There is a price to pay for every single outcome big or small, and success in life is no exception. The good news is most of the side effects are mental and can be contained in your head. While it is certainly normal to have volatile psychological experiences when you are going through struggle after struggle trying to make it in life, there is no logical reason nor legitimate basis to remain in this frame of mind once you have achieved financial independence and have no concrete problems to worry about. With that said, the transition is neither easy nor painless and there is no one size fits all approach to the problem. This is one of those areas where a substantial amount of trial-and-error will be required as every individual has gone through a unique set of experiences that build up in different ways. In this post, we will go through the main psychological pitfalls that we personally experienced over the course of 8-10 years, as well as what worked for us to combat their prolonged impact when it came time to transition to the next stage of life.
Decline in Health: On our blog we have repeatedly said that health is the no. 1 item on our list of priorities. To truly derive the greatest enjoyment out of life you need to optimize your health- there is no point being filthy rich with all the best toys if you struggle with even the most basic forms of physical exercise. It is also true, however, that your health can take a substantial hit in your twenties without any long-term damage or drawbacks. No, putting in a 100-hour workweek or two all-nighters in a row will not kill your health. There will always be a few people who really overdo it, but there are also millions of others who made it through a grueling career in a cutthroat industry and have been in the best shape of their lives since. For an extreme case, look no further than all those World War II vets who spent the duration of the war enduring inhumane and barbaric conditions inside Japanese POW camps. Despite the extreme hell they went through, plenty of those who survived went on to live well into their eighties and nineties.
This does beg the question of when should you draw the line? We would say you should draw the line as you approach the twilight of your mid-thirties, so at around 37-38 years old. By this point, you would have already noticed a substantial decrease in your physical capabilities in fast-twitch exercises such as sprinting, jumping and powerlifting. The moment you notice this will be a sign that your body can no longer do high-intensity work for 60+ hours week after week. At this stage, applying a consistent system that maximizes your time will facilitate the growth of your wealth and assets without impacting your health. Ideally, you should already have some very solid contacts within multiple sectors who can open new doors through just a few phone calls, giving you a substantial amount of free time to focus on the 5-10% of activities that actually matter.
Personality Dilution: One of the common denominators among successful people is an extremely hardened mentality of focus, which can lead to too much attention to detail on a single item of business. We still suffer from this problem to this day: Taking jump shots from the same spot on the court for one hour straight, calling the same number day after day hoping it’s a different gatekeeper on the other end, rewriting the same email over and over again, etc. This still occurs even after you are financially well-off and decide to hang up your suit & tie because it is a habit that got you to where you are in the first place. Willpower trumps talent any day of the week and if you develop the “obsessive” trait you will ultimately get most of the things you crave.
The flip side of this can be seriously negative. Being too obsessive will inevitably lead to tunnel vision which makes you come across as less appealing personality-wise to other people. This is why it is important to focus on building horizontally rather than vertically once you have already made it in the $$$ game. This means expanding your network across many niches/industries/hobbies/interests instead of continuing to dig deeper down the same foxhole you have been in for the past decade plus of your life. This eliminates group think, exposes you to a constant flow of different perspectives, and most importantly brings to light your own tendencies and compels you to reflect on them and make the necessary modifications. On many occasions we have come to an abrupt halt and asked ourselves if it was logical to continue pushing on. The same strategy that might churn out a superstar outcome in one industry could result in irreparable long-term damage in another.
To provide some concrete examples, if you are used to dealing with lawyers for 60+ hours per week then you would have developed a certain type of mentality and set of tendencies. In this case it would definitely be good for your personality to branch out and connect with people whose line of work is more focused on the transactional aspect of business. Likewise, if you are scared of heights then taking up activities like rock climbing and skydiving would do wonders for both your confidence and personality. Join any group of avid skydivers and you will immediately notice that they are all incredibly positive and interesting people. As a general rule of thumb, once you have substantial recurring income streams and no longer need to work a full-time career you should aim to take up one new hobby every single year. This doesn’t mean you need to become an expert at it. It just means you should develop one new basic skill per annum. Occasionally this might be a multi-year long engagement (i.e. learning a new language) which is entirely fine but the key is you want to develop an actionable skill you can leverage and also meet new people through your pursuit of this hobby. This will drive you to adapt to multiple new cultures/environments and make it impossible for you to not come across as interesting and a positive value-add to any interaction.
Lack of Empathy: This is a common feature of success and usually arises out of either arrogance or becoming desensitized as a result of the personal struggles you overcame to get to where you are.
The solution to this is simple: Find some people to mentor. Yes, mentor. Note we didn’t use the word *help*. We do not advocate ever giving away anything for free as the recipient will fail to cherish anything they receive with zero effort. This could be giving a basic job to someone who is struggling financially, or hiring a paid intern to help you with administrative tasks. If these guys do a good job and show some promise, feel free to give them more responsibilities, increase their comp and offer guidance. The point here is that it is a two-way deal. You extend the initial helping hand, but the other party has to reciprocate in the form of putting in the work. If they are able to add value then it’s your turn to provide further input.
