The core theme is that individuals often fail to build wealth not due to a lack of intelligence or effort, but because their innate psychological biases, rooted in ancient survival instincts, actively sabotage their financial decision-making in the modern world.
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Now, let me ask you something. Why are
you not rich yet