8 Reasons Why Rich People Hate Their Lives_4c94778b1e0c4

8/3/2019 8 Reasons Why Rich People Hate Their Lives_4c94778b1e0c4

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How to have a great life and a great business

By Sonia Simone

http://lateralaction.com/

8 Reasons Rich PeopleHate Their Lives


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Feel free to republish excerpts from this report, as long as you link back to

http://lateralaction.com/ for attribution.

And its also okay to share this report in its entirety with anyone you think might

be interested. In fact, Id be delighted.

Copyright 2010 Lateral Action. Some rights reserved.


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8 Reasons Rich People Hate Their Lives

http://lateralaction.com 1

Heres one view of what business is about. According to this well-known business guru,

you musttake this approach or your business cannot be successful.

The entrepreneurs responsibility is this: maximum profit and wealth to his shareholders. Ifyoure the sole shareholder, thats you. . . . Integrity for the entrepreneur is optimizing sales

and profits and value in the business he captains.i

Heres another definition from a different well-known entrepreneur.

Topping my list of gut feelings is this: business has to give people enriching, rewarding lives, orits simply not worth doing. ii

One of those quotes is from a multi-millionaire.

The other is from a billionaire. In fact, hes started more billion-dollar companies fromscratch than any other person on the planet.

So clearly, both strategies work. Both points of view attract wealth. Both can make you

rich.

Sure, it would probably be interesting to be a billionaire, but my guess is that you wouldbe comfortable with the financial picture of either of these two men.

They buy what they feel like buying. They choose what theyre going to work on. They

have fame, comfort, and autonomy.

They both keep extremely busy, and are in many ways defined by their work.


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Here are two more quotes, one from each of our two famous entrepreneurs.

First up:

I lived in Phoenix from 1978 to 2004, and never got to the Grand Canyon. Neverdrove all the back roads. Never got to the places I like enough. . . . I didnt get to the

zoo at all last year, there are at least a dozen terrific restaurants I didnt get to all

year. I missed shows at Playhouse Square, . . . didnt set foot in the Art Museum. . .

. People often ask me genuinely puzzled what Ill do when I retire. They cantseem to conceive of anything I might do with my time, not working. Ive got a very

long list. Starting with the zoo.iii

And now for the other perspective:

Entrepreneurship . . . is not necessarily about making a lot of money. It isabsolutelynot about letting work take over your life . . . . I think entrepreneurship is ournatural state a big adult word that probably boils down to something much moreobvious like playfulness. I believe the drudgery and clock-watching are a terrible

betrayal of that universal, inborn entrepreneurial spirit.iv

So one of the two seems to have made greater sacrifices for his wealth. Hes traded a

significant portion of joy for his success. Hes comfortable with that trade, but you

might not be. So you might want to model the playful entrepreneur, rather than the one

who never got to go to the zoo.


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This report is going to talk about how to do that. Im going to get into some of the core

principles of a discipline called Positive Psychology, which studies the science of

happiness. Im going to look at whats been proven to add more satisfaction to a life.

We only get a limited number of days to play this game, my friend. You only have a

certain number of days to love your mate, have dinner with friends, go sailing. You only

get a handful of summers with your kids. Your number of perfect spring days is finite.

By the way, you probably guessed that the entrepreneur who has more fun is the sameone who believes that the primary purpose of a business is to give people rewarding lives.

But did you guess that hes also the billionaire?

The multi-millionaire is the notoriously cranky Dan Kennedy. The billionaireis the

playfully irreverent Richard Branson.


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There is a science of happinessThere are certain behaviors that research has shown will make you less happy. Youll be

less satisfied, more subject to depression, more pessimistic.

Conversely, the flip sides of those behaviors are shown to make you happier. More

satisfied. More subject to joy. More optimistic.

Lets look at 8 dangerous behaviors that entrepreneurs can fall prey to, behaviors that

damage happiness and can also sabotage success.

With each one, well look at how we can play the game in a smarter way. Awiserway. A

way that gives us more perfect spring days, more dinners with friends, more trips to the

zoo.

Since both paths can make us a millionaire, lets look at the wise, happy path.


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Dangerous Behavior #1: Thinking ItsJust Business

Ever have someone screw you over and then trot this one out?

Nothing personal. Its just business.

Killing coal miners in accidents caused because you routinely dodge safety regulations,

and deciding that actually obeying the law to keep them safer would be too expensive.

Its just business.

A history of sloppy conduct eventually leads to the spilling of millions of gallons of oil

into the Gulf of Mexico. Destroying the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people, never

mind the appalling environmental devastation.

