There have never been more opportunities to become wealthy than exist today, Brian Tracy argues in “Get Smart!” More people are starting more businesses in more different industries than ever before. More knowledge, information, and technology are creating more products and services people want and will pay for.
In 1900, there were 5,000 millionaires in America after almost two hundred years of development. By 1980, there were 1 million. In 2015, there are more than 10 million millionaires and 1,826 billionaires, most of whom started with nothing and earned everything in one lifetime.
Within reason, so can you.
But here’s the challenge: if becoming wealthy is more accessible than ever, why do most people fail to achieve it? Tracy’s research revealed seven specific reasons people don’t become wealthy – and all seven are psychological, not circumstantial.
The Law of Correspondence
“The Law of Correspondence works for everyone at all times under all circumstances,” Tracy writes. “This law says that your outer world will be a reflection of your inner world. Everything moves from within to without.”
You cannot accomplish something externally until you first accomplish it internally. To be wealthy outside, you must think like a rich person inside. There is no other way.
Poor people think like poor people. They have self-limiting beliefs that hold them back and stop them from even trying. Despite evidence that saving $100 per month throughout a working lifetime invested with compound interest would create $1 million by retirement, most people don’t do it.
Why? Poor thinking.
Tony Robbins, after interviewing fifty of the richest people in the world, concluded that almost anyone can start small, save and invest regularly, use compound interest, and eventually become financially independent if not wealthy. This simple method has worked for almost everyone throughout history.
It can work for you.
The Seven Barriers to Wealth
Once Tracy passed the million-dollar mark, he began asking why everyone doesn’t use these simple principles to become wealthy. His research identified seven specific reasons:
1. It Never Occurs to Them
Many people never consider that they could become wealthy. Because of upbringing and early conditioning – perhaps coming from homes where no one was wealthy, associating only with poor people – they never thought they too could become wealthy like millions before them.
2. They Never Decide to Do It
Many wish, hope, dream, and fantasize about having money. They admire and envy people doing better. They worry about money constantly.
But they never make a firm, do-or-die decision to become wealthy. They never take the first step. They don’t learn wealth-creation techniques. They don’t upgrade knowledge and skills to become more valuable. They make excuses, rationalizing that success is “luck” they didn’t get.
3. They Procrastinate
If it occurs to them and they decide to become wealthy, they never get started. They procrastinate. They move to that wonderful fantasy place called “Someday I’ll.”
“Someday I’ll save money rather than spending it all.” “Someday I’ll upgrade my knowledge and skills.” “Someday I’ll work harder and make myself more valuable.” “Someday I’ll get out of debt.”
They end up living on “Someday I’ll” for most of their lives.
One of the great secrets of success: “vote yourself off the island!” Stop making excuses and start making progress.
4. They Fear Failure
Because of destructive criticism in childhood and adult mistakes, they’re paralyzed by fear of losing time or money. Even presented with opportunity, they experience paralysis.
Fear of failure causes them to create reasons not to act. They don’t have time. They can’t make minimum investment. They lack necessary knowledge and skills. Like deer in headlights, they’re paralyzed by failure ideas, causing them to never take action.
Most American fortunes started with selling personal services. People had no money but had ability to work hard, upgrade skills, and become more valuable. More doors of opportunity opened as a result.
5. They Fear Criticism and Disapproval
Many think that setting financial betterment goals will make people ridicule and criticize them. They’re afraid others will watch over their shoulders and gleefully point out mistakes. Because they fear others’ disapproval so much, they often attempt nothing.
The solution: When you decide to become wealthy, don’t tell anyone. Keep it secret. Work on your goal privately. Only tell people when they see your life improving and ask how you did it.
6. They Stop Learning and Growing
To achieve something you’ve never achieved, you must learn and practice something you’ve never done. The rungs on the financial success ladder are knowledge and skill. To be financially successful starting from nothing, you must learn, develop, and practice an entire series of new skills enabling you to become valuable and indispensable.
Abraham Lincoln said, “I will study and prepare myself and someday my chance will come.” When you study and prepare yourself, by some universal principle, you always get opportunities to practice new skills. But it’s up to you to develop them first and continue developing them throughout your lifetime.
7. They Lack Persistence
Most people don’t persist long enough to succeed. Successful people will tell you the major reason for their success: they refused to quit. They refused to give up when the going got tough. They persisted over and over, year after year, even facing complete bankruptcy and financial ruin. They never stopped.
Many people give up and quit just steps away from the key turning point after which they would have been hugely successful. Persistence and determination are the ultimate guarantors of achieving all financial goals.
