It's a curious phenomenon: imagine someone who has built a fortune from the ground up, then loses it all in an instant. More often than not, they find their way back to prosperity. Why is this? The answer may lie not in a secret formula, but in a distinct way of thinking and acting. True wealth isn't just about relentless work or chasing profits; it’s about clarity—understanding what you do, when, and with whom. Let's delve into some guiding principles that illuminate this path, drawing from profound insights on wealth and happiness.

Discovering Your Authentic Blueprint: The Power of Uniqueness

One of life's most significant pursuits is finding your unique calling. Often, we're pushed to make career decisions when we're young and still figuring things out, a time when our understanding of ourselves may still be nascent. This can lead to years spent in roles that feel like a poor fit, potentially leading to dissatisfaction. Even if a change is made, how can one be sure it's not just trading one form of discontent for another?

The key is to understand the intricate interplay between what you genuinely want to do, how to build a meaningful career, what you truly enjoy, and what might bring substantial income. Focusing on just one of these aspects is seldom enough. It's the combination of these factors that crafts a truly unique specialist, someone whose work is not just a job but an authentic expression of their capabilities and passions.

Consider these reflections to uncover your uniqueness:

• Authentic Interest Over Fleeting Trends: Don't chase careers solely because they are popular or seem profitable at the moment. Genuine interest is the enduring fuel for excellence and perseverance. How can true success be achieved in something that doesn't ignite your innate curiosity and enthusiasm?

• Focus on Core Life Goals: Remember what truly matters in the grand scheme of your life. It's easy to get distracted by trivialities, but concentrating on your significant aspirations provides direction and purpose.

• Recall Your Innate Talents: Think back to your younger years. What activities did you engage in with genuine enthusiasm and relative ease, perhaps without even considering them "skills"? Others might have noticed your aptitude. Maybe you possess a natural talent for sales, a flair for cooking, a gift for music or languages. Are you meticulously detail-oriented, or do you have a knack for understanding social dynamics and communication (what some might casually call "gossiping")? Even traits that might initially seem like disadvantages can be powerful assets in the right context. For instance, an ability to gather and eloquently share timely information could make for a successful journalist or analyst. Your uniqueness is your foundational strength; to build lasting prosperity and fulfillment, first find, acknowledge, and embrace it.

Work as Play: The Joyful Pursuit

Many people dream of retirement as an escape—a chance to finally rest and stop working. This longing often stems from jobs that are tiring, unengaging, or even detrimental to overall well-being. But what if work felt less like an obligatory chore and more like an enjoyable, engaging game? If you genuinely love what you do, retirement ceases to be the ultimate end goal.

What does "retirement" truly mean to you? Is it simply ceasing all forms of work, or is it having the freedom and resources to spend your free time doing what you love most? Let's say you would like to travel more. If you can devise a way to make money by traveling, effectively making travel your work, then the conventional notion of retiring from that life becomes irrelevant because your work itself is fulfilling.

There are different paths to financial freedom. One common approach is to save up enough money so that passive income covers all living expenses. Another is to drastically minimize expenses, thereby reducing the income needed. A third, and arguably more fulfilling, path is to do what you genuinely love. When passion drives your work, money, while still important, often becomes a secondary consideration to the enjoyment and satisfaction derived from the activity itself. You're not just "working"; you are deeply engaged and enjoying yourself, as if on an indefinite, purposeful vacation, even if others perceive it as labor. The trap of anti-sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow should be avoided. What matters is that you live today in a way that you truly want, instead of perpetually putting off your desires until the moment when it will supposedly be financially possible. Perhaps you should not work just to pay endless bills. It is important to love your job and want to do it, not merely to lay down straw for a tomorrow that may never come as imagined. Enjoy life today.

The Strength in "No": Making Deliberate Choices

Consider a long-term relationship, perhaps spanning five years, and plans are underway for marriage. Everything seems to be fine on the surface, and you feel you should be happy and eagerly looking forward to the wedding. But suddenly, you catch yourself thinking that you don't want to get married at all, or at least, not to this person or at this time. What should one do in such a situation? If you are gnawed by such profound doubts, the answer is often obvious, though perhaps difficult: the wedding, or the commitment, needs to be postponed or reconsidered. If you are riddled with doubts, you shouldn't proceed blindly. This principle of heeding strong internal resistance is also true for other significant areas of life.

Is it worth getting this particular job? Maybe buy this specific piece of real estate or move to another city? Is it wise to get involved with this person or project? If you can't make a clear, resounding "yes" decision, the answer is often "no," at least for now. Life will open its doors when the right moment and opportunity align. If you can't get one job, you will find there are a thousand other vacancies, hundreds of places where you can move if you want. You meet new people throughout your life. You can acquire real estate and choose any hobby from a multitude of options. But your choice should ideally be well thought out and deeply resonant.

