Editor’s note: This article was first published in December 2014, and its figure of “1.2 billion people” on Facebook is from that year.
Most of us don’t really understand the mindset of the rich. For Steve Siebold, author of How Rich People Think, that is a fact: he is convinced that if the middle class understood and believed in how the mind of a true multimillionaire entrepreneur works, we would all be truly rich.
The middle class reassures itself by saying that the rich got lucky, that rich people come from rich families, or that the rich are all corrupt or harmful people who will do whatever it takes out of their greed for money. And although it may be hard for us to believe, cases like those are a minority today.
For Siebold, what separates the rich from the middle class is a radical difference in how they think and how they see the business world. But above all, it comes down to habits. No university, course or book will help you if you can’t change your mindset radically and build new habits. It may sound like a cliché, but to achieve wealth you will have to act in a completely different way from how you act now, and you will have to think in a way that nobody has taught you so far.
When we say that money should not be your priority if your goal is to become a millionaire, it may sound contradictory, but the truth is that if you focus on the money, you’re lost.
(Read: 7 ways to make a million that have nothing to do with making a million)
1. The rich seek risk; the rest of us seek comfort
Most people look for comfort. After all, we’ve been sold the idea that money isn’t the most important thing, so a job that pays the mortgage and some emotional stability are all we look for. Then one of those things goes wrong and our whole dream comes crashing down.
The rich know that becoming wealthy won’t be easy, and that starting a company won’t be easy. But above all, they know that living in the so-called comfort zone can be devastating, especially if a problem gets into that comfort zone like a virus.
They know you have to take risks in life, and they know things can go well or badly, but they also know the game is never over until they say it’s over.
The middle class is frightened by not knowing what will happen tomorrow, while the rich embrace uncertainty. In fact, uncertainty and risk have become their comfort zone. They are comfortable living in a zone where everyone else would be permanently on edge.
There is a price to pay for fighting for the dream of becoming rich, and only people who have trained their minds to withstand pain, uncertainty and risk can pay it. Only then will they reap the rewards, and if they fail, they will at least have the peace of mind of knowing they tried.
Tip: make a list of things you know you should do to reach your goals but that you don’t feel comfortable doing. In other words, the things you know would help you succeed and improve your finances if they went well. And remember that until you find the guts to face those things, your dream and your goal will stay on the waiting list.
(Read: The 4 most notable differences between how the rich and everyone else think)
2. The rich dream about the future; the rest live in the past
Most of us grow up hearing old stories about other times, when life was healthier, when there were no crises, when everything was cheaper, when businessmen were honest…
And today we have carried that way of thinking over into our own self-mutilation: five years ago you were…, four years ago you were earning…
Most people believe their best days are behind them; the best days of their lives have already gone, and so they struggle to find a glimmer of happiness in that on-and-off state of depression.
But the rich know that their best days are yet to come. They feel they are part of the change that shapes the future.
3. A mindset of helping and creating
This may be the part the middle class, and many of our readers, find hardest to believe; they think it’s just something people say.
But the truth is that the middle class’s problem is that we focus only on our own benefit. We want to be…, we want to earn…
That is why the famous saying makes sense: “Don’t look for a way to make a million; look for a way to help a million people.” Help that million people and you will earn more than a million.
Mark Zuckerberg found a way to help 1.2 billion people entertain themselves, upload their own photos and even waste their time. But his core business is not generating advertising revenue; it is helping you connect with your friends. After that, he helped companies reach millions of potential customers, who are you and your friends. And for helping you get onto Facebook, Zuckerberg pockets a few billion.
Google has helped you find information on the web in an organised way, helps thousands of companies promote their services, and helps millions of websites and blogs earn advertising revenue.
Not to mention that entrepreneurs become the main force behind job creation and a country’s economic strength. Entrepreneurs make the world go round, which is why I don’t think people who criticise entrepreneurs know what world they are living in.
(Read: Why the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer)
4. The rich are more self-assured
The middle class constantly feeds on negative projections, and when they talk about the rich, instead of being inspired, they tend to look for labels to criticise everything they themselves have not achieved.
Siebold says that one of the most common labels the middle class pins on the rich is that they are arrogant and conceited and think they are better than everyone else.
Successful people tend to be more confident than others, and perhaps that confidence can be read as arrogance. The truth is that these are people who have made risky bets again and again and, as a rule, they have paid off. So they gain that extreme confidence in their ability to make decisions, along with the healthy habit of learning from their failures and coming back even stronger and wiser.
They use their successes to double their confidence, and once they triple their net worth, they add even more efficiency to their thinking. Over time they believe they can achieve anything they set their minds to, and because they believe it, they turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their self-assurance grows as their successes grow, and that extreme self-confidence is what many of us read as arrogance.
5. The rich know that money is freedom
While we listen to the famous line “money is the root of all evil”, the rich know there is no real freedom without money.
It is impossible to be truly free without wealth. An employee is a slave controlled by his company, and will stay there only as long as his boss wants to keep him.
It will always be easier for governments to rob you if you are poor, through tax rises, fines or changes without warning that hit your standard of living. And if you stand up, the government crushes you.
But the rich (the truly rich) do have the power to stand up and fight a government. In fact, governments are slaves to the rich. When the rich fall ill, they have better doctors, and they find it easier to get credit for new business ideas. Whether we are in an economic boom or a devastating crisis, the rich will keep making money, because they know how the system and money work.
In fact, the poor and the middle class can also make money in a recession if they spent some time learning what they need to know about finance.
6. The rich think carefully about who they spend their time with
It’s a fact of life. Educated people tend to spend more time with highly educated people. People who look after their bodies tend to spend more time with people who are in shape. Religious people don’t meet up with atheists to go to Mass on Sundays. And of course, the rich surround themselves with other rich people, or with people who have the ambition needed to enter that select circle.
In any case, there is a high probability that you will end up like the people you spend most of your time with, and over time you may well pick up their way of thinking, for better or for worse.
As we’ve said before, if you surround yourself with stoners, you may or may not end up a stoner (most likely you will), but one thing is clear: they will never give you what a circle of friends with business ambitions or dreams of greatness can give you.
Remember that our intelligence ends up being the average of the five people we spend the most time with.
And those, basically, are the main points that, according to Siebold, the middle class and the poor find hardest to understand about the rich.
Further reading
- 6 beliefs of self-made rich people
- 25 habits of successful people
- I went from poor to rich thanks to these 4 habits
Featured image: Los Angeles, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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