Your Self-Concept Determines Everything
Psychologists call your bundle of beliefs about yourself your self-concept – considered the single biggest breakthrough in human potential development in the twentieth century.
Your self-concept is how you think about yourself. You always act externally consistent with your self-concept, whatever it is. You can always tell what people think, feel, and believe about themselves by looking at what they do daily.
All improvements in external performance and results begin with improving your self-concept. When you start thinking of yourself in positive, constructive, financially successful ways internally, you begin acting consistent with those beliefs externally until they eventually become your reality.
Children raised in affluent homes, especially by parents who started as entrepreneurs and became successful in one generation, are much more likely to become successful and wealthy as adults. Throughout their upbringing, they were surrounded by and inculcated with success and affluence beliefs and lifestyles. Growing up, they expect nothing less for themselves and will accept nothing less until achieving it.
Wealth Creation Today
Throughout much of history, people acquired wealth by taking it from someone else or another country. Napoleon’s armies looted areas they overran, sending everything back to Paris. Nazis under Hitler stole everything they could when overrunning countries. Throughout history, dictators coming to power immediately steal everything they can get.
Then, after 1815 in Europe and eventually in America, a phenomenon occurred never before seen in human history. People found they could create wealth by producing products and services others wanted, needed, and would pay for. Legal systems were set up protecting wealth production and acquisition this way, enriching every country embracing market systems.
Because entrepreneurs and business builders didn’t fear wealth expropriation by authorities, many of the best and most inventive entrepreneurial minds became focused on wealth creation rather than simply wealth transfer.
In America, for the first time, the expression “make money” became popular and accepted. People moved from all over the world, and still do, for opportunity to take part in the greatest entrepreneurial, wealth-creating system in human history.
Starting with Nothing
Today, new immigrants to the United States are four times more likely to become millionaires than native-born Americans who have lost sight of the key to becoming rich: Find a need and fill it.
Steve Siebold, author of “How Rich People Think,” said: “If you want to make a lot of money, find a big problem that a lot of people have, and solve it in a new way.”
This is your key to wealth creation as well. There is no other way to become truly wealthy except by supplying others with what they want and need and are willing to pay for.
Rich Habits Versus Poor Habits
In simplest terms, rich people have rich habits, and poor people have poor habits. Mary Kay Ash used to motivate her distributors by saying, “Don’t get the rabbit habit; think mink.”
Rich people think mink in every area of their lives.
Tracy remembers when he was in his thirties, still broke and struggling, working hard making little progress, he enrolled in an executive MBA program. One evening, a local well-known wealthy entrepreneur pulled into the parking space next to him driving a silver-gray 450 SEL Mercedes-Benz. Tracy got out of his old Volvo and just stood staring at the car. The driver looked at Tracy, looked at his car, looked back at his car, smiled, waved, and walked off to class.
At that moment, Tracy decided he would do whatever necessary to become wealthy enough to drive a big, beautiful, expensive Mercedes-Benz like that. He looked in and saw blue leather upholstery, making a mental note as he walked away.
From that moment onward, Tracy began thinking rich. He read two to three hours daily about wealthy people’s habits and behaviors. He got another job, then a better job. He took on more responsibility and moved up. He worked longer hours, sometimes twelve per day, generating more money for his employer, some of which was paid out in bonuses and profit sharing.
Within thirty-six months, he walked into the Mercedes-Benz dealership, traded in his car, laid his money down, and drove out in a silver-gray 450 SEL Mercedes-Benz with blue leather upholstery. It was one of the great moments of his life.
The Seven-Step Habit Development Strategy
Habits are developed with a simple seven-step strategy:
First, develop only one habit at a time. If you get ambitious and decide to develop several immediately, you end up developing none. Be patient. “Make haste slowly.”
Because it takes about twenty to thirty days of repetition to develop a new habit, you can actually develop one new wealth-building habit per month, or twelve in a year. This is enough.
Second, input new data: Decide upon a helpful habit to develop. Be clear about this new way you want to think and act.
Third, affirm to yourself that you already have this habit. Say to yourself repeatedly: “I see money-making opportunities everywhere.” The most powerful words are ones you say to yourself and believe.
Fourth, visualize yourself practicing this new habit. “The person you see is the person you will be.”
All improvement in performance begins with changing mental pictures of yourself acting in a particular way. You always perform externally the way you see yourself performing internally.
Fifth, act as if you already had this new habit. The Law of Reversibility says that if you feel a particular way, you’ll naturally act that way. But if you start off not feeling it?