Let's say you want to start investing. A carefully planned strategy, born from research and clear decision-making, will help you find the best solution that can generate income from year to year. The research phase and the actual decision-making process are the most important. However, in youth, many are in a hurry to get through it quickly: marry the first person they meet, choose the first job that comes along, get any place to live. Who to marry and what career to choose are profoundly important decisions that everyone must make for themselves. They will influence, if not determine, many aspects of your future quality of life, well-being, and overall satisfaction. Take as much time as you genuinely need to make such decisions. When making decisions, the brain often makes predictions; it thinks if 'a' happened in the past, therefore 'a' will happen in the future. For example, "The last time I went to New York, I got robbed. I don't want to go to New York anymore." This is a potentially flawed way to make a decision, based on circumstances that might be too specific and misleading. Create good mental priorities instead. Let them be your life guides—things to remember when the decision-making process is hazy. For example, one of them might be: "My long-term, intrinsic goals are more important than the fleeting opinions of others." If you have to choose between buying a new suit for your brother's wedding or saving money for a trip you've been dreaming about, you will know exactly which choice is the right one for you, based on your established priorities. This is a simple example, but you can use such mental models for more complex decisions.

Imagine a woman who has a mental priority: "Spending time alone is more important for my well-being than constantly being with family." Why, then, should such a woman choose a man who desperately wants to become a father and envisions a large, bustling family life? Such people, if their priorities are deeply misaligned, perhaps should not become parents together, because with the advent of a child, personal time can become scarce, and ultimately, both mother and father, and unfortunately the child, may suffer. The separation of such a couple, while potentially painful, might still help to avoid huge disappointments and quarrels in the future. It is often better to make a difficult decision now than to suffer for an entire lifetime. The same applies to career decisions. If your parents want you to become a lawyer, but you think otherwise, this is a difficult decision, and it will likely be painful to assert your path. Or maybe you want to drop out of school to open your own business, which you have long dreamed of. This is also a difficult and responsible step, but if the decision turns out to be right and corresponds to your long-term career plan, then just do it. When you postpone making a decision, you thereby postpone potential suffering for later. Learn to say "no" to what you do not want in all areas of life: career, relationships, nutrition. Do not look for the easiest ways. Think about long-term benefits in the future.

Understanding Your True Value: Time and Self-Worth

Rich people usually do not cook every meal themselves, unless it's a passion. Cooking is labor-intensive, requires certain skills, and considerable preparation. You need to decide on the choice of dish, buy ingredients (desirably keeping the freshness of the products at the best price), wash them, plus the cooking process itself. Rich people value their time immensely and often prefer to eat ready-made food or hire help. They cook only when they genuinely want to, for pleasure, not necessity.

You should value yourself and your time. This is true for life in general and also in relation to finances. A rich person realizes the value of their time and will not waste it frivolously. They concentrate on what is really important and filter out unnecessary trifles. Someone might say that buying ready-made food is an expensive pleasure, or even that hiring a personal chef is an extravagance. But it all depends on how much you earn per hour. If your hourly rate is, for example, 50 monetary units and a cook costs 60, then outsourcing cooking means you will work at a loss in that specific exchange. Conversely, if their rate is less than yours, then you will be in the black by delegating. Let's say you earn 100 monetary units per hour and the cook is 50. If you decide to cook yourself, you will effectively lose money from potential earnings. If you spent two hours preparing dinner, you lost 200 units of potential earnings, whereas you could have used a ready-made solution or delegated. Always consider your hourly rate and the approximate time required for a specific task. How quickly can I do it? How much money could you earn if you delegate this matter to someone else whose specialization it might be?

Another important point is status in society. How do we understand whether a person has status or not? What is it, fundamentally? It is often merely the opinion of others. Your neighbor buys an expensive car, and suddenly you feel you definitely need a cool car too; you feel you cannot afford to "fall flat on your face" in the eyes of others. So, you might buy an expensive car, but you pay for status; you literally buy other people's opinions about yourself with the hope that "now society will appreciate me, look at my car, let everyone see." This concern about status can be so absurd that many would prefer to take out loans for a new phone and a cool car, only to live in poverty, just to seem like a status person. Status is exclusively the desires of our ego. As long as you allow the ego to command your actions, you will not be truly free. It is important to work on creating wealth and not just the appearance of status.

Cultivating "Luck": Preparation Meets Opportunity

Are rich people often accused of what, in fact? That they were just very lucky. Sometimes this is true, for example, in cases of blind luck, when something happened that was completely beyond your control, like winning the lottery. But there is another, more predictable kind of luck. This is when you have gained enough experience and knowledge that you know where to look for your "luck," or how to recognize it when it appears. Let's say you come across a great investment opportunity in real estate, but if you don't understand anything about real estate, you won't be able to recognize your luck or act upon it effectively. It's important to gain experience and develop expertise.

