“Making money is not a thing that you do – it’s a skill that you learn.”
Naval Ravikant
Many wealthy people say that making money is a skill anyone can learn. They claim that if they were dropped in the middle of a strange city with no money that, as long as they spoke the local language, they would in 5 – 10 years be wealthy again.
I first came across this idea when I was starting my own business. I was 2 months in, things were tough, clients weren’t knocking my door down (in fact, they didn’t seem to know had a door) and I was working my arse off. During this period, I read every book and listened to every podcast on how to make a business successful. When you’re in the position I was in, hearing someone tell you that making money is a learnable skill is infuriating. Especially when you realise it’s not a skill you possess.
And the more I tried to understand the skill sets required the more frustrated I became. I started believing that everyone else knew the secret was to financial success, and they just weren’t telling me. It was as if there was a secret society which I desperately wanted to join, and I didn’t know the special handshake.
However, I now realise that these wealthy people were right. Being able to make money is a skill, but not in the way I thought.
It’s about how you see the world, dummy.
I have written at length about where we focus our attention and how we interpret the world. Most of us don’t realise how little of the world we experience. Neuroscientist, Beau Lotto, for instance states that only 10 percent of what we see actually comes from our eyes. Our brains supply the other 90 percent of the information and then present us with a full, if slightly distorted, picture.
In other words, we don’t experience the world, we interpret it and then supplement it with our own narrative. Our brains take in a small amount of information that’s around us, and then makes up the rest. And in that picture our beliefs, fears, hopes and biases play a huge role in how the world appears to us.
Now, returning to the point of wealth creation being a skill. What I have come to understand is that the skill to making money isn’t so much about the ‘how’, but more about the ‘what’. The critical skill to making money is seeing and being able to identify the opportunities to make money.
“the thing I got really good at was looking at businesses and figuring out the point of maximum leverage to actually create wealth and capture some of that created wealth.”
Naval Ravikant
We all see the world through the filter of our beliefs and interests. People who have learnt the skill of making money have done so by seeing the world through the lens of financial opportunity. Similarly, artists speak at length about having to see the world, and it is in how they see that they’re able to make art.
What we focus our attention on; the world we see dictates how we live.
What do you see?
I have spent a lot of time recently trying to understand what I see when I look at the world. And I have come to realise that I don’t see or interpret the world with only one lens. On some days, the world looks full of possibilities, and I believe that I can achieve anything. On other days I am very aware of the constraints the world imposes on me while also being acutely sensitive to my own limitations.
And, I have also come to understand that the way I see myself and my abilities are tainted by my state-of-mind; most days I’m invincible, occasionally I’m heartbreakingly mediocre, and on a few rare days I’m utterly hopeless. I’m having a good day today.
This is the paradox in the whole equation. How we see ourselves, our futures, and our opportunities are, at the end of the day, completely under our control. Who we are, the world we exist in, it is all ours to manipulate and mould. However, our ability to influence the world requires two things. The first is learning to see the world in the way that benefits us. This requires that we train ourselves to identify the opportunities and details others miss. Specifically, those opportunities which will allow us to get closer to the lives we need to lead.
Secondly, before we train ourselves in seeing the world in a way that benefits us, we need to know ourselves. Most of us spend our lives creating personal realities that make us miserable. This is because we haven’t taken the time to understand who we are. We need learn what we genuinely want from life before we build our skills and start constructing our lives. Once those two pieces are in place, I truly believe anything is possible.
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