwitz, stripped of his name, reduced to the number 119104.

But Frankl also knew the antidote. He wrote:
“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is unique, as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”

That’s it. That’s the point. You are unique. There never was and never will be another you. There is no meaning of life. There is only the meaning of your life. And only you can fulfill it. If you don’t, it is lost forever.

That’s the tragedy. And also the invitation.

So stop chasing decimals. Stop reducing yourself to digits. Stop letting your worth be confused with what you’re paid.

Because your worth can’t be counted. It can’t be deposited. It can’t be traded.

It’s priceless.

And here’s the truth: you won’t remember that alone. This is why we created Men’s Peer Groups. A brotherhood where men stop reducing themselves to numbers and start reclaiming their worth as men of spirit, mission, and meaning.

If you’re ready to stop the decimal chase and reclaim your unique, unrepeatable, priceless life—join us.

Men’s Peer Groups