If you become the best in your business or field, "luck" will often not keep you waiting. You won't even need to tirelessly seek your opportunities, because they will start to find you. This is a pathway to more guaranteed success. For example, imagine you are the best deep-sea diving specialist in the world. You are braver than other divers and are able to dive deeper than anyone else. Now, suppose someone finds a sunken ship with treasure, but no one can get to it. What "luck" that there is such a specialist as you, willing to be paid a generous fee for the dive. Of course, this is an extreme example, but it shows well the difference between blind luck and the kind of luck you should aim to cultivate. The first person was blindly lucky to find the treasure, but the chances of such a find are minuscule. You, on the other hand, created your own luck by becoming the best deep-sea diver. This is the only kind of luck that, according to some successful individuals, we should reliably count on. When they say that rich people are lucky, in 99 percent of cases, they were simply prepared to take advantage of a situation. That is, they developed a strategy, gained skills, and built a network. Whether it is luck or not, this is how you increase your fortune.

The Power of Leverage: Multiplying Your Efforts

Even if you have unique knowledge in your field, the author of these ideas does not recommend getting a job solely as an employee if substantial wealth creation is a primary goal. Why? Let's say you work as a doctor in a clinic from Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 5 pm, and earn, say, a certain amount per hour. Let's see how soon you can get rich in this job, even if you work hard and work without vacation, 6 days a week for 10 hours. Your annual income will be a certain figure. Of this amount, you can put aside, with great discipline, perhaps half. While this might be a very decent sum, leading to a comfortable life, consider the trade-offs. Firstly, you will likely not be able to work on such a demanding schedule all the time without burnout; you will spend most of your life at work. Secondly, such high hourly rates are not universally available. If you receive a more realistic amount per hour, you will need an incredible amount of time and effort to get rich through direct labor alone.

So, even if you have a well-paid job, it will not be able to make you a truly wealthy person in the sense of having significant financial independence if you dreamed of this position solely to feel satisfaction, that is wonderful. But you might need to adjust expectations about massive wealth accumulation through that path alone. Rich people often choose a different way of earning money. You cannot get truly rich by renting out your time directly. By doing so, you essentially become a financial slave to the clock, no matter who you work as—a doctor, lawyer, or teacher—you exchange your finite time for money. This is what many people do, but it can be an unreasonable use of time if wealth is the aim because its quantity is very limited. And also, do not forget that time is the most valuable resource.

Well, let's say you found a way to automate your work process and delegated your duties to a robot or a system. Now it works for you 24/7. Even if it is an excellent "employee" who does its job impeccably, people will generally not pay a machine significantly more than a living person for the same output, even if the robot brings you a steady income. This alone might not make you super rich, but still, it is better than working hard 10 hours a day yourself. Not so? In this case, you can get several machines or systems that will do the work for you. "Well, it is impossible to hire a robot that would work for me," you might say. Well, it is possible, and this "robot" is right in front of your nose: the internet is your financial leverage.

Let's figure out what financial leverage is. Financial leverage, or simply leverage, shows how borrowed funds or external factors can affect a company's profit or an individual's earning potential. It's the use of equity and borrowed capital, attracting labor, and creating a product to increase profits. For example, hired workers represent the oldest form of financial leverage: you use people's labor. This type of leverage can be unstable and disorderly if not managed well. The second type is capital investment: you have your own funds that you invest in a project. The internet is a relatively new type of financial leverage. Its advantage is that it has almost no restrictions on scale. You do not necessarily have to hire numerous employees to implement your project. You do not need to get additional permission or beat off the thresholds of bureaucratic authorities in the same way as traditional businesses. This is a virtual space. If you create your own software or media tools, they will work for you around the clock. This is the real definition of wealth: business and assets that make money while you sleep. For example, you want to publish your e-book. You will have to spend time and perhaps money on creating and marketing it. But as soon as the book is released and gains traction, your marginal costs for each additional sale are reduced to almost zero. You will then primarily receive profit from sales.

The Foundation of Habits: Structuring for Success

On holidays and weekends, you can afford not to plan anything specific. The only thing you might plan is to "do nothing." So, you woke up, and the day goes by, perhaps in vain. Even if you lie on the couch all day and stare at your phone, by the end of the day, you will likely feel mentally and physically unwell. To prevent this, it is important to have at least some kind of routine, that is, a set of positive habits. The habit of falling asleep and waking up at the same time, having breakfast, doing physical exercise, working. Even fun and relaxation should ideally become a habit, integrated into your life rather than erratically pursued. And for all these actions, you need to set aside a certain time. Planning the day, even loosely, makes life easier and saves time.

