The reason most young people are not striving for super levels of success… and how you can start.

If you’re just starting out in life as a young person, can you honestly tell me how much you know about personal success and becoming wealthy? What did the school system actually teach you about becoming a millionaire or did they even talk about it with you? Do you know how rich people think and the strategies they use to get even richer?

Andrew Carnegie, the 1800s steel magnate, had his friend Napoleon Hill dedicate 20 years of his life to write a book about personal success. Carnegie gave Hill access to 500 of the richest and most successful men of the gilded age to find out what the secret to becoming very successful was and publish it in a book. The book, Think and Grow Rich, was then published in 1937.  After its publication, Carnegie wanted the book to be required study in every school in America and no student should be able to graduate until they had mastered all 13 principles of personal success in this new book.

They ran into one problem trying to get it into the schools. This is why you have probably never heard of this book up until now.

I’m not saying anything bad about your schools and teachers are some of the hardest working people in America but the fact remains, the vast majority of students graduating today do not have the minds that are magnetized for super levels of success. This short article is geared to find out why and how you can start thinking about and learning about what they never taught you in school.

You’ve heard about schools being a NFL or NBA factory where the highest percentage of professional sports players come out of these schools. But where are the millionaire factories? You know, the schools where a high percentage of students become business leaders and millionaires.

I would argue that most high schools in the US are not priding themselves on being the “Millionaire factory” for a few simple reasons. We will go over these reasons and in exploring these reasons, maybe you can discover something that might help you.

1. Who is going to teach super success to kids?

I don’t mean to sound harsh here but honestly, how are you going to learn the highest levels of finance and risk taking from people who have safe and secure government jobs? It just doesn’t work. There are no classes that teach kids how to take big risks and strive for spectacular results. People on a salary are not going to instruct young people how to work 80 hours a week without getting paid to have a chance at hitting it big.

2. Equal outcomes  

We all know about equal opportunity and the pursuit of happiness but unfortunately those concepts have been watered down to social justice and a whole host of new ideas that demonize the idea of success. Many young people now are fighting for equal outcomes rather than focusing on what will actually give them the desired outcome they want. They are putting in more effort trying to make it fair than putting in effort to outwork their competition.  

3. Easier pathways to average and mediocre.

This is probably the number one reason most people will never drive a Ferrari and have a multimillion dollar home. It’s just easier not to. If you drew a map of the direction in life a young person could take for their life there would be a fork in the road. One direction would have 10,000 or more pathways to the average, mediocre, and ordinary lifestyle and there would be only about 20 or so pathways to superior levels of financial success. Average is just easier.

4. Easier pathways to victimization.     

If you did not come from a wealthy family, it’s going to be very easy to say that you were dealt an unfair hand when it comes to being successful. So many young people today think that it was privilege and generational advantage, or being in the right place at the right time that gives the most successful among us their start in life. Being a victim of the classes is now becoming a social credit score. There has become a sense of virtue with being a victim where people rant that they have it harder than everyone else.  

5. Worry what others think and say

If you were absolutely honest with yourself, how worried are you about what other people think or say about you. I would argue that while you might not worry about it as much as others, but I’m sure you do think about it. It’s natural to worry about what others think and say. We are social creators and we want to be liked by our friends and the people we know. Worrying about what others think or say can be a paralyzing feeling that holds most people back from fulfilling their dreams.

6. Believing talent is a real thing

Do you think that you could ever be a Michael Jordan or an Elon Musk? Most of you probably don’t think you could because you think they are talented. I hate to tell you this but the idea of talent is a poison in your mind. I would be offended if anyone called me talented. I would much rather be seen as significant as a result of my exceedingly hard work and fearlessness of risk. It would be a far better complement to be known more for consistency than talent or being lucky. By the way, you don’t know MJ’s or Elon’s name because they were talented, you know their names because they were consistent. They are what we call extreme winners. We will discuss the idea of extreme winners in later articles.

I could list many more reasons but I think you can see that just these 6 reasons are why most people are not financial superpowers. Look that list over again and see where you can identify yourself in them. If you can, find a way to extinguish it out of your life. Here at New Money, we strive for the good life. That’s why we are called “the good life magazine.” I want you to see that the six concepts listed above are keeping you out of the good life.

As the founder and chief editor of New Money, I want you to know that I was just like most of you. I was from a middle class home and had no financial advantage to start becoming successful. I was a college dropout and was only making a mere living when I got started. The one thing that led me to becoming very financially successful was not a lucky break or timing. It wasn’t some new advantage that came into my life but rather the things that I got out of my life.

The most significant thing about successful people is far more about what they are not than what they are. They are not afraid to learn something new, they do not accept average or mediocre, they are not victims, they are not worried about what others think, and they know talent is not a real thing. Once a person can remove these things from their life, it makes room for the greatest things life has to offer.

Start by removing these 6 things out of your life and I guarantee you, you will begin to see something much better than you are seeing now. It’s only the beginning for you once you have learned this. Much more will be headed your way so keep reading New Money and get ready to be the first millionaire in your family!

~ Daniel J Bockman

Founder, editor and chief.