I would love to tell you that I wake up at five in the morning, hit the gym, take a cold shower, green juice, 30 grams of protein, one hour meditation, and finally then I get to start my day.
However, then I'd be lying. Here's what I do instead. I have developed seven habits over the last five years, which have made me significantly happier and wealthier in my life. Today I will share those with you.
1. Build multiple income streams
An average millionaire has about seven income streams. In 2017, I saw some of my senior consulting partners get laid off, and that cemented in me this idea that, one income stream, even if that is a huge income stream, is not 100% risk free.
So, I started building multiple income streams, and today I have built up a few which means that even if tomorrow my company shuts down or I lose my job, I don't have to worry about where my next mortgage payment comes from.
It is incredibly financially freeing, but it also has ripple effects on your mental health because you are not constantly worrying about money.
2. Reading and Learning
I have been a voracious reader since my childhood, but I lost that habit in my early twenties because of so many distractions in life.
I'm glad to say that, I have restarted reading. Not only for the sake of reading, reading, not only for a vanity metric of I read x number of books in a year, but reading for learning, and then implementing those lessons in my life.
If, I read 10 books through the year and I have implemented 10 lessons from those books in my life, that's good. If, I have read hundred books and have implemented zero, that's no good. So this is a habit that I cannot highly recommend enough.
3. Developing a Growth Mindset
Now, I'll be honest, this did not come easily to me. I was used to being the class topper for most of my life. Then, when I failed very publicly, I was absolutely shocked. I thought that was the end of it all. This is as far as my successes go, and I went down into a reeling depression.
However, what I finally came to realize is that, the failure is only cemented as a failure if I fail to learn from that opportunity. Since then, I have started taking failure in my stride and I have regularly failed. It's embarrassing to say the number of times I've failed in the last five years. But, I have also learned quite a lot because of those failures and today I could not be happier celebrating my failures as much as I celebrate my successes.
4. Curate Your Company
Jim Ron famously said that, "You are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with." I couldn't agree more. In fact, in my life, I have found that whenever I have spent more time with average people, I have got average results. And when I have spent time with outstanding people, I have had outstanding results.
But, this obviously, does not mean you start cutting average people off from your life. How do you even know what average people are?
The fact is, that there are no average people. People are average in some respects and extraordinary in other respects. This simply means that you want the people around you who match your goals and aspirations in life.
So, if you want financial success, you want to be surrounded by people who are invested in their personal financial success. If you want to start a business, you want to be around a group of entrepreneurs who are already at their 'A' game.
In fact, as of today, curating a list of people to be around is extremely simple. You can pick one or two mentors that you generally vibe with and listen to every podcast, every audiobook that they have mentioned they have been on, and you start imbibing a lot of what they say in your subconscious. That is how you better yourself every day.
5. Saying 'NO'
Saying 'no' is hard. I get it. I have struggled with this for the longest time, but what really made the switch for me was that saying no somewhere means you are saying yes somewhere else in your life.
So, unintentionally, when we say 'yes', we unintentionally say 'no' to a lot of things we could be doing during that time. However, when we intentionally say 'no', we also intentionally say 'yes' to the priorities that we have set in our lives.
I understand that this could come across as a bit selfish and impersonal, but in fact it is absolutely the opposite of that because you are therefore creating more time and space for the relationships you value in life, for the things that you value more in life.
So, personally in my case, when I say 'yes' to a random coffee chat, I say 'no' to spending an hour with my son. So, it's about setting your priorities and then actually sticking to them by saying no ruthlessly to everything that is not a priority.
6. Practicing the Mindset of Abundance
Now, abundance is a loaded concept. Everyone talks about it, but I truly believe that abundance is everywhere around us. There's an abundance of opportunities that we can pursue that will make us money.
Instead of thinking, everything that could go wrong, if we thought about everything that could go right, we tune into abundance. You can also tune into abundance by stopping the excuses.
So, if you are focused on how you could make it work, that's a much better question to solve than coming up with answers for why this wouldn't work.
Personally for me, I have a business, I have a full-time day job, I have a family to look after and I stay miles and miles away from my home. I could very well say that this can't work for me because I don't have time. However, I choose to find time. Putting that personal power back to myself and making a choice and a decision every day to pursue what I want to pursue, rather than, focusing on the 10 reasons why this would never work, because I don't have time, has really empowered me to become more productive, more happy, less bitter, and more wealthy as well.
7. Planning in Decades
Bill Gates famously said that, "People overestimate how much they can do in a year and underestimate how much they can do in 10 years."
I truly believe that, I have always been a long-term thinker. I want to have a direction of travel that keeps me excited to go on that journey called life. So, while talking about 10 year plans, obviously, I don't mean to intricately plan out what you'll do in each year, every year till the 10 years. What I mean is, your direction of travel. Probably know what you'll be doing this year and perhaps next year.
As you go further out into the future, it keeps getting more vague. That's okay, because you know the direction of travel and that is what I think we all need to inculcate to become more wealthy in our lives, to own our time, to own our money, to own our freedom.
Talking about all of that, this blog is actually a part of my 10 year vision rather than something that I want to monetize right away. Which is why, I realize that I have to be consistent and I have to be motivated.
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