How to Choose Your Personal Success
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First Edition: January 2015 ISBN: 978-1-61268-046-0
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How to Choose Your Personal Success
HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR PERSONAL SUCCESS If you’re like most people, you like your work … but deep down, you know you’d rather be doing something else. Maybe you feel trapped because of family obligations. Maybe you’re worried about the economy, or you’re playing it safe so you can retire someday. Or maybe you’re just like so many people who don’t realize they’ve been programmed to get up every day, go to work, collect that paycheck, go home and do it again the next day. But what if, instead of working for money — and if you’ve read Rich Dad Poor Dad, you know the rich don’t work for money — but what if you were working for meaning, for a mission that makes the world better? That’s what this book is about. We’re going to talk about why you feel trapped, what you can do to change that feeling (maybe without even changing jobs), and why this is so important not just in your life but in the lives of others, too.
OLD THINKING MEETS NEW I was in Baltimore recently and walked into a kind of high-end men’s store. There was this sales clerk, just the kind you’d expect in a store like this — older, kind of stuffy, running the place. As I walked in, this group of young kids came running in. They’re with a network marketing company, and they start asking me questions. Their eyes are bright; they’re happy because they’re going for their dream. They have a 4
thing called a “RAT” pack, which stands for Retired At Twenty. They’re going for it. Now, the sales clerk doesn’t like these kids. Their hair is pink. They have piercings; they’re wearing strange shoes. The clerk — who isn’t really that old; he’s younger than I am — walks up to the kids and shakes his ngers at them, saying, “You kids better shape up or you won’t get a job. I’d
never hire you.” All I could think was, holy mackerel! I’d hate to be that guy. I’d much rather be those kids, so full of enthusiasm and dreams, than this clerk. Which type of person are you? Are you stuck in a rut, thinking you have to follow the old pattern of how it’s always been done? Or are you striking out with a bold vision of what your life can be, and what it can mean?
HOW WE GOT HERE It’s not your fault if you think the cycle of “get up/go to work/collect paycheck/repeat” is normal. It’s largely a product of our school system. My poor dad was a head of education, and I didn’t score many points with him by continually asking, “Why don’t you teach us about money at school?” He could never give me an answer. So that became my mission as a young kid. I said, “OK, I’m going to nd out why they
don’t teach us about money at school.” What I found out is that what they’re teaching is to keep your nose to the grindstone, working and not thinking about anything but that paycheck. One hundred years ago, schools were focused on turning farm kids into factory workers. The modern-day version is to turn them into coders. Nowhere in there do the schools teach nancial education; in fact, many think that’s beneath them.
Our schools have churned out workers who don’t think past the next paycheck. But that’s only part of the story. Let’s look at this situation through the lens of psychology.
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REWARD & PUNISHMENT Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as modern psychology was dening itself,
there was an assumption that to understand behavior, we had to look at rewards and punishments — which were usually material things. In the lab, rats will press levers for food. They’ll keep pushing those levers if it leads to more food (reward), but as soon as scientists give them a shock (punishment), they’ll stop. The experts took that behavior and turned it into a model for how humans act. It became the stance that many economists took: that if you want people to do something, you just have to create the right incentives. Nothing else matters. For a lot of people, those incentives take the form of a paycheck, benets, and a
401(k). But that’s not the full story. It’s not just about the rewards — otherwise people wouldn’t stay in jobs they don’t enjoy. There’s a thing called negative bias that comes into play with decision-making. To put it simply, losses hurt more than gains help. It feels much worse to lose $10 than it feels good to gain $10. It’s a risk to change jobs. There’s no guarantee that things will be better; in fact, by switching jobs, you’ll likely gain some things and lose others. Negativity bias makes us view the things we’re going to lose with more weight than the things we might gain. What you’re giving up is more powerful than what you’re gaining, and so you are reluctant to make a change. Listen, I get it. It’s one thing to be a 20-something with pink hair and a vision to conquer the world — and no one depending on you. But when you add in a family and a mortgage, kids in college and huge tuition bills, the stakes get higher. It can be tempting to stay in a bad situation because the reward — the paycheck — is adequate. But life is about so much more than merely a paycheck. Negativity bias doesn’t get to dictate your life story, any more than the schools’ failure to prepare you does.
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You need to shift your mindset to what makes your work worthwhile. That goes way
beyond your next payday.
