Rewire Your Mind to Be Wealthy in a 6-Minute Read
When we outsource blame for our problems to others – governments, bosses, employers, exes –we lose the power to control them.
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Wealth is created in the mind, not from great ideas.
I say wealth instead of rich because wealth focuses on time, whereas rich focuses on material possessions and ego.
How you think about money is everything.
Even if you have no desire for luxury items, without money you’re going to be distracted and have to spend time on stuff you don’t want to do.
In the next 6 minutes I’ll change how you think about money forever.
The slap across the face you’re not going to like
I warned you.
Here goes: if you have money problems it’s all your fault.
No one else’s. When we outsource blame for our problems to others – governments, bosses, employers, exes –we lose the power to control them.
When we wake up and say “this sh*t is my fault and I’m gonna fix it” our brain moves into problem-solving mode. This is the holy grail you want to reach.
When I lost $1M I blamed a lot of people.
A week later I said to myself, “you idiot Tim. How could you be so dumb? Don’t worry, we’ll rebuild this together.”
Victims are overloaded by undiagnosed mental health problems that hold them back for the rest of their life. They can never experience the good life.
Responsible adults own their future and, thus, get to create their future.
Stop being a victim. Start being a responsible adult.
The path to wealth most people reject
There’s another uncommon core feature to wealth.
Business owners make the most money.
Here’s the problem with that idea: many people hear the labels business owner, or entrepreneur and have a mental breakdown. I get it. Why?
In 2011 I left behind a wildly successful startup I had built. It hurt me badly. I never wanted to own a business again. I just wanted to be a no-name barcode employee with an email job like everyone else.
I stayed that way for a few years. Then I began to buy stocks (ownership in other people’s businesses). Then I started an online writing side hustle.
Before I knew it, I had a side business. But I never called it that so my fragile psychology wouldn’t sabotage my wealth goal once again.
The other day, I found myself snap at my business partner. “I’m not a CEO, founder, entrepreneur, or business owner. Don’t call me that! I’m a writer.”
The programming to NOT be a business owner runs deep in most people’s brains.
We have to get over it.
Even if you work a job, you’re still a business owner with one customer. It’s just a subtle shift in labels. If you do one paid task outside of your job then you’re a business owner. If you have a side hobby that doesn’t currently make money then you’re still a business with a free product/service in MVP (Minimum Viable Product) phase.
Level 1 of the wealth game is to own businesses by buying stocks.
Level 2 of the wealth game is to realize you need to start a business slowly on the side so you can one day own your time and make all the decisions about the work you do.
The goal isn’t to avoid business ownership. It’s to reject the labels and ease your way into it slowly over time.
Own or be owned.
Why?
Business owners make way more money, so they can buy their time back and experience true wealth.
The best inflation hedge in the world
Inflation is above 5% in most countries. That simply means prices keep rising.
A lot of financial gurus explain complex strategies to deal with the problem so you don’t become poorer. They call these solutions “hedges.”
I’m a simple boy from a small town in Australia. There’s a solution that makes far more sense. You can get all complicated with investment strategies, or you can just use your mind to learn new skills that make more money.
Make-more-money is a mindset that’ll get you ten times further in life than I’m gonna invest in the S&P 500 stock index and slowly get wealthy.
Feeling wealthy is a mental game
The psychology of money is fascinating.
How much money we have doesn’t mean a lot. For evidence, just look at the guys and gals making 6-figures who are still miserable and stay late at the office every night while their kids tuck themselves into bed.
The skill you want to master is to reprogram your mind to see you’re already wealthy.
If you have food, internet, shelter, and clothes you’re wealthier than many people already. Beyond those basics you don’t need as much as you think.
The trouble is clever marketers have psychologically manipulated your desires. There are a few ways to undo the programming:
Watch less TV
Pay for the ad-free experience (example: Youtube)
Make books the main source of media you consume
Another trick is to do a basic gratitude practice. Think about what you already have on a daily basis. Think about how much abundance already exists.
Slowly over time you’ll reverse the mental game.
You’ll realize you have enough so chasing money becomes less of a goal.
There are two categories of wealth to be aware of
My friend Dan Koe says there are two forms of wealth: 1) Material Wealth 2) Mental Wealth.
Material wealth is our default. It’s where we live in a kind of game inside of a matrix. We pass through the levels of the game based on what material possessions we buy.
Got a big screen tv, level 1
Got a BMW, level 2
Got a white-picket fence house, level 3
Mental wealth is a different game. It’s one you discover in the dark corners of the internet, like my Substack. It requires you to go from unconscious to conscious. When you do, you discover mental wealth. It exists outside of the matrix.
Mental wealth equals:
A family-first priority
A thirst for self-education
An experience-first decision override
A free time over more money mindset
Mental wealth is the game you want to play. It’s where the mind is unblocked and creativity can thrive once again.
I joined this world 18 months ago.
It’s an entirely different human experience. It’s so radical it’s hard to explain at times. But the journey to discover it is a must if you want to get out of this life without a mountain of regrets.
Wealth doesn’t exist without this
I’ve already said worshipping free time is a big part of being wealthy.
There’s one thing people forget. We trade time to earn money. That money can then buy us more free time. Or it can be invested into assets to generate more money, thus producing more free time without your effort.
But what’s missed is a far more basic philosophy.
Money you earn (time) has to be stored. The storage method you choose has a huge effect on your current and future wealth.
Only assets can store time.
(Read that again.)
So you must rewire your brain to understand the asset options available. Then you have to decide how much money to store in each asset.
If you never take the time to do this task then your free time will always melt like an ice cube on a table on a hot day.
"You don’t retire on money, you retire on memories.”
(Bill Perkins)
The point of wealth is to use money, to buy time, to then create memories.
That’s how I feel right now. I have an 8 week old daughter. One reason I had her is because I want to be a kid again through her existence. I want to do all the daddy-daughter things one can do.
But ultimately, I want to use money to create memories with her.
This is the goal of wealth.
Decide on the people you love and want to spend time with. Then buy back your time to go make memories with them before your alive time runs out.
That idea will rewire your mind. And that’s my 6 minutes up. Cheers.
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Curious: How do you put these narratives together? Is it as read, a stream of consciousness smashing into our own existence as in real-time thoughts, or do they take much longer, are carefully scripted through excruciating research?
It certainly reads as the former, but then, when paragraph one alone contains one after another profound statement... well, either way, it is genius.
This is awesome, I love it! I'm saving this one. Thank you.