In this post we're going to be looking at reality of success, not just wishful thinking. Success never comes from wishful thinking. In order to get super successful, there are plenty of sacrifices to be made.
Success or riches always come at a cost, and if you're on a journey to getting them for yourself, it's best to be aware of these sacrifices and plan accordingly.
Getting rich or successful is not for everyone, you're free to live a mediocre life, if that's what you want. We're not going to pretend that life is built with rainbows and sunshine, because it isn't.
Hopefully at the end of this post when you look at someone who is very successful or rich, you'd give it a second thought and think of the sacrifices he or she made to get where they are currently.
The following list is based on the average reality of multiple multi millionaires and billionaires from multiple countries and cultures aggregated into a single list that makes it easy for you readers to go through and get yourself ready for the future.
I'm not saying that in order to get rich you need to make all of these sacrifices, what I'm saying is, there isn't a single individual who made it big without making at least some of these sacrifices to get to the top.
That being said, let's begin.
Family
I wanted to start with family because, this is the last thing people would want to sacrifice. Many successful people postpone starting a family to a later date. They start one only after they have accumulated success. This is probably one of the most important sacrifices one makes in order to be rich. The road to financial success demands so much focus and effort put into it that it would be almost impossible to achieve the same level of greatness if you're sidetracked by personal feelings. That's just the truth.
Successful people don't get married early, and almost never in their twenties and of course they don't have children as soon as the rest. Having a kid earlier on is pretty much financial suicide, trapping you in the rat race. In order for you to acquire wealth, the process needs your undivided attention. The moment one has a child that child immediately becomes the focus point and everything else falls behind as it should be.
Center for Change
Someone you love has an eating disorder. What now? When you realize someone close to you may be struggling with anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder (BED), naturally you want to know more.
A third aspect that gets sacrificed is the relationship with your family. Parents and siblings require time, effort and sometimes financial resources as well, all of which you're not in the position to spare at the early stages of your journey. If you're serious about getting wealthy. It sucks to see that you won't be available for your relatives that you're not going to focus on building a family for yourself at this stage of your life and that you'd postpone having a child but this is one of the harshest reality of which most rich and successful individuals sacrifice in order to get there.
Health
We've always mentioned health as one of the most important ingredient to a successful life but this post focuses on getting wealthy. The paradox is that most people sacrifice health in order to get money and then sacrifice the money in order to regain their health. We all like to believe in the iconic image of the entrepreneur working 16 hours per day, hitting the gym for two more hours, and meditating for at least one hour in the morning, the truth is the road to riches will take a toll on your health.
The most common feeling is that of tiredness, because most individuals have difficulties in falling asleep; the goal keeps you up at night, there are worries to consider and everything depend on your ability to manage them. Entrepreneurs live with a tremendous amount of stress in their lives, they usually neglect their health in the pursuit of success.
Friends
There is very little room for a social life when you really want to be rich. One of the first thing you should sacrifice if you really want to make it, is the people around you who are not pushing you further, cutting down on the toxic individuals is a must, then followed by those who are not actively making you better. It's very common for successful individuals to reduce their inner circle to focus on the quality of the individuals.
The average future millionaire has 1.8 close friends and they themselves are also focused on getting rich, that way they can push each other further along the way. You need people who can relate to your struggles and can understand why you're putting in that level of effort, nobody else will understand with the exception of individuals who they themselves are doing the same thing.
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Hobbies
Nobody's got time for that. Hobbies by their nature place very little value on yourself and the immediate environment, not only that, in order to maintain a hobby, it demands time attention and most of the time, financial resources as well. If you want to be rich and you're not where you want to be in life, you can't afford to have a hobby, that's the truth. You can go golfing, paint landscapes or whatever you find worthy of calling your hobby after you've taken care of the basics. Why do you have a hobby when you can't take care of yourself. Hobbies should be the last thing on your mind.
Time
The road from zero to financial success will take an average of 0-10 years, depending on the industry, your emotional intelligence, your intellect, your ability to play the market and the volume of work you're willing to put out in order to make it happen. Guess what?
