For Thomas Corley, author of Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals, whether people become rich has very little to do with luck and everything to do with their habits. Corley spent five years of his life studying and analysing the habits of both rich and poor people.
For Corley, as he explains on his website, a rich person is someone with an annual income above $160,000 and liquid assets of $3 million, while the poor are those with an annual income below $35,000 and liquid net worth of $5,000 or less.
There are at least 10 ways the rich think differently
(See also: The 4 most notable differences between how the rich and the middle class and poor think.)
1. The rich know their habits have a major impact on their lives
Daily habits are fundamental to financial success in our lives. The rich know that bad habits create “detrimental luck”, while good habits create “opportunity luck”. In other words, we make our own luck. That is why Corley encourages you to ask rich and poor people about luck: many rich people will tell you they have been very lucky, while most poor people will say they have had very bad luck in life.
Of course, we would find that most of those who had “good luck” acted very differently from those who think they have had bad luck.
(Read: 15 habits and choices for success)
2. The rich believe the American Dream is still possible
The American Dream is the idea that anyone can make a great fortune on their own; that whatever your situation, anyone, with effort and a well-thought-out strategy, can achieve the dream that others have already achieved. Most rich people believe that anyone can achieve that dream if they work at it. Most poor people believe the American Dream is no longer possible today. As the old saying goes: “Whether you believe it is possible or you believe it is not, you are right.”
See also: And you, why do you want to be an entrepreneur?
3. The rich value personal and professional relationships
Relationships are essential for success, because nobody achieves success alone. The rich know this. They also know that the quality of people influences success: depending on the kind of people you surround yourself with, your success or failure can be predicted. It is important to stay in touch with the people we know or once knew. In our 10 life lessons, we pointed out that, contrary to popular belief, most job and business opportunities come from our network of contacts. The more contacts we have, the better our chances of finding opportunities to do good business.
4. The rich love meeting new people
While most poor people always surround themselves with the same people, even making the mistake of building a circle of friends in which everyone thinks the same way, rich people love meeting new people with different points of view, different hobbies and from different industries. They learn from anyone, and of course every new person they meet is someone who in turn knows other people, which increases the chances of doing more business with new people.
5. They place great importance on financial education
Poor people have neither the time nor the desire to study how money works, so even if they get a stroke of real financial luck, their lack of knowledge will send them back to ruin, because, as the saying goes, “a fool and his money are soon parted”.
The rich can only be rich in one way, and that is by knowing how money works. Saving and investing are subjects every rich person has passed, and the poor have clearly failed them.
6. The rich do not believe in destiny
While 90% of poor people believe their path in life is set by what we call “destiny”, the rich are aware that they are the ones who open their own paths and decide whether to sit down, walk, or take the road to the right or to the left. Whether they get it right or wrong, they are the ones making the decisions, not some “destiny”, which they see as an invention of the poor to console themselves for having been born marked to be poor with no way to change it.
7. Creativity matters more than intelligence
Creativity is fundamental to success, much more than IQ. When poor people see a rich person, they tend to think that person is rich because they are more intelligent. But the truth is that, if we look at the statistics, there are many poor people with a higher IQ than rich people.
In other words, a poor person can be very intelligent and still be foolish. A rich person can be less intelligent but smarter and more creative than the poor person.
Recommended: Are rich people more intelligent than everyone else? In that article we explained that it is not so much raw intelligence as the time devoted to specific skills.
8. The rich enjoy their work
Passion is present in the rich. Most of them admit they like what they do every day. If they did not, they simply would not do it. That is a big difference from the poor person who is willing to put up with garbage their whole life because they believe they were born for it (working hard even if you do not like it because you have responsibilities), which brings us to the next point.
9. The rich know you have to take risks
Most rich people are rich because they started their own business or ran a large company. If a large company is not going to give you a big job other than in maintenance, the second option is not for you, so you will have to start your own business.
The rich took many risks, knowing they could succeed or fail. According to Corley’s study, 27% of the rich admitted to having failed at least once when starting a business of their own. They think the lessons of failure are the best ones, because they last forever. Poor people are more afraid of failure, and without risk there is no reward.
10. The rich believe their health influences their success
You cannot do quality business from a hospital bed. The rich know it is vitally important to stay in top health, because that helps them make decisions from a place of energy rather than fatigue. Likewise, daily exercise relieves stress and tension and gets oxygen to the brain. And finally, being in good health means you may have time to enjoy your wealth.
Further reading
- The young man who planned to retire rich at 27
- How Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, thought
Featured image: Philippe Alès, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
