$25 Million and Miserable

Adin Ross bought a $25 million mansion.

Not long after, he went live and said:

“Life is so f*cking mid. I take drugs when I’m not streaming.”

Millions of people saw the clip (if you haven’t, you can check it out here:

Lots of people mocked it. Some people pitied him. But a small group recognized it for what it was:

A pattern.

The further you disconnect your work from your purpose, the louder the silence gets. Every new toy. Every milestone. Every view. They all stop hitting when none of it feels rooted in something real.

It’s called hedonic adaptation where no matter how big the win, your mind adjusts. Your baseline resets and it’s one of the main reasons why millionaires get bored, athletes relapse and creators spiral when the algorithm changes.

But it’s not a lack of success. It’s the absence of something solid behind it.

Stanford’s Sonja Lyubomirsky explains this through the treadmill effect

> You move faster > The numbers rise > The achievements stack

BUT your internal experience stays the same and this is because your nervous system wasn’t built to be fed endless stimulus.

It was built to survive. And in survival mode, growth without grounding feels more like a threat than a reward. So the system numbs itself.

More content, more cash, more chemicals.

It becomes a game of distraction.

Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

He saw that suffering could be carried when it had meaning. And that even joy becomes unbearable when it doesn’t.

This is why creators who worry about views often feel inauthentic, why founders who only talk about revenue feel hollow.

I’m not saying success is bad but because meaning was never part of their model. They don’t feel anything and the only thing that holds over time is the act of building something you care about.

That kind of work creates its own momentum and turns into rhythm.

That’s when you don’t need to chase highs because the process is enough. You wake up thinking about how to get better, you fall asleep with ideas.

And you don’t need applause to keep going.

I started building at a young age because I realized at a young age that it was the only thing that made sense to me.

It still does.

It’s the only thing that has never stopped feeling real, no matter how many milestones I hit.

Talk soon,

Wiz.

P.S. If you’re ready to build something rooted in meaning, we’re here:

→ Utopia: For founders who want to grow their personal brand the right way

→ Mogul Media: For those ready to scale without wasting time in the process