To Get Rich, You Must Have A Compulsion For It
Most people want to be wealthy. They’ll talk about it. Yearn for it. Maybe even start down the path to try and obtain it.
But far fewer need to be wealthy - carrying a compulsion with them that keeps them up at night. If you want to be rich, desire isn’t enough. Compulsion is.
You Must Be Certain Wealth Is What You Really Want.
Wealth will not bring you happiness. Or creative fulfillment, or a clear mind and healthy body. It will not bring you loving relationships. It will not bring you peace.
Wealth gives you only one thing: freedom. If freedom is what you want, becoming independently wealthy is the only way to do it.
That’s what Charlie Munger - partner to Warren Buffett - understood and longed for early in his career:
“Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris – I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it.”
You have to know exactly what you’re after, and why. Because the road is to riches is long and hard. And chasing it for the wrong reasons will leave you desperately unhappy.
The late Felix Dennis spends the first quarter of his book, How To Get Rich trying to convince you not to try. He has a dire warning for readers who are only half-in:
“It is my hope that this book will cause you to consider very carefully whether you are truly driven by inner demons to be rich. If you are not, then my earnest and heartfelt advice to you is: do not on any account make the attempt. What are riches anyway, compared to health or the peace of mind that even a modicum of contentment brings in its wake? In and of itself, great wealth very rarely, if ever, breeds contentment.”
Again, money will not make you happy. If you are looking for peace and contentment, it won’t help. For that, you must look inside yourself, not outside.
Getting rich will be the hardest thing you ever do. And it will take the better part of a decade or two to do it. “Wanting it” isn’t enough - everyone wants to be rich. But very few are ready to put their careers, personal lives, finances, and relationships on the line to do it.
Here’s Felix again:
“Only you can know if you are willing to tread the narrow, lonely road to riches. No one else can know. No one else can tell you either to do it or to refrain from the attempt. When the going gets tough… all that can sustain you is a fierce compulsion to succeed at any price.”
The desire for wealth isn’t enough. Compulsion is.
Wishing To Be Rich Isn’t Enough.
Life is a single-player game with competitive elements. Everyone “wants” to be rich and many are playing for it. But few win.
One reason for this is that there are finite resources in the world. To win those resources, you need to stand out. Here’s Naval Ravikant explaining this in How To Get Rich: Every Episode:
“You’re not going to get that unless you really want it. The entire world wants it, and the entire world is working hard at it. It is competitive to some extent. It’s a positive sum game—but there are competitive elements to it, because there’s a finite amount of resources right now in society. To get the resources to do what you want, you have to stand out.”
A positive sum game just means you are adding to the total pool of resources to everyone’s benefit by playing the game. It’s not win-lose, it’s win-win.
But it’s still highly competitive. You can’t just “wish” to be rich - that’s not enough. You must be willing to stick your neck out for it.
“Desire is insufficient. Compulsion is mandatory.”
If you are going to get rich, it must be the only thing you want to do. It must be your only compulsion, and everything you do is in service of that compulsion.
The worst thing you could do to yourself is to start the quest fooling yourself. You will be worse off pursuing it half-heartedly than not pursuing it at all.
Here’s Felix again:
“The cardinal error is to begin such a quest in the vague belief that you would like to be rich…Wishing for or desiring something is futile without an inner compulsion to achieve it. Such lack of compulsion, if not frankly acknowledged, can lead to great personal unhappiness. We have all met deeply unhappy souls muddling along in professions or careers for which they are patently unsuited.”
Getting rich is not the most important thing in the world. Spend time on your health. Spend time with your family. Spend time cultivating peace of mind.
But, when you’re not doing those things, and you’ve chosen this path, you should be trying to get rich.
Wealth Brings Freedom. Nothing more.
There’s one quote that I chose very purposefully for the footer of Wealest. If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you’ll see it. It’s a quote from Naval Ravikant that reads:
“When you’re finally wealthy, you’ll realize it wasn’t what you were seeking in the first place.”
I made this quote a permanent part of every page on Wealest as a reminder to myself that wealth creation will not bring peace. It will only give you freedom of your time, and it’s up to you to do something meaningful with it.
That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned since quitting my full-time job to work for myself. Freedom of time is wonderful, but you have to use it to create meaning in your life. Those who forget that will be bitterly disappointed when wealth doesn’t bring happiness.
As Aristotle writes: “The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”
That “something else” is freedom. And that’s what I’m after.
Keep going.