14 Tiny Habits That Make You Emotionally Wealthy
Wealth is a mindset.
arturmarciniecphotos, Maridav | Canva If you’re not yet on the path to emotional wealth, the first step is to learn from those who have already achieved it and start incorporating their habits into your life.
Here are 14 tiny habits that make you emotionally wealthy:
1. Place heavy emphasis on positive impact
Emotionally wealthy people care about creating a positive impact in the world. Whether Christians or not, they embody the famous Biblical principle from Luke 6:38: "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” In other words, they understand that wealth, which is more than just money, is created by providing value to others.
But this is only surface level… The deeper you dig into the mind of an emotionally wealthy person, the more you realize that their desire to impact society positively aligns with their values and gives them a sense of purpose. For example, Andrew Carnegie once said, “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.”
Countless neuroscience studies have shown that giving is an extremely powerful way to create personal joy and improve overall health. By placing heavy emphasis on positive impact, the wealthy are filling themselves with joy and other feel-good emotions because they are helping others have better lives.
2. Create multiple income streams
Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors of all time, once said, “Never depend on a single income. Make investments to create a second source.” This is because market fluctuations are inevitable. No matter how powerful you are, you can’t fight against them. The best you can do is protect yourself from what’s bound to happen. By creating multiple income streams, you give yourself stability. If a mass layoff, like the one that occurred in the tech industry not too long ago, comes around, your financial future is safe, regardless of your fate at the company.
This doesn’t mean you should go around creating a bunch of unrelated businesses. The most effective way, at least in the beginning, to create multiple streams of income is to find different ways to monetize what you already do. For example, if you create content, the next step could be to write for clients while providing affiliate links to various products and then create a course to help people with a specific problem — that alone is three, possibly four if your content creation is monetized through views and clicks, different income streams.
The point here is wealthy people don’t depend on a single income stream. They create multiple to give themselves stability, which enables them to think expansively.
3. See challenges as an opportunity
Kobe Bryant emphasized this worldview when he said, “Everything negative — pressure, challenges — is all an opportunity for me to rise.” Many years prior, Albert Einstein also echoed this sentiment when he was quoted saying, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” In the minds of the emotionally wealthy, obstacles equal growth opportunities.
4. Build genuine and new connections
Everyone knows the saying, “Your network is your net worth,” but only a few live it. According to Harvard psychologist William James, most people stop having first experiences as they approach and surpass the age of 30. In The Principles of Psychology, he wrote, “In most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.”
The point he was making is that most people stop surrounding themselves with new types of people, engaging in new roles, experiencing new environments, and taking on new challenges as they age. As a result, their personality becomes fixed, and their life becomes highly routine and predictable. But even when they do network, it’s usually about “Me, me, me.”
The emotionally wealthy are different. They understand opportunities are provided through people, so they make every effort to build their network to increase their odds of finding their next breakthrough. Note that these swipes at meeting new people aren’t just about what others can do for them; they’re about what they can do for others. Remember what we said about positive impact: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
5. Constantly learn and improve
People without emotional wealth often put an end to their learning when they finish school. They believe they’ve completed the learning required to prepare them for life, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The emotionally wealthy know and understand progress is a byproduct of embracing lifelong learning. Motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar implied this when he said, “If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.” The emotionally wealthy always look for new to better themselves. They never feel like the finished article.
6. Focus on one thing at a time
Being in flow is a major part of becoming successful. The secret to getting and staying in flow is simple: You must define one outcome that you focus on intently without distractions at any given time. People without emotional wealth are often distracted. While they’re working on one thing, they’re simultaneously doing a bunch of other things. In other words, they’re seeking multiple outcomes, which prevents them from going deep on a topic.
When Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were asked by Gates’ father about the most important factor for their success, they both replied, “Focus.” You don’t achieve better-than-average results without the ability to focus. But not just any kind of focus… It’s the ability to focus on one thing. Einstein insinuated this when he said, “It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer.” The wealthy don’t try to multitask; they focus on one thing at a time.