The days you spend on your computer or negotiating with clients are probably not going to be the best years of your life but it's the sacrifice one needs to make if they're serious about getting rich because it's that time that yields the result you're looking for. 7 years might sound like a lot of time, and it doesn't mean that those years will lack any positive memories. Time will pass either way, so make sure to invest it wisely. Ask yourself the following questions;
Are you willing to eat shit for several years in order to eat caviar for the rest of your life? If the answer is yes, you're on the right track.
Happiness
Happiness is the big one because as you know, money can't buy you happiness at the end. But in order to get money, you will need to sacrifice your happiness to a certain degree. Even if you love what you do, nobody is happy working 14-16 hours every single day. That's not how evolution made us . So there needs to be a balance to the amount of happiness you're willing to sacrifice in exchange for material gain. If you sacrifice too much, you might not be able to cope with your new reality.
This post is not a To-Do list, it's just a frank observation of reality and you should treat it as such. Sacrificing your happiness at this stage will result in you being able to enjoy different types of happiness in the future; like being able to spend quality time with your child when the time is right because you won't have to worry about paying the freaking bills, that's a trade that you should be willing to make.
LIFE AS A HUMAN
The Pursuit of Happiness
Happiness, in terms of physiology, has been linked to amplified activity in the brain’s left pre-frontal lobe, as well as a decreased amount of the stress hormone (cortisol) in the bloodstrea…
Sleep
You've got to be willing to sacrifice sleep, if you sleep, you may miss the opportunity to be successful.
You can't sleep, broke people sleep. You've got to be willing to sacrifice sleep, if you sleep, you may miss the opportunity to be successful. That's an interesting quote, isn't it? You've got people like Elon Musk, who sleeps the absolute minimum amount required to get him to function and then there are people like Arianna Huffington; the founder of Huffington Post, that says sleeping more results in higher productivity and nobody should cut down on sleep. If you draw the line and look at it subjectively, sleeping less is an amazing advantage if you make quality use of the time while you're awake.
There is no point in sleeping 5 hours a night, if you're only got to be working 8 hours during the day. Sleep is the first thing everyone should sacrifice when they begin their journey. 5 hours of sleep per night is really manageable and you can fit a lot more work during the day.
Who you are
If you want to be wealthy, if you want to be successful, you need to sacrifice who you are in order to become who you want to be. It's OK to think of yourself as a work in progress, similar to a software, this is your current version but don't be afraid to make updates, fix bugs and reiterate what makes you, you. Your current reality didn't make you rich, the current version of yourself wasn't able to alive the puzzles needed to further your achievements from a finance standpoint, so you need to do something about it.
Evaluate who you really are; what are the things that set you back? What are the things that the current version of yourself fail to do? Then seek ways to transform yourself in that department. An easy aspect to point out is discipline. If you lack discipline, you're probably never going to become successful.
Poor people always lack discipline. This is because success in any form comes from repetitive actions which add up everywhere time. Unless you can discipline yourself, you won't stand a chance. Discipline is one of the traits that determines success in life.
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Entertainment
After sleep, this is the second thing people who want to get rich should sacrifice. There is no need for you to sit down and watch all the seasons of "game of thrones", there is no value there.
Poor people always justify wasting time in one form or another. If you're just starting out as most of you are, immediately cotton out the low and medium level of entertainment in your life. If you can't cut everything out, reduce it drastically and enjoy only the best types of entertainment so that it works as a reward unless you're a professional e-sport player, there is no need for you to be spending your time playing video games.
There is no need for you to watch sports or TV for that matter, unless you're the one on TV, there is no need for you to be on social media unless you're running a media business. This is not a post on how to be happy in life, it is a post on what it takes to get rich. Your need all your creative power and working hours to be put in and compounded into achieving your goals.