A SCOTTISH ECONOMIST’S MISTAKE In the book Why We Work , author Barry Schwartz acknowledges that most people wouldn’t work if they didn’t get paid — but that’s not the end of the story. People want work that is challenging, varied and — most importantly — meaningful, making a difference in someone else’s life. Think about your own career. What are the moments that make you come alive, that make the mundane duties worth it? Odds are, they are times that you conquered obstacles or saw how your work made life better for others. But somewhere along the way our focus turned from making a difference to making a dollar. And much of it can be traced back to Adam Smith. Smith was a Scottish economist who lived in the 1700s. He’s considered the father of modern economics. He took a pretty pragmatic view of commerce: that it was simply about self-interest; that is, a paycheck. When it came to workers, Smith believed they were basically lazy. After all, why else would you do the same mindless thing (factory jobs thanks to the Industrial Revolution were beginning during Smith’s lifetime) hour after hour, week after week, unless you were getting a paycheck? And true, most people wouldn’t work without the promise of a paycheck. But t hat’s not the only reason they’ll do it. The problem is that Smith basically eliminated the possibility that there might be other reasons people would work, and his views became the accepted viewpoint in the centuries that followed. A lot of people still feel this way. But now we have research that tells us, across different industries and lots of different ways of organizing workplaces, that the most protable companies are the ones people like working at. And not because there are
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always snacks in the break room or cool ofce decor — the companies that are most
successful are the ones where people feel like they’re doing interesting work and gaining more than just a paycheck. Think about your own workplace. What are people working for? At Rich Dad, part of the reward for employees is the education they’re getting. We encourage everyone to start their own businesses and to invest, and many of our employees have created their own part-time businesses. I think that’s great. Some people say that things are shifting toward meaning because of two groups increasingly entering the workplace: women and Millennials. Experts say that both groups care more about meaning and purpose, and that they want to feel at the end of the workday like they’ve accomplished more than just putting a few bucks in their bank account. Let’s look at what “meaningful” really means. Because it’s easy to see how reghters and cancer researchers and teachers might nd meaning in what they do, but what
about everyone else?
FINDING MEANING IN NON-HEROIC WORK Listen, it doesn’t have to be grandiose. Not everyone is a neurosurgeon saving lives — and you don’t have to be in order to have meaning in your work. You might work in a call center and get a call from a customer whose computer problem is making it impossible to get work done. You come up with a solution, and
you just made that person’s life better. Maybe you didn’t save their life, but you saved their day. I love the guys who clean my lawn because, a) I don’t have to do it and b) they do it so well. Their mission is to create a beautiful environment, and they do that at every house they go to. These guys are fantastic, and their mission comes through in the quality of work that they do. My wife, Kim, was walking through the airport the other day, and she heard this woman selling airline credit cards. Now, you might think trying to convince stressed8
out travelers that they need to stop and ll out forms would not be rewarding work.
But this woman was incredibly full of life. She was making everyone who walked by happy — she said, “This is my purpose in life, just to bring a smile to people’s faces.” Her mission was about a lot more than just selling airline credit cards. So how do you go about nding meaning in your work? Or, if you’re the boss, how do
you go about creating an environment that helps your team do that? Read on.
A SHIFT IN MINDSET Sometimes the best way to nd meaning in your work is to nd new work. And if
you’re in a truly toxic environment, you might have to just get out of that situation. But most people can start to shift their thinking right where they are. Someone told me a story once about a researcher who tried an experiment at a university call center. This particular group of workers was made up of college students who were hired to make calls to alumni asking for donations. This kind of job is not particularly pleasant because almost everyone says no. The student workers show up for two hours a couple of times a week to make these calls, calls where they’re almost always rejected, and it’s not a surprise that they weren’t particularly inspired by the work. So the researcher brought in a recent graduate of the school. The only way this person was able to go to college was because of a scholarship — a scholarship made possible by contributions like the ones the call-center workers were soliciting. This guy was a working-class kid whose life trajectory was altered by the opportunity to go to that school. He gave a ve-minute speech about how life-changing it was and
how much he appreciated the efforts of people who made the scholarships possible. That was it; a ve-minute speech and then everyone got back to work calling the
alumni. But guess what happened? After that speech, alumni contributions almost tripled. All of a sudden, these college students saw how the work they were doing had an effect on the lives of other people. Suddenly, it mattered. And that spurred them on to doing better work. 9