7. Find time to relax
In 2018, LeBron James’ trainer, Mike Mancias, did a rare interview with Tim Ferriss alongside the basketball star. During this interview, he revealed the secret to LeBron James’s astronomical success. Specifically, he told Ferriss, “Recovery never stops.”
The quality of your recovery determines the quality of your productivity. If you don’t recover well, you don’t perform well. But what does recovering well mean? Well, to those without emotional wealth, it means lazing around with your feet up or getting drunk out of your face because you don’t have work the next day.
In contrast, the wealthy optimize their lives to ensure they perform at the highest levels. While they rest, they get better. This could be through reading or a multitude of other activities. They’re so intentional about their rest because they care intently about quality. They want their efforts to be efficient but also effective. They understand the secret to immense growth is focusing on doing less but making their contribution extremely impactful.
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You can’t improve the quality of your contribution while you’re working. Real gains come when you’re rested, but the quality of your rest matters.
8. Play the long game
The emotionally wealthy see today as an investment into their future. They’re always sowing seeds to give themselves the best opportunity to thrive. On the other hand, those without emotional wealth would rather take from their future to have pleasure in the present. Instead of waiting to make purchases that don’t bring them back returns, they buy on credit and use their time to pay it back. They prioritize now over everything else. This keeps them trapped in a cycle of constantly needing to do work they don’t enjoy to meet their responsibilities. The wealthy live for the future. Their goals determine what they must do in the present, so they’re just acting out a script.
9. Avoid unnecessary expenses
You don’t get emotionally wealthy by spending frivolously. Ask any emotionally wealthy person how they got to where they are, and they’ll likely tell you about some decisions that set them up for success. The quality of your decisions determines the health of your bank balance and the size of your net worth. This doesn’t mean they don’t spend on luxuries. If they want something, they will get it because meeting their wants is considered necessary. The difference is how they get it. While they may also use credit, odds are they’ll first use it to purchase a revenue-generating asset, allowing them to grow their worth and earn an income.
10. Study other successful people
American novelist Brad Thor once said, “Success leaves clues, and if you sow the same seeds, you'll reap the same rewards.” This is exactly why successful people study other successful people. They want to learn how others approach various problems so that they can reproduce similar results for themselves. Those without emotional wealth would rather hate. They make excuses for why people are successful rather than learning what they did.
11. Acquire mentors
Those without emotional wealth often repel people who could potentially help them. They think they know what they need, so they look for handouts rather than offering value. American writer and professor Isaac Asimov referred to this when he said, “People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
The emotionally wealthy, on the other hand, know their perspective is limited. They seek out people who are better than them to expand their minds. And as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions."
12. Build a strong team
Nobody on the planet has climbed the mountain of success on their own. In the words of Charles Darwin, “It’s the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” The wealthy know and understand this fact — even if they allow people to refer to them as “self-made.”
Those without emotional wealth prefer to do everything themselves. This is not only impractical, it’s also virtually impossible. There are not enough hours in a day or years in a lifetime to become good enough at all facets of life. You need people to help you. By building a strong team, you create the foundation to thrive.
13. Change things they don’t like
Emotional wealth is the result of an exchange of value. To have something of value to give, you must become sensitive to problems. This is why emotionally wealthy people never complain — they just fix what they don’t like. There’s value in a solution. If you spot a problem without a seamless solution, there’s a chance someone else has encountered the same issue. Solving the problem helps you create an offering while complaining does nothing to help the situation.
14. Get paid for results instead of time
There is not a single emotionally wealthy person on the planet who optimizes to be paid for their time. Being paid for your time limits how much you can earn. There are only 24 hours in a day, and you cannot physically work for all of them. You need leverage to create wealth. One form of leverage is building a team of people better than you to run tasks that don’t have the highest impact. The problem with this is it can be quite costly. Another form of leverage you can start without significant upfront costs is getting paid for your results. When your compensation is tied directly to the outcomes you deliver, you’re incentivized to maximize your productivity to achieve desired outcomes.
Kurtis Pykes is a professional writer and author of the free e-book Don’t Just Set Goals, Build Systems. He's had articles featured on Medium, Nvidia blog, DataCamp, and neptune.ai, among many others.