If you are still insistent on *helping* someone without getting anything in return, then we recommend volunteering at an animal shelter. Unlike humans, domesticated animals such as dogs do not have the capability to take care of themselves and genuinely need help after they have been abandoned or mistreated.
Insecure Behavior: For a certain segment of rich folks, being rich becomes more or less a dick-measuring contest. Oftentimes, these people have been miserable long before they became rich and due to their obsessive streak they also happen to be very good at one particular skill while falling short in many other areas of life. Now that they are flush with cash they try hard to compensate by throwing money to achieve victories in even the smallest and most inconsequential of things. And because these people only know one area (their industry/line of work), they are also intensely resistant to any disruption to their industry as it places their entire identity at risk. When your area of expertise does not extend beyond one to two skills it becomes impossible to have any sustained level of internal happiness.
The good news is it is very easy to develop a diversified skillset. It takes a lot of time investment and many sacrifices in your twenties and early thirties but this will pay off in a big way and make you comfortable and content even within a volatile and unpredictable environment. By actively making moves to acquire new skills, you will find out what you are good at and what you lack the physical foundation or mental intuition for. The skills you invest time in but fail to progress forward with become incredibly humbling experiences that are valuable in their own respect as they enable you to develop thicker skin that comes in handy in situations of real adversity.
Passive Aggressiveness: This isn’t unique to rich people and we will say it is substantially more common as a trait among the ordinary crowd. You will still stumble across these types of people frequently enough and will notice some degree of passive aggressiveness on display particularly if you have some physical traits they envy (tall/good-looking/athletic/confident) but are evidently lower on the totem pole when it comes to net worth. Your reaction should be measured; you will try your best if possible to minimize or outright eliminate any interaction with them as there is little to no upside from being in their presence. Hang around them too much and you will lose some of your drive because your mind will tell you that you don’t want to end up like them. By reducing your F2F exposure to them, you will be able to focus on your main goal of obtaining substantial wealth without having to deal with doubts in your head about how this could negatively affect your mentality.
The direct antithetical approach to behaving passive aggressively is reacting positively to every interaction you have, and this is exactly what you will do going forward. Almost every single individual you come across will have at least 1-2 strengths they can easily outshine you in. When talking to them, you will incorporate genuine praise in your conversations which will prevent your ego from becoming inflated. A good way of communicating this would be: “Speaking of that, I gotta say, you really do XXX so well. I wish I had half of your talent in this area.” There is no way you can possibly beat a 10-year veteran of Google at coding, just like there is no way you can expect to beat the last guy on the bench of the worst NBA team at shooting threes. Even if you are in the top 0.1% of an extremely cutthroat and competitive field, you will not be able to challenge a common street cleaner from Egypt when it comes to proficiency in the Arabic language.
Knowing how and when to dish out honest praise will take you a long way when it comes to solidifying bonds with people you want to expand relationships with. To be frank, there is a limit to this- doing it too often with the same people will make them question your authenticity so there is no basis for doing this constantly. Just heap out a bit of praise every now and then and your comment will be appreciated and remembered favorably.
Escalation in Stress Levels Despite Reduction in Sources of Stress: This sounds ridiculous and makes no logical sense but we see it happen all the time. In our view the primary explanation for this is because someone was raised in an affluent setting. While there are plenty of downsides associated with growing up poor (very few people make it out as most succumb to the negative influences) one of the advantages is the incredible upside that comes with a lifestyle transformation. If you grew up feeling constantly hungry and cold then attaining financial independence will solve 99% of all the problems you have ever known. But if someone grew up with plenty of money then most of their problems will be trivial ones that won’t disappear unless there is a mindset shift.
A solution to this would be to go out and travel to poorer neighborhoods, cities, and countries and talk with people from drastically different backgrounds. Earlier this year one of us was on vacation abroad (we won’t name the country) and was looking to do a tandem skydive but couldn’t find a qualified partner to jump with. One of the guys with the right qualifications he ended up approaching turned out to be a soldier on leave. He offered to pay the soldier $500 to tandem jump with him, a huge sum in that country, but the soldier turned it down immediately, citing that he was on leave and wanted to jump with his girlfriend. He then upped the offer to $1000 and without any hesitation the soldier turned it down again. Turns out the soldier had fought in his share of extremely brutal conflicts and made it out of a number of deadly and dangerous engagements. This ultimately shaped his priorities in life, which were no longer about money but more to do with participating in meaningful experiences that brought him real happiness.
Concluding Remarks: If this post was applicable to you, then we would like to congratulate you on attaining financial success. Too many people give up way before they achieve anything remotely meaningful, so in spite of whatever mental and psychological shortcomings you may struggle with now the traits of perseverance and consistency greatly overshadow them. Just remember, these shortcomings are a legacy of 10+ years of being in a high-stress/low freedom environment, so naturally, a transition will be neither immediate nor painless. Rather than tackling them all at once, make a conscious effort to focus on implementing individual steps first and give it time to see if it works for you. Some of these steps will be a challenge to implement on a consistent basis but that should no longer come as a surprise for you if you have been reading our blog for more than a year. As with everything else that matters, the keys to satisfaction, joy, excitement and more lie on the other side of a great challenge.