#5 The Secret I Didn’t Know About Being Rich Until I Had Money

The secret that I learned about being rich once I had some money was that feeling rich has little to do with money once you make at least 75K in household income annually.    We are smart people and we know on some level that money doesn’t make one happy but we still believe in the back of our minds that we will somehow feel just a little better and a little safer, and a little more successful if we pile up more savings.  Even though we mostly know better, we also hold remnants of a vague notion that once we are “rich” we will be able to relax on a beach, do whatever we want, and feel content.  Of course the reality is that all of the habits and work that you practiced and programmed your brain to do don’t just shut off when you hit a threshold number in a bank account. 

Success or Addiction?

In the startup community, we all know someone who had a big multi-million dollar exit, sat on a beach somewhere for about 3 weeks freaking out the whole time and then panicked and jumped back into another startup or leadership role. Did he need the validation and status? Did he need the rush of it with the highs and lows? Did he ever question if there was a path to get what he needed in a way that better served himself, his relationships, and the person he aspired to be. The habits and skills that get you to that beach are the same ones that make it near impossible to immediately enjoy it once you get there. The secret is that your brain becomes what you train it to become. I believe that this fact is actually your friend rather than some enemy that keeps you running back toward the rat maze once you’ve finally made the cash to escape it. I mentioned in a previous post how we fall back on our habits when we are at our low point and to me this suggests that living a life outside the maze involves forming the right habits to be self sufficient.

What We are Training Our Brains for?

The last 20 years of neuroscience has shown that our brain’s wiring is not static and memory is re-allocatable.  The brain gets really good at associating situations with feelings and creating subroutines for things that happen often.  These are called “neural pathways and they are super important when it comes to training your brain for happiness.”  For example, you start a job on Monday and you have a challenging meeting right before lunch.  Your body amps up to perform and you process this as stressful.  You feel a rumble in your stomach and are hungry and hangry.  The conference room smells of stale coffee.  It turns out that this meeting is every Monday.  Each time you process this situation in the same way your brain re-enforces a neural pathway to associate the room, the smell, the challenge, and the stomach rumble with hunger, stress and angst.  It does this to make you more efficient and better at what it thinks you are trying to do.  This pathway becomes so developed over time that the smell alone or any piece of this neural pathway may trigger all of the rest and you execute it habitually.  This is like the triggers of an addict but it can also be like the performance of a professional athlete. 

Rewire

Take the same conference room scenario but now imagine that you practiced processing the challenge as stimulating and interesting. You process that rumble in your stomach as healthy restraint.  Our brains have been shown to have amazing “neuro-plascticity” meaning that they can rewire over time optimizing different neural pathways.  This is why training your brain is so important.  Having awareness of our own emotions, practicing how we process things to develop pathways that serve how we aspire to feel, and even meditating to practice changing our emotional state of mind on command are worthwhile efforts.  The pathways that you developed working for others to achieve financial independence are likely due for a rewire if you now want to work for yourself to be happy.  With this in mind, let’s talk about Building New Habits: My Race Car