Its just business.

Conditions in your offshore factories are so oppressive that your employees are

committing suicide.

Its just business.


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Is it any wonder you sometimes feel squeamish about becoming successful? Who would

want to be one of these guys?

Heres the reality: Checking your ethics at the door isnt smart business.Its laziness.

It is also, in fact, very bad for your business.

Good karma, good businessLets go back to our happy billionaire. Branson is pouring lots of those Virgin billions

into developing renewable fuel sources.

Is that because hes a good guy? Partly. It makes him feel better to do things that are

good for the world.

But he also knows that theres a massive market for wiser fuels, for fuels that dont rely

on a nonrenewable resource. For fuels that dont dangerously increase the levels of

carbon in the atmosphere.

He sees the writing on the wall. At some point, countries around the world will write

laws to limit the use of the fuels we use today. Those fuels will also eventually become

very expensive as they become depleted.


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The market for greener fuels will explode. And Virgin will get even richer than it

already is.

When you amputate your sensitivity and empathy in order to meet a short-term business

goal, you may make some money this quarter. But you expose your company to

regulation, lawsuits, and boycotts.

Youll also wake up at 3 in the morning, unable to block out the fact that youre a

monster.

Sure, you can make money as an unscrupulous bastard. Plenty of people do.

But that path is for suckers. Its for people who are chasing illusions that will only make

them miserable. Thats not your path.

Wise, happy millionaires know that real wealth, the kind that lasts and

multiplies, comes from creating value. They cultivate empathy rather than

trying to amputate it. They focus on contribution. They solve real problems

and make the world better.


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Dangerous Behavior #2: Fixing YourWeaknesses

Conventional wisdom will tell you that to be successful as an entrepreneur, you

absolutely must be a great salesman.

So what do you do if youre a lousy salesman?

You could do what a lot of people do, which is to give up and keep the day job.

Or you could take a lot of very expensive sales training, put months or even years into

practicing your approaches and closes and elevator pitches.

With a lot of effort, and hundreds of hours spent doing something you hate, you could

become a mediocre salesperson.

But you have another option. Actually, you have a limitless number of other options. All

you need to do is reframe the problem to focus on what you do incredibly well.

You could create non-salesy content and communication that built incredible levels of

trust with your prospects. You might even joke about what an entirely inept salesperson

you are. Traditional-minded sales pros will tell you how naive you are while you smile

and count your profits.


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You could obsess over your customers needs until you had an offer to make that would

make her delirious with desire. Instead of selling ice to Eskimos, you could talk to abunch of Eskimos, really listen, and find out what they actually want and need.

Then you could learn a couple of simple and non-creepy communication techniques that

made it easier for the customer to buy.

Thats just one example. Maybe youre great at selling, but you suck at numbers. Britishpublishing tycoon Felix Dennis made his first several million pounds before anyone was

able to explain to him how to read a balance sheet.

We get hung up on some kind of grade-school idea that we have to master everything.

Good news: youre officially allowed to get over it. Use this report as your permissionslip, if you want.

Wise, happy millionaires refuse to do things they hate. When they do

something they suck at, its because they get off on the growth and the

learning experience. They partner with others who complement theirstrengths, so everyone is doing work thats meaningful, that turns them on,

thats fun.


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Dangerous Behavior #3: MeasuringAgainst the Wrong Yardsticks

Success coach Dan Sullivan has a great metaphor for ideals.

He compares them to the horizon. No matter how fast you run, how hard you try, howdedicated you are, youre never going to reach the horizon.

The horizon moves. And so do your ideals.

You see this when a friend loses 30 pounds and looks terrific but measures herself

against ever more-anorexic celebrities, and never manages to actually feel good about herappearance.

You see it with high-power professionals in New York and London, who feel poor

making a million dollars (or pounds) a year. When they reach two million, they feel poor

because theyre not making ten.

Theyre chasing the horizon.


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The real purpose of goalsNow Im not knocking goals. Its fun to pursue goals.

But setting goals is like plotting a course to sail a boat. You can decide youll go to Costa

Rica, or San Francisco, or Liverpool.

In terms of your happiness, where you end up is completely immaterial.Where we live doesnt have any effect on how happy we are.

Once were out of extreme poverty, our income has virtually no effect on how happy we

are.

Being great-looking has no effect on how happy we are.

It will not make you happy if your next launch scores 1000 new customers. If your work

is accepted by that prestigious gallery. If your novel hits the New York Timeslist. If you

move to Santa Fe. If you win the lottery.