Stability
Getting rich is a rollercoaster, it'll take a lot of ups and downs, until you reach the destination. Stability gets sacrificed, you don't know what tomorrow holds and you don't have the luxury of being at ease. You need to move yourself, to position meet new people, to negotiate your own reality, and provide for yourself since nobody is going to go get it for you. If you believe your environment is keeping you from becoming successful, sacrifice it, move somewhere else, you are in control of this ride, if it doesn't work out, you're the only one who is to blame, although the journey is a rollercoaster, the ride is worth it, so get busy.
Income
You might not like to read or hear this but until you make it big you have to sacrifice your share of the income. You put it right back into the business or project until you make it. There's no other way, you're not going to be a borrower when you're still pushing towards it.
Every single dollar needs to be carefully planned where it would have the impact to go toward and usually, yourself is pretty far down the list unless you're going to use the money to develop your own set of skills. This is the reality, whenever I see people flaunting their purchases without them being where they want to be in life, I just feel bad for them as they're actively sabotaging themselves.
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Comfort
The luxury lifestyle; the big house, the luxury cars, the private jet, travelling all around the world in first class, that's the end result of years of living way below your means, unless you're born rich, you have to work really hard to get there and sacrifices need to be made.
The simplest way is to sacrifice comfort, and use money to accelerate your growth. It's mind boggling, how many people blow away their money on meaningless thing that they perceive as comfort. You don't need the new iPhone, your old one still works perfectly, you don't need to leave in a big house or apartment in your twenties, cut down on rent and use the remaining money somewhere productive. Poor people stay poor by trying to look rich, while rich people are busy getting richer by acting like they're poor.
Many highly successful individuals refer to this period as their hibernating phase, it's the time when you cut down on comfort so much that you survive on the bare minimum. There is no need for comfort, at this point in your journey.
The Need to be liked
Statistically, disagreeable people are a lot more likely to become rich and successful than agreeable people. This is a fact, not an opinion.
In order for people to like you, one needs to sacrifice oneself for the good of the other, that's how it works. This doesn't mean you should become an asshole, it just means that you need to focus on yourself first and sacrifice the need to be liked by others. If others will like you for who you are, and what you're doing, that's fine but you should never go out of your way to make that happen. Getting rich is about getting the job done, not by being the most popular person in the room.
Big Whiz Bang
Do You Need To Be Liked To Be A Successful Marketer? - Big Whiz Bang
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Pride
You do what you have to, to make it happen. If you're too proud to work at a fast food joint just to be able to feed yourself, while working on your project during the night, you'd never be able to make it.
Pride is counter productive, you don't need to think what other people will think of you what other people will think of you, mostly because people will always care about themselves.
You do you, maintain focus on your goal, on your objective and make your dream become a reality, not what others are expecting of you. Trust me when I say, everybody respects the winner, you just have to get there first. Put your head down, sacrifice the pride you have and make it happen for yourself and your future family. That's how your win.
PRIDE WILL DESTROY YOU
Immediate Desires
People are always seeking immediate gratification from even the slightest of effort, DON'T. That's what makes the difference between those who are going to make it and those who just want to portray the image that they are. If you stick to the plan, put in constant amount of work and improvement, you're bound to see positive results. As soon as you get the first glimpse of success, it's easy to fall into the trap of congratulating yourself for the lap, instead of concentrating on winning the race.
What usually happens while you're busy fulfilling immediate desires, is you stray off course and end up with that small win as your highest point. Do you want to win small or win big. Stay focused.
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This was a difficult post to put together, filled with things that you probably didn't want to read, but these are the current rules of the game of money. You're probably hoping for an easy fix, how to get rich or successful, but the truth is, people who make it to that level are highly intelligent individuals who are driven, disciplined, focused and sacrifice almost anything for their career or journey.
The expense for the success you seek is a great one. So think twice if you really want it and what you're willing to do to achieve it. If not for anything, reread this post and see how you can improve yourself at least by a little in some of these aspects in order to get closer to your financial goals. I really hope you'd be able to see the value in this post, and if you do, share the links with someone who's got the same mindset as you do.
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