William James pointed out: “If you do not already have a habit you desire, act as if you already had this habit in every respect, and the action itself will soon create the actual belief.”
Sixth, refuse to allow exceptions. Once you resolve to develop a habit, never let up until it’s locked in permanently. Don’t rationalize away unhelpful behavior. Refuse to justify or make excuses for not remaining true to what you’ve resolved to do.
Seventh, if you “fall off your horse,” get back on immediately. If you lapse back into old habits, which you will from time to time, immediately catch yourself and begin acting consistent with the new habit you’ve decided to develop.
Wealthy People’s Habits
In the Forbes 2015 survey of self-made billionaires, fully 76 percent attributed success to “hard work and self-discipline.”
Millionaires work about sixty hours per week, usually six days per week, ten or more hours per day. They arise early and get started by 7:00 or 8:00 a.m. and keep going until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. As David Foster, the music impresario, said, “I don’t know any successful people who work less than six days a week.”
The key: Do what you love. Do work you enjoy that attracts you, energizes you, and makes you happy. Most millionaires say they never work a day in their lives. They just do something they love and get paid very well for it.
Millionaires don’t waste time. They think continually about revenue generation by serving customers better, faster, cheaper than competitors. They continually ask: “Is this the most valuable use of my time in achieving my goals?”
Set Clear Goals and Measures
Most millionaires are intensely goal oriented. They have a major definite purpose, one big goal, sometimes called a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) they think about and work on all the time.
Millionaires set measures, especially financial measures, and deadlines for each goal.
Millionaires are frugal, careful with money. They examine every investment or expense detail before deciding. They like earning money, but they hate losing money.
Millionaires focus on financial accumulation, on earning and keeping more money. As the Japanese proverb says, “Making money is like digging in the sand with a pin. Losing money is like pouring water on the sand.”
Use Your Time Well
Millionaires are highly productive and use time well. They plan every day in advance. They set clear priorities. They focus and concentrate on the most valuable use of their time every minute and hour.
Poor people throw themselves at work without detailed planning, wasting enormous time, becoming tired and discouraged long before achieving success.
One of the most valuable skills: calculate your desired hourly rate. Divide 2,000 (average hours successful people work yearly) into your desired annual income. If your goal is $100,000 per year, divided by 2,000 hours, this equals $50 per hour.
From then on, every minute and hour, ask if what you’re doing is paying your desired hourly rate or more. If it isn’t, immediately stop. Delegate, outsource, or eliminate that task. Absolutely refuse to do anything not paying the kind of money you’ve decided to earn.
Keep Learning and Growing
Millionaires are always learning. They read, learn, and listen two to three hours daily. They subscribe to business book and article summaries, both written and audio. They know one key idea, combined with existing knowledge, can change their business future and maybe even earn them a fortune. They’re convinced the right idea exists somewhere, and they constantly seek it from every source.
Rich people watch less than one hour of television daily. Poor people watch five to eight hours daily, only going to bed when too tired to watch, then getting up and turning television on to start the day.
Maintain Health and Energy
Rich people take excellent care of physical health. They keep well-informed about things they can do to live longer, healthier, better lives.
High energy levels are required for success, to work long hours, start earlier than others, and work later. Rich people continually seek ways to increase energy levels.
One expert said the most important asset of any business is rested executive thinking time. This is your most important mental asset as well.
Wealthy people eat nutritious foods and drink lots of water. As a result, they have more energy, especially mental energy they can focus on getting more and better results and earning more money.
Elite performers sleep an average of 8.46 hours each night. Peak performance is hard work. It takes lots of energy. You simply cannot perform at your best for any period sleeping only five, six, or seven hours nightly. You need eight to nine hours to totally rest your body and recharge your brain.
Wealthy people exercise an average of two hundred minutes weekly, or about thirty minutes daily, or more. They get up and exercise each morning. They walk more often place to place, take stairs more often than elevators, and always look for opportunities to move their bodies.
The Takeaway
Rich thinking versus poor thinking isn’t about circumstances, intelligence, or even opportunity. It’s about self-concept, habits, and daily disciplines.
The seven barriers to wealth are all psychological: it never occurring to them, never deciding to do it, procrastinating, fearing failure, fearing criticism, stopping learning, and lacking persistence. Each can be overcome through deliberate habit formation.
As Tracy emphasizes in “Get Smart!”: “By the Law of Indirect Effort, when you focus single-mindedly on developing the thinking styles of wealthy people and engaging in the behaviors that they practice every day, you will soon become a wealthy person yourself, both on the inside and on the outside.”
The question is whether you’ll develop the rich habits that create million-dollar results.