If your fairy godmother comes along and gives you all the money you ever wanted,makes you tall and gorgeous and thin, and then gives you a private estate in the

Caribbean, you will not be any happier than you are right now.

You think that those things will make you happy. You think youre different. We all

think that.


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But evidence collected from tens of thousands of people shows the truth. Chasing goals

for their own sake is a very expensive illusion.

What makes you happy is navigating that boatAutonomy makes us happy. Making decisions and taking action to move toward what

we want makes us happy. Purpose makes us happy. Commitment to a project thats deep

enough to carry us through the hard part makes us happy.

So yes, work hard. Yes, be focused.

You can even be a little obsessed.

But dont confuse any arbitrary yardstick with happiness. If it can be measured, its not

what youre really pursuing. The yardstick is just a tool to help you get some focus.

Piloting the boat aimlessly just isnt as much fun as deciding where you want to go.

Wise, happy millionaires know that the steps on the journey have to be fun.

They know better than to short themselves on time with their families, days

spent purely for pleasure, and even something as simple as a good nightssleep.


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Dangerous Behavior #4: SpendingMoney on the Wrong Stuff

Ever heard of the Hedonic Treadmill?

No, its not a band name. Its an effect based on the psychological principle of

adaptation. And adaptation is just a fancy name for getting used to stuff.

Whether you live in a dwelling thats 400 square feet or 40,000 square feet, youll get

used to it pretty quickly. It becomes your version of normal.

When you consume a luxury every day, its not a luxury any more. A super caramel

triple-shot cappuccino with whipped cream and sprinkles is a luxury when you drink itonce a month, making a little ritual out of it, sitting at your favorite table in the coffee

shop and drinking in tiny sips with your eyes closed.

If you do it every morning on your way to work, its just caffeine and calories.

Thats the hedonic treadmill. Pleasure becomes ordinary, so you seek more and moresensation, something more and more luxurious to give you the same payoff.


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Adaptation comes in two flavorsThere are the luxuries you get used to because you consume them every day. And thereare the luxuries that dont seem like luxuries because all of your friends have them too.

Back to our poor millionaires in New York, its the $12,000 Rolex that becomes cheap

and ordinary next to the $197,041 Patek Phillipe.

1,000 square feet in Iowa City is painfully cramped. In Moscow, its delicious luxury.

A lot of people have certain luxuries that become yardsticks for them. Ill feel successful

when I buy a Mercedes. Ill feel successful when I have an Armani suit.

No, you wont.

So is it as simple as Money cant buy happiness?

Actually, moneycan buy happiness if you know where to shop.More specifically, spend money on experiences. Have adventures. Travel. Take classes.

Connect with your family and friends. Absorb yourself in a challenging hobby like

horseback riding or sailing.

You dont have to spend money on luxurious experiences. You dont need to go deep-

sea diving in Bali to be happy. A trip to the aquarium with your four-year-old might

bring as much or more satisfaction.


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But when you get to the point where a trip to Bali is in your budget, it will bring you

infinitely more satisfaction (for much less money) than a $197,041 watch will.

Dangerous Behavior #5: IdentifyingYourself as Smart and Talented

This one is really counterintuitive.

A funny thing happens when you tell a bright, curious kid that hes smart.

You actually set him on a track to be unhappy, have a terrible self-image, stay on a

treadmill that never gets him where he wants to go, and live with a constant gnawing pit

of self doubt.

Sounds totally insane, right?

But Carol Dweck, one of the worlds foremost researchers in motivation, has discovered

that thinking of ourselves as smart or talented sets up a surprisingly poor mindset for

future achievement or happiness.


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Choose your mindset wiselyDweck has found two different mindsets, one she calls fixed and one she callsgrowth.

In the fixed mindset, weve been given a certain set of gifts. Youve heard this expression,

Youve either got it or you dont.

Everything we achieve or dont achieve gets attributed to innate talent. Got an A on themath test? Its because I'm good at math. Got an F on the same test? I must be dumb

at math.

When success is about talent, you dont take that much pleasure in achievement. After

all, its just your natural gifts, nothing you really worked for. Conversely, when you fail,

it becomes a fatal portent that you arentgifted or talented after all.

So you take little pleasure in success, but failure brings you to despair. This is a recipe for

a life that sucks.

People with the growth mindset see things differently.

When they succeed at something, they think, Yep, Im proud of how hard I worked on

that. And if I work a little harder, I bet I can do even better.

When they fail, they think, Hm, that strategy didnt work. I wonder what I can change

so I can have a better result next time.

