The Habit of Becoming Wealthy

If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them

There I was, scouring the internet, podcasts, and blogs for the knowledge to outpace all of my contemporaries in success. I had been studying self-made millionaires and billionaires for a couple of years. Reading biographies, the books they publish and studying their decision trees throughout their careers. I knew that a select few top performers achieved extremely more significant success than others that started with the same amount of time, intelligence, education, and money. So what made them different? What sets them apart? Why do some of my high school classmates that never went to college make more money than a ReFIned man with a few degrees and an indomitable spirit? How can I be one of the top performers and put myself in positions needed for advancement and success?

I started to see common threads or trend lines in this data set of the millionaires and billionaires I had been studying. I discovered that they didn’t go to sleep poor and wake up rich one day but rather their success came from lots of long days, commitment to continued learning, willingness to adopt new skills, discipline to work to a large more distant goal in spite of little measurable accomplishment in the near term.

The predominant trends that immerged seemed not to be directly correlated to published models of success. What I was searching for was a strategic trend of investment portfolios, business development paths or asset control that I could duplicate. The trends that proved to be most common where lackluster, less than sexy simple habits rather than breakthrough moments or once in a lifetime opportunities.

“Excellence is not a singlular act but a habit. You are what you do repeatedly.”

– Aristotle

So then why do all the lucky break moments make the news in the stories of success we commonly hear about? Because they are the exception, not the rule. Because they are abnormal. Because they are sexy. Most billionaires have very unsexy careers of discipline and hard work. Each deal is only slightly better than the last. No one is going to watch that new story. Imagine the news anchor describing Warren Buffet’s Thursday, which was exactly like his Wednesday, which was exactly like his Tuesday. “There he is folks! At his desk, reading a book again! Oh, wait folks, he set the book down and picked up another book.” yet that is what making a billionaire looks like. Warren Buffet admits in interviews that he spends 5-8 hours a day reading.

Good News/Bad News

The bad news is that lucky breaks come by once in a lifetime and few people are prepared, informed and courageous enough to take advantage of the opportunity. The good news is the much more common skillset to become a billionaire is accessible to us all. This skill set can be summed up in a short list of simple habits, the habits of the ultra-successful. This skill set explains why heavyweights like Robert Kiyosaki talk more about mindset and becoming who you need to be to attract success. With this skill set, luck is defined very differently but much more duplicatable.

Luck = Preparation + Education + Attitude + Opportunity + Taking Action

~ Mr. Refined

37 Identity-Based Core Habits of the Ultra-Successful

After studying millionaires and billionaires for years and tracking common beliefs, attitudes and habits I have compiled the following list.

Highly successful people…

1. Focus on the opportunities not problems.
2. Love challenges and seek to solve problems.
3. Track Results or KPIs (Key Performance Indicator.)
4. Think big, act small.
5. Plan out their day in advance.
6. Boldly take action without answers to every question.
7. Don’t get distracted by what other people are doing or saying.
8. Cultivate a strong bias to taking action.
9. Aim higher than they can shoot.
10. Don’t give up.
11. Constantly try new things.
12. Set aside the self-limiting beliefs holding them back.
13. Go above and beyond in work and business.
14. Do what others aren’t willing to do.
15. Set goals, don’t make wishes. And review them regularly.
16. Don’t listen to the majority.
17. Take risks that make others think you’re crazy.
18. Make their health and exercise a priority.
19. Seek out mentors.
20. Look up to people who are different than them.
21. Network, volunteer and donate regularly.
22. Talk less and listen more.
23. Use people’s names frequently and write them down.
24. Avoid procrastination.
25. Avoid toxic people.
26. Know their main purpose.
27. Put their ladder on the right wall.
28. Track their habits, spending and time.
29. Meditate daily.
30. Journal daily.
31. Reading every day for 30 minutes or more.
32. Ask for the “sale.”
33. Set short term sprint goals, as well as, 10x stretch goals.
34. Each night name their top priorities for the next day and record their progress.
35. Continuously learn.
36. Actively practice gratitude and journal about it daily.
37. Spend free time doing something productive.
    
    
    

“These habits are like snowflakes — they build up, until you have an avalanche of success.”

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See Related Lists:
32 Traits of Successful People: According to Grant Cardone

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“To know and not do is to not know at all.”

Action Break:

Create your own personalized “I am a person who ______” list and post it in a very visible location. Use this list as a starting point for the kind of person you want others to describe you as. The more you see this list the more you internalize it and live it out through your words and actions.

Inquisitive Isabel: “Good insight but practically speaking, how do I apply this to my success, these are just habits?”

Simple, Reverse engineer your life base on your end goals and then structure your daily habits to support your end goal. If your goal is to write a NYT bestseller book, a good habit is to practice writing one blog post every day. Make it a 30 day trial with strong consistency.

Inquisitive Isabel: “But Mr. ReFIned, where do I start?

Begin With the End in Mind

Start by writing your obituary. Yes, I know that sounds silly and morbid but think for a second who better to write it than you? What do you want people to say about you when you are gone? Now is your chance to design your future. Now think for a minute what did you do yesterday to support those life goals? If you just said I don’t know, perhaps you could use that obituary to set your life goals. Perhaps you could use your life goals to set your decade, then annual, then monthly then weekly, then daily goals.

