Creating wealth is easier said than done. With so many books out there on financial success and making money, it is only reasonable that you should wonder why the one percent is still only one percent. Although I took some personal finance classes back in college, I found myself still struggling to make ends meet. At one point my wife and I couldn’t even afford to buy chewing gum as it wasn’t a necessary grocery item. In my desperation, I decided to embark on a personal journey to learn why my life was the way it was.
I wanted to know why some people appeared to have such ease in generating wealth and money.
What I found was astonishing. In this article I will share these tips with you and no they are not about will power. Without getting too much into the topic of money and inflation, I want to share 15 daily habits of the wealthy.
1. Challenge and question themselves
Wealthy people surround themselves daily with people who question their beliefs or what they know to be true.
Creating wealth is all about critical thinking. However if you surround yourself with people who confirm your perceptions of life, you may never find the inspiration to think outside the box. Hence the famous saying “Birds of the same feather flock together”. If a sheep wants to learn to hunt, it must surround itself with wolves.
This is easier said than done because as humans, we like our comforts. Most people only think as creatively as their filters or labels will allow. However if creating wealth is your goal, you must be open to the beauty of surrounding yourself daily with people who don’t think like you.
2. Live in the future
“I am living in the future, so the present is my past.” – Kanye West
People who have wealth or make a lot of money are not fortune tellers or wizards who predict the future; they are ordinary people like you and me.
One thing they do differently on a daily basis is attempt to forecast future trends.
Steve Jobs displayed this daily habit and it is often cited as the platform for a lot of Apple’s innovative products. Steve seemed to know what people would want even before they knew they would want it. Sometimes the products themselves didn’t even exist. When it comes to building wealth, a daily habit to practice is forecasting what challenges the future may bring. Like Warren Buffett once said, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
3. Outsource busy work
Creating wealth is all about time management. On any given day, you will surely accumulate a fair amount of busy work. How you manage these mundane but seemingly important daily task could determine how successful you become. Before you start each day, make a mental note of tasks that steer you off course and find ways to outsource those.
If you must do them, be aware of how much time in your day is lost to them.
4. Exercise daily
The most common excuse to not work out is that there isn’t any time to do so. People who are wealthy have the least amount of free time. But they are actually the least likely to use that excuse.
This is because they understand that their health and well being has no price tag.
5. Eat Healthy
This goes hand in hand with the exercise but it still needs to be said. Buying enough fresh produce to create a healthy balanced diet, organic or not, will cost you a bit more than a bag of Cheetos and a cola. But the number one tip to enjoying the returns of your financial investments is to invest in yourself first.
Besides, the money you save on medical bills will far outweigh the extra you spend on broccoli and cauliflower.
6. Live minimally
“If you buy things you don’t need, you will soon sell things you need.” – Warren Buffett
By minimally, I am not trying to imply that most wealthy people live in a tiny house with no electricity and only one chair. I simply mean they actively practice not living in excess.
While building their wealth, they will have developed the habit of identifying what is an essential and what is a luxury, and it is a habit that will stick with them. They might begin to indulge in a few luxury items such as a nice house, new car or some name brand cloths but it is still well within their means and usually just one or two of said items. After all, you can only live in so many houses and drive so many cars at a time.
7. Read daily for self-improvement
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” – Joseph Addison
With so many amazing classics in the world today a person could read a book a day and never read them all. Through books we learn so much about history, human nature, lifestyles and cultures that vary from our own.
The majority of the poor say that they don’t enjoy reading or they simply don’t have time for it. This is sad as it leaves a wealth of potential knowledge untapped.
The wealthy percentile of the population actively use this resource to sharpen their minds and sooth their souls. And if wealthy people don’t have time to read, they use modern technology to their advantage by listening to audio books during their commute. Like Thomas Corley said, “The wealthy are not avoiding watching TV because they have some superior human discipline or willpower. They just don’t think about watching much TV because they are engaged in some other habitual daily behavior – Reading.”
8. Learn something new every day
“Risk comes from not knowing what you are doing.” – Warren Buffett
Money is made by being actively engaged in the world and at the same time having an unrelinquishing thirst to understand it. Knowing this, wealthy people make a conscious attempt to learn or understand something new every day.
By learning and understanding the world and how the people in it operate you will be better able to predict their actions/needs and profit from it when opportunity presents.
9. Show gratitude
Gratitude is not just a powerful tool for the wealthy, it is a great habit for anyone to practice daily. When you constantly have a lot of people around you, expressing sincere gratitude is a good way to keep opinions about you positive. They also make a habit of thanking someone with a gift or card.
10. Pass on T.V. and social media
Nearly 70% of the wealthy class will watch less than one hour of television a day, while only 23% of poor people can make the same claim.
Being poor alone will cause you to stress. Add an unfulfilling, mundane and minimal paying job to the mix, and it is understandable why many of the poor find comfort in mentally “unplugging”, or shutting off their brains, in front of the television.
Reality T.V, televised sports, Facebook and Twitter are all modern day tools of distraction to help us temporarily forget how miserable we are being poor. Problem is the time it takes you to forget the problem of being poor is the time you could have invested fixing the problem.
11. Wake up early
Waking up at the crack of dawn to rush out the door for work is not the same thing as waking up early enough to have plenty of time before work to think and reflect. Wealthy people typically practice the latter. Think of this time as a pre-game warm up, allowing your mind to mentally prepare for the coming challenges. Waking up early is an extremely useful tool for self-reflection and meditation in the daily arsenal of the wealthy.
12. Teach their kids to think rather than what to think
We have established that the wealthy do a lot of reading and learning. However it is important to know that they also pass down this habit of seeking knowledge and understanding to their kids.
Many wealthy parents will challenge their kids to find their own versions of truth. They actively engage with their children in intellectual conversations on the similarities and differences of their opinions without judgment. Wealthy parents understand the responsibility of letting their kids make their own way.
13. Meet someone new every day
Recent studies have shown that most people have a fear for speaking in public. The wealthy, however, overcome this fear by meeting, engaging or simply talking to someone new every day. Practicing this habit daily will help build the confidence needed to address larger groups.
14. The make a daily to-do list
“I thought a goal was a broad objective, but the wealthy said a wish is not a goal.” – Thomas Corley
According to an article on business insider, over 80%of the wealthy will keep a daily to-do list. And not only do the wealthy write their detailed to-do list out, but they follow through with it as well. To become and stay wealthy, you have to know what needs done and be focused on following through on it.
15. Keep it simple
Wealthy people are forced to make multiple important decisions within any given day. Often times those decisions involve risking thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Even so, the human mind is only capable of making so many decisions a day, big or small. Knowing this, wealthy people will strive to simplify everything else around them in order to eliminate many of the mundane small decisions that litter our day such as what to wear or what to eat for lunch.
Steve jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are two wealthy men known for this habit. Keeping it simple, and not over complicating the basics, is a daily habit of the wealthy.
“These habits are like snowflakes – they build up, and then you have an avalanche of success.” – Thomas Corley
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