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That’s good news whether you’re the employee or the employer. In this particular case, it was a supervisor stepping in that changed the environment. But anyone can do this by asking themselves, “How is what I’m doing changing someone’s life?” Maybe you’re working in a clothing store and someone comes in to buy something. You ask yourself, “What can I do to make this person’s day better? I can sell him
what he needs and try not to upsell him. I can even talk him out of buying something because I know he won’t be happy with it. I can make this person’s day.” That’s a very different mindset than, “How can I make a sale for as much money as fast as possible?” And if you’re the employer, and have a business where you want to motivate your employees, there are steps you can take. Some large companies have given permission for employees to use some of their compensated time to work on projects that improve the world in some way. For example, some allow people to work a chunk of hours each week in a homeless shelter. That’s a good thing — the companies aren’t just talking about it, but are really encouraging employees to make a difference — but that difference-making is happening outside the company. There are things that can be done to change the workplace itself. The critical thing is for business owners to trust their employees. You’ve got to give
them room to work (don’t look over their shoulders all the time), emphasize the positive effect their work has, not just on the organization, but on its customers. You also have to listen to them. Respect them enough to recognize that they know
something about what they’re doing and might just have something to teach you. We see this all the time in brainstorming meetings at Rich Dad, where our team often comes up with better ideas than we do. That’s why we hired them. And that should be why you hired your team. On the employee side, if your supervisor gives you this freedom and isn’t always carefully scrutinizing and monitoring your work, you have the space to turn what might be dull work into something meaningful by focusing on the ways it makes a difference in other people’s lives. That can go a long way toward making your work feel less like a ball and chain and more like something you’re eager to return to every Monday morning. Sadly, this is not the way most workplaces are run. Call-center supervisors want calls to end fast so workers can take as many calls in a day as possible. Yard-care
companies want their employees to do each yard as fast as possible to be able to see as many clients a day as possible. 10
There’s very little emphasis placed on why the work is meaningful. And that can be detrimental not just to the workers, but to productivity overall.
A SUCCESS STORY Remember Schwartz and his book Why We Work ? He shared an example of a carpettile manufacturer who was very successful and had made a lot of money. Then one day this guy, who was in his 60s, had an epiphany that his production process — though quite protable — was also poisoning the Earth. How they
manufactured the carpet tiles was a very highly polluting process. So he made a commitment to switch his production to a zero environmental footprint. He knew it was going to cost his company money because it involved revamping the whole process, but he didn’t care. But you know what happened? Instead of these changes costing the company money, prots went up. How could that be? How could something that costs more end up creating larger prots?
Part of it could be that eco-minded customers were impressed by the company’s stance and chose its product because of it. But the largest part was that the workforce, instead of being one that was just making carpet, became a workforce that was saving the Earth. The company’s new approach so motivated the employees that they worked more effectively and harder than ever. They came up with more ideas for modifying the production process to be more environmentally friendly. The company owner didn’t anticipate that going in. But that’s the kind of transformation that can happen when a company and its employees are united for a purpose. At Rich Dad, we have a mission: to elevate the nancial well-being of humanity. That’s
been our mission since 1996, and it drives everything we do. Finding the mission behind your work — whatever that work might be — is crucial not only to the company’s success and your own satisfaction, but to the next generation, as well. 11
How to Choose Your Personal Success
SHOWING, NOT TELLING, YOUR KIDS WHAT IT MEANS The single biggest influence on the attitude young people have toward work is the attitude their parents have toward work. Note: I’m not referring to the attitude their parents tell them to have toward work, but the attitude the parents actually have toward work, day in and day out. What this is means is that by nding a way to see what you do as more meaningful,
you’re not only doing yourself and your customers a favor, but your children as well. And remember, it’s your actions, not your words, that are going to have the biggest effect. In the 1960s, John Kennedy came into ofce and established the Peace Corps. My
mom and dad quit their jobs, just like that, and signed up. My dad, as I’ve mentioned before, was a head of education with a PhD, and my mom was a registered nurse. And they went to work for the Peace Corps. It was the biggest nancial hit our family ever took, but you know what? I remember it
as the happiest our family ever was. For two years we had no money, but our family — the parents, the kids — was just the happiest ever. In my wife Kim’s family, her dad marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. because civil rights were so important to him. That showed Kim meaning and purpose. My parents served in the Peace Corps; her dad walked with MLK. They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t say, “You should do this” or “You should do that.” Kids can see
right through that. So the question is, what message are you sending to your kids by how you approach your work?