8 R Ri h P l H t Th i Li


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Its probably fairly obvious that the growth mindset will set you up for a life thats more

successful and more satisfying. The fixed mindset tends to lead to pessimism, impostersyndrome, and a fatal allergy to taking risks.

Do yourself a favor and pick up Dwecks bookMindsetfor a complete explanation of the

phenomenon.

For now, focus on thinking more like a growth mindset person. When you catchyourself saying, My last launch didnt go well. I must be a crappy businessperson. Guess

Ill never really make it in my business, realize that its just your mindset talking. And

mindset can be changed.

Wise, happy millionaires adopt a growth mindset. When they fall into fixed

mindset thinking, they recognize it and change how theyre talking to

themselves. They know that mindset can be changed at will. And they know

that success comes from taking action, not from intelligence or talent.


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When you start to change your behavior so you aredoing those things, it can be

threatening sometimes to the people you care about the most.

Coming under friendly fireYour family may worry youre going a little overboard on this success stuff. Your

parents may tell you not to go thinking youre some kind of millionaire. And your

friends may try to pressure you into lightning up and wasting time with them on somelame activity you dont even like all that much.

Successful entrepreneurs dont have to be heartless, but theydo have to be pretty good at

setting boundaries. They need to recognize hostility or sabotage, and to refuse to let

those things slow them down.

Most of all, they need to recognize when they have their own issues with hating rich

people, and to make a decision to get over it.

If you hate rich people, youll constantly sabotage your own work to get rich. (Rich

can, of course, just mean that you get to buy whatever kind of cheese you feel like at

Whole Foods. Theres a pretty huge spectrum of rich.)

Just as youre on the cusp of doing something extraordinary, youll screw it up. Youll

start blowing deadlines, getting sloppy in your execution, finding resistance to work you

used to love.



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The answer to both problems (lack of support among the people you know now, and

hidden bad attitudes about wealth in your own thinking) are the same:

Hang out with more successful people.

Ever wonder why rich people will spend so much money on a country club membership?

The golfs not thatmuch better. Its because rich people like to hang out with other rich

people.

They like hanging out with people who expect to succeed. They benefit from makingfriends they can do business with. And they know that we all unconsciously pick up the

beliefs and expectations of the people we spend a lot of time with.

Finding the right groupAs I said, there are a lot of different flavors of rich. So find the flavor that works for

you. You may not particularly like the folks at the country club, but a small group of

successful writers or artists would be a wonderful place to hang out.

You don't necessarily need to find people who do exactly what you do. (In fact, youll

learn more from people in wildly different industries.)

What youre looking for is a group that embodies the valuesyou want to strengthen in

your own thinking.



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I will modestly suggest that you want a group that models:

The growth mindset A focus on contribution and ethical success An insistence that business be fun

Wise, happy millionaires spend time with other wise, happy millionaires.They know that attitudes positive or negative are contagious.



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p


Dangerous Behavior #7: SacrificingRelationships for SuccessYou remember we talked about the fact that how much money you have, where you live,

how good-looking you are have no correlation with happiness?

That doesnt mean theres nothing you can do to be happier.

Probably the most important factor that you can control is the quality of your

relationships.

Which means that the many successful people who put off time with their kids, timewith their mate, and time with good friends in order to build their businesses are doing

something very, very foolish.

Theyre trading away something that will make them happy, because of a completely

incorrect belief that success and moneywillmake them happy.

And as enjoyable and rewarding as business friendships can be, a life with only business

relationships is a pretty impoverished one.



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If you have kids, put them in your schedule. Every day. For some serious time hanging

out, not just 15 minutes of quality time before the nanny or your mate puts them to

bed.

If you have a significant other, put some dirty weekends into your calendar. (You can

call them romantic weekends if you like.) Check into a great little bed & breakfast. Go

for a hike, have some great dinners.

Get your head out of your businessThere need to be days in your life when you do not do a single damned thing to move

your business forward.

(Weirdly, regularly scheduling such days will move your business forward. Strange buttrue.)

Because youre making sure the journey is enjoyable, and not trying to motor as fast as

you can to a destination that has no intrinsic meaning anyway, the second most

important thing you can make time for is your relationships.

(Well talk about the most important thing below.)

Your business will eat all of the time you make available for it. And it will still behungry, no matter how much you give it.



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So its your job to decide.

You set the boundaries. You outline what your days will look like. You outline how youwill spend your time. You decide what youre going to value. You make sure that your

highest priorities are covered.

Allow me to suggest that you put, as your highest priorities, the things that are most

likely to actually make you happier. Healthy and rewarding relationships are right at the

top.