Action Break:

Write your obituary right now! Don’t worry this article will be here when you are done. Then set your life goals, use the breakdown of those the plan your decade, then annual, then monthly then weekly, then daily goals. 

Seriously, you didn’t do it!? This is why you are not a billionaire. Do it now! For realzies, open a OneNote, Word doc, Evernote, pull out a notebook, for the love of God pull out a chisel and fashion a tablet. Don’t do it and you would be better off squeezing your fingers tightly against your palm and running into your hand with your face as fast as you can.

Action Steps:

Today: write your obituary
Day2: write a few dreams or scientifically speaking, life goals based on that obituary.
Day3: write a few goals for the next decade based on your life goals.
Day4: write a few goals for the next year based on your decade plan.
Day5: write a few goals for the next month based on your annual plan.
Day6: write a few goals for the next week based on your monthly plan.
Day7: write a few goals for each day based on your plan for the next week and post them visibly, then celebrate one full week of action, you are building a new habit of taking action. Great job future millionaire!

“A dream is just a goal without a deadline. A dream without a goal is a wish. A wish is a thought, that if taken action on is a dream come true.”

– Mr. Refined

I don’t suggest that you need to write daily goals this week for each day of the rest of your life. This is habit building, and you need a process. What I am recommending is that you should have daily goals for this week based on the work break down to achieve your life goals.

The Process of Becoming Success

At the end of every week, the last goal should be to write out next week’s daily goals. At the end of every month look at next month’s goals and break them down into written weekly goals. At the end of every year, your last annual goal should be to write out next year’s goals to hit your decade plan and so on. Recalibrate more often as needed to ensure your life goals are still valid and in alignment with your course to achieve your dreams.

In this way, you only get granular for the next time period into the future not the rest of your life. Let’s be honest kid, your life is way too chaotic for that. We have left plenty of room for life (Life = adapting to things that don’t go according to plan.)

So, Who’s Comin’ With Me?

My obituary necessitates me to be financially independent in 10 years to accomplish the contributions I hope to leave this world with. In that statement you see the life goal “financially independent” and the decade goal “retirement to refocus my contributions to the world.” Retiring as a millionaire in a decade sounds like an unrealistic goal for most people at first but if you looked at the work break down today all I have to do is:

1. Change out my incandescent light bulbs and replace them with LED lightbulbs I ordered through the power company homeowner discount program.
2. Extract and table my power bill expenses over the last 12 months.
3. Read 10 pages.
4. Write one blog post.

This is all I have to do today to retire a millionaire in a decade! Those simple 4 steps are all I have to do to work my plan. Could you do that today? Could you do half that over your lunch break? If you could do that, you too could retire a millionaire in a decade. It is an unbelievably liberating feeling to know that if I just do those 4 things today and four other things scheduled tomorrow and so on I am working my plan. I am on track. I will hit my goal. Make your plan that simple. Remember KISS Keep It Simple Stupid. Don’t expect to move a mountain in a day but if you move one stone a day you can build a mountain of success over a lifetime.

Health, Wealth and Happiness

Now at least you will know if anything you do tomorrow supports your end goals.
Plan your work, then work your plan. Whether you think you will achieve your goals or you think you will not, you probably will find that you are right. Good job, you just built a habit that hundreds of billionaires practice.

Health, wealth and happiness are determined by your daily habits. A simple activity done every day over the course of months and years develops into a ritual which develops into a habit which develops into who you are which is how you will be remembered after you turn to dust.

Becoming Success

Arnold Schwarzenegger is known as the all-time Mr. Universe but before he won seven Mr. Universe titles he was just a completion bodybuilder and before he was a bodybuilder he was a disciplined weightlifter and before that he was a gym rat and before that he was a guy who made it to the gym 12 months in a row and before that he was a young guy who made it to the gym three days in a row and before that he was a kid that bought a gym membership.

What is the action today that will enable you to achieve what your contemporaries will read about in the news post? Making one phone call? Researching one investment strategy? Reading 10 pages? Buying a journal? For me, it is writing this blog today, and one more tomorrow, and on more the day after one day in the foreseeable future I will be Mr. NYT bestseller. But for today, I am just a kid who bought a blog-site.

For more resources check out:
Lists of Lists, https://zenhabits.net/, and https://www.tonyrobbins.com/

For deeper study read:
” 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey “
“Rich Habits by Thomas C. Corley”
“Atomic Habits”
“The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley,”
” Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.” from my Recommended Reading List

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Action Step Summary:

1. Write your obituary right now! Tomorrow set your life goals, the next day use the breakdown of those the plan your decade, then annual, then monthly then weekly, then daily goals.
2. Post your goals visibly.
3. Print and post the “Identity-Based Core Habits of the Ultra-Successful” list.
4. Create your own personalized “I am a person who______” list to post visibly.
5. Notice any repetition of action steps in this post? If as if that was by design 🤔 I wonder if the ultra-successful are dispositioned to a strong action taking bias?
   
   

Keep the FIRE burning my friends.