Habits are very important. We are, of course, talking about good habits. Unfortunately, bad habits also tend to take root in the mind. Over the years, you acquire a whole set of different habits, and they collectively affect your well-being. You get used to the stores and the goods you buy. You get used to driving your own car or using public transport. You adapt to the place where you live, to life values, and develop eating habits. Instead of unconsciously layering habits one after another, stop and ask yourself if this habit brings any benefit. When did you acquire this habit? How old were you? Who or what influenced it to take root? Is there any actual benefit from it now? Some habits can be quite poisonous to life. For example, you are used to complaining about everything and talking only about problems. Maybe this habit comes from childhood when you tried to attract your parents' attention in this way. Think about it: has it made you happier? What effect does the habit have on your health? Does it bring you closer to your goals? Cut off habits that are harmful. Often, they are performed thoughtlessly, automatically. You don't even suspect that you have fallen into the trap of a bad habit. Maybe you are prone to impulsive shopping, buy a lot of junk, and don't know what to do with it later. Or you are used to shopping in the same store because you just don't want to look for an alternative; it is convenient for you. You are used to keeping money in a savings account or deposit and are afraid to consider other ways of investing. You think that more work will bring more money, but you think so only because, perhaps, your parents said so. Challenge and consciously choose your habits.

Lifelong Learning: The Indispensable Skill of Reading

In order to succeed in something, you must learn new skills and combine them effectively with what you already know. Sometimes, this may be specific knowledge in demand in your field, but there is also universal knowledge that will be useful to everyone. These are basic skills compatible with any type of activity. For example, knowledge of elementary mathematics is needed by everyone. It will not be superfluous, and an understanding of basic economics can be very beneficial. What other skills can be useful in everyday life? Knowledge of psychology, marketing, or computer science. Such knowledge is universal and can sometimes be more important than highly specialized skills. Basic English will likely be more useful to you globally than the ability to write poetry (unless poetry is your calling). Elementary mathematics is much more practical for daily life than trigonometry for most people.

How does one acquire a set of basic, foundational knowledge? By reading books. Yes, yes. Therefore, first of all, you need to learn to love reading, or at least appreciate its value. If you like science fiction, for God's sake, read for your own pleasure. But these books alone, while enjoyable, might not solve your practical problems or build specific skills. If you want to learn something, choose a topic. Want to improve your sales skills? Read a couple of books on this topic. Not confident in yourself? Read the necessary literature, maybe a biography of someone who went through the same thing as you and overcame it. While reading, another crucial skill develops: the ability to learn. Today, it is not so much what you know that is important, but how quickly and effectively you can learn the necessary skill. Think about the career of your grandparents or even your parents. They might have studied in college or university, after which they were given a fixed place of work where they could potentially work for 30 or 50 years, and they might have been satisfied with that. But today, life is going at a frantic pace. Professions are becoming obsolete, people are losing jobs and qualifications, and labor is being replaced by robots or simply becoming unclaimed. Who knows what will happen in the labor market in about 30 years? That is why it is important to never stop learning.

The Ultimate Aim: Peace and Fulfillment

So, there is no sadder picture than a person who strived for wealth but, having become rich, lost all interest in life. Everyone strives for harmony; this is the ultimate goal of any person—to find inner peace. So, do not chase money blindly. Ask yourself: Do you like what you are doing today? I hope everything in this exploration was insightful. True wealth encompasses not just financial abundance, but a profound sense of peace and fulfillment in the life one has built.

References:

• Jorgenson, Eric. (2020). The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness. Magrathea Publishing.
  This book is a compilation of Naval Ravikant's insights on wealth creation and achieving happiness. It serves as the foundational source for the principles discussed, covering topics such as finding unique skills, the nature of work, decision-making, leverage, and the importance of learning. The ideas are interwoven throughout the text.

• Clear, James. (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery.
  This publication provides a practical framework for understanding how habits are formed and how to systematically cultivate beneficial routines while eliminating detrimental ones. It directly supports the principle of establishing good habits for a more effective and fulfilling life, particularly relevant to the section on "The Foundation of Habits." Key concepts are detailed in its exploration of the Four Laws of Behavior Change.

• Dweck, Carol S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books.
  Dweck's research on fixed versus growth mindsets underpins the importance of continuous learning, resilience in the face of challenges, and the belief in one's ability to develop skills. This aligns with the article's emphasis on discovering uniqueness, creating one's "luck" through preparation, and the necessity of lifelong learning. The initial chapters (1-3) lay out the core distinctions between these mindsets and their impact on achievement and personal development.