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THE RIGHT TEAM AROUND YOU Let’s take a moment to talk about the people you’re surrounded by at work. We’ve discussed how an individual employee can change his or her mindset, and how a supervisor or boss can shift the company environment. But there are a number of other unknown factors known as Other Employees. From a coworker perspective, it’s so important to have support around you. If you’re the only one with an excited mindset surrounded by a sea of negativity, it’s going to be hard to maintain that excitement. A reader from the Philippines once called into my radio show asking how to nd new
friends and acquaintances with similar interests. In his case, he was wanting people interested in real estate and investing, but his situation highlighted the importance of nding people who will support what’s important to you.
And my answer to him could apply to anyone: Education is key. Go take classes on what you’re interested in learning and becoming, and you’ll nd like-minded people.
Spend time with them. And even if those people don’t work at the same company as you, they will be in your life and a source of support backing you as you strive to improve your outlook. Who you hang out with reflects your core values. I hang out with people who have a mission. I don’t hang out with people who just want to make money or be miserable at their job. And remember what I said earlier in this book: If it’s a truly toxic work environment, get out. From the employer standpoint, you can be a little more proactive with the team. I was once asked by a guy starting up his own network marketing company, “My team and I are growing slowly through the grind as expected, but what can I do to keep them from giving up so easily?” Two things strike me about his question. First, if your team is made up quitters, I wouldn’t worry about how to keep them; you should get rid of them. That sounds
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harsh, but it comes back to the question about a sense of mission. When I went to military school and then joined the Marine Corps, it was a mission. If I were this company owner, I’d sit with the team and nd out what their mission in
life is. If it’s just to make money, it’s time for a parting of ways. The second thing that strikes me about his question is his choice of wording: “working through the grind as expected.” Building a business is tough, but if that’s the mindset — “working through the grind” — then that sounds an awful lot like the people feeling trapped in a 9-to-5 job. How can a boss expect to inspire a team when he himself feels like the whole thing is a slot? If you’re the boss and that’s how you’re feeling, take a look at why you’re even building that business, whatever it is. Are there different products or organizations you could align with to change your outlook? It all comes back to meaning, purpose and mission.
THE BOTTOM LINE It’s an old adage that you have a career or you have a calling. The term “calling” was originally a spiritual term used to describe people called to God, but today it has expanded to include people called to save the planet or to treat desperately ill children— people who feel a mission to do their work for the greater good. If they’re also making a living, that’s great, but that’s not why they do it. Even if you gave them incentives to do something else, they wouldn’t switch. What’s your calling? Do you even know? You need to nd that meaning to escape feeling trapped at a job. So much of this is
up to the individual, up to you. If you work at that call center, for example, you can tell yourself that you’re making people’s lives better every time you solve their problems.
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In nding your purpose, you may eventually discover that your mission takes you to a different company or a different eld entirely. And that’s OK. The point is to realize that
you are in control of how you feel about your work. Maybe you’ll stay in the same job but be inspired to start a side business, one that grows, thanks to your mission, into something that works for you, rather than you working for it. A calling will sustain you through the tough times, just like how my family’s Peace Corps years were lean but happy. It’s crucial that you discover what your mission is. Part of that is continuing to educate yourself. At Rich Dad, all of our advisors get together for three days twice a year. So many people say, “Yeah, yeah, I’m into
education,” but they don’t show up to actually do the learning. They’re all talk. Contrast that with my dad. He didn’t talk about purpose. He didn’t talk about the Peace Corps; he joined the Peace Corps. My wife’s dad didn’t talk about Martin Luther King, Jr.; he joined Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s that spiritual sense of mission that is lacking in most people’s lives because all they want is money. Discover your mission. Put your group together and study together. Read books and discuss them. Reach higher, reach farther. Listen, life is far too short to waste time at a job where you’re miserable. So gure
out what will make you greet each day with purpose, whether that’s a different job or simply a different attitude toward the one you already have. The beautiful thing is that nding your mission doesn’t just make your life better; it makes the world better, too. It’s one of those ring-on-all-cylinders moments that makes life so great; when you are feeling most fullled and productive, it will be
reflected in the positive experience of your customers and coworkers. It’s up to you. I can point you in the right direction, but you have to be the one to discover your mission. Starting today decide the mission that will drive your lifes work. Not fear, not family obligations, not retirement worries. Find that purpose, and don’t just talk about it. Put it in action. Don’t let fear hold you back. I promise you, it will give your work energy like you’ve never experienced before. Find the life you want. It might be easier than you think.
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