My Decade-Long Journey To Five Million

The Danger of The “Either/Or” Mindset

Go to any forums or blogs about salary, wealth building, or personal finance, and I can almost guarantee that you’ll see people with this “either/or” mentality making comments like these:

“He might be rich, but he may not be happy.”
“What’s the use of having a lot of money if you have no life?”
“I have to backstab and play politics, which I don’t like, but I have to do this for my career and wealth.”
“She may be rich and powerful but no man would want her!”
“I value my health. I won’t destroy it just for money.”
… and gazillion other examples.

Oh well geez. Set a higher standard for yourself, will ya? How about aiming to become rich AND happy? How about aiming to have lots of money AND lots of life? Let’s see, Donald Trump. Richard Branson. Heck, Hugh Hefner! Just 3 guys who have more money than 99.999% of the Internet users (including me), and have more “happening” lives than 99.9999999% of the Internet users (definitely including me). How about becoming rich AND healthy?

It’s weird. People have no problem imagining happy AND healthy. People have no problem imagining “having a life” (whatever that means), AND keeping one’s health. People have no problem imagining being a super backstabber in the office AND being a loving mother at home.

But throw MONEY into the equation, and suddenly everything is flipped from “AND” to “EITHER/OR”. Suddenly you can’t have money AND be healthy. You can’t have money AND have a life. You can only pick one! Something is really screwed up with our social programming, I think.

I say that setting our expectation on “either/or” is really shortchanging ourselves.

Imagine what will happen if a guy has the belief that to become rich, one MUST be a mean backstabbing machine? In the end either we’ll get (a) a guy who’s rich but hated by everybody because he backstabs his way to the top, or (b) a nice guy who never becomes rich because he doesn’t want to be a backstabber. I have to admit that as long as the guy is not me, I prefer option (b). But he’s really shortchanging himself, don’t you think?

IMHO, it’s really important to start with the right mindset. Wealth? Happiness? Heck. Go for both!

(Image courtesy of That Guy Who’s Going Places @ flickr)

Roddy:
September 17th, 2008 at 11:24 pm

Hey, thanks for using the photo and leaving credit. Good luck on your quest for money, I look forward to checking in on your blog in the future. I like the AND mindset you keep.