Wise and happy millionaires make their relationships a priority. They

schedule time with family and friends, and they take that time as seriously as

any business activity. They know that the business will always want more

hours than any of us can ever give. They know that its healthy to set

boundaries with our businesses, even if were passionate about them.



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Dangerous Behavior #8: Trying to Runon FumesI said there was one thing more important than taking care of our relationships.

Its taking care of ourselves.

The first very common and very dangerous way this manifests is by shorting ourselves on

sleep.

Driving while sleep-deprived is as dangerous as driving drunk, but most of us dont give

it a second thought.

Going without enough sleep makes you stupid. Worse, it makes you unable to feel how

impaired you are. You think youre ok. But actually, your judgment is terrible, your

focus is worse, and your reaction time is a bad joke.

Oh, and by the way, your immune system sucks and youre radically increasing the oddsthat youll gain weight.

Does that sound like someone whos able to be on top of a challenging business?

Does it sound like someone whos having a full and happy life?



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The problem is, we dont go without enough sleep just every once in awhile. We do it

day in and day out. We believe that weve trained ourselves to get by on 5 hours ofsleep a night. (A few people, statistically, do need less sleep. But if you had to train

yourself, you arent one of them.)

And you know the other culprits. Theyre on your New Years resolutions every year.

You eat crappy food. You dont get any exercise. You let stress eat you alive. You dontmake any time to do silly, frivolous things that bring you pleasure.

Scheduled maintenanceEver work with a big, high-volume photocopy machine?

High maintenance doesnt begin to cover it. Theres always something wrong with the

damned things. They start having hourly paper jams, or they start sprinkling cheerful ink

confetti on your documents. And of course they have pricy ink and toner that need

frequent replacement.

The only way to keep these things running is to get ahead of the problem to have the

fix-it-up-dude come out on a regular schedule to keep everything in good shape.



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If youre too busy or too broke to make that happen, the karmic law of disasters

guarantees that the machine will break down spectacularly at the exact moment the

FedEx guy is waiting for you to print out the biggest proposal of your career.

Scheduled maintenance is critical for any complex piece of equipment thats working at

or close to its maximum productivity. And the fix-it-up dudette will tell you that delicate

equipment is a lot easier and cheaper to maintain than it is to repair.

How to get anything doneIf something (anything) mustget done, then you mustcarve out dedicated time for it.

You, my friend, are a high-maintenance machine. Youre the complicated invention that

cant be replaced. Your work relies on your energy, your creativity, and your enthusiasm.And you can only fake those things on a very limited basis. Starbucks is a crappy

substitute for creativity and life force.

By now, I suspect youve gotten my main point. You have to schedule maintenance on

yourself. And you probably need to do that daily. (Sorry, workaholics. I dont make the

rules, I just write them down.)

You are too busy for a psychic breakdown. And youre not rich enough (yet) to cope

with being forced to take three months off to repair your damaged nervous system.

So start taking care of your machine every day. Starting today.



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Why did I write this report?Partly, Im obsessed with the path of the wise, happy, wealthy person. And

when Im obsessed, I write.

And partly because I think these ideas can do great things for a whole bunch

of wonderful people. People who are feeling stuck in one way or another,

who sense theres a better way, but theyre not sure how to find it.

They may be looking for the freedom and autonomy of running their own

business, but theyre not sure how to make that happen in a way thats true

to their deepest values.

Ive recently joined the crew at Lateral Action, an organization devoted to

providing tips and techniques that help you focus on doing remarkablethings, rather than getting bogged with doing trivial busy work. And if you

enjoyed the perspective contained in this report, then weve got some other

things youll want to take a look at.

A recorded conversation (with edited transcript) between poet/businesscoach Mark McGuinness and bestselling novelist and historian StevenPressfield, about the true artof entrepreneurship.



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A recorded conversation (with edited transcript) betweenproducer/entrepreneur Brian Clark and 37signals founder Jason Fried,

about building businesses that produce not just remarkable profits, but

remarkable lives.

A longer report where Brian shares specific strategies that build smartbusinesses, based on his successes and more importantly, his failures

on the way to building a multimillion dollar enterprise on his own terms.

Heres where you go to pick up all the contentas each installment becomes

available in the next week.

I hope youll want to continue this conversation with us. Im very much

looking forward to talking more with you.

All the best,

Sonia Simone

i Dan Kennedy, No B.S. Wealth Attraction in the New Economyii Richard Branson, Business Stripped Bareiii Kennedy,My Unfinished Businessiv Branson, Business Stripped Bare
http://lateralaction.com/smart-business/http://lateralaction.com/smart-business/http://lateralaction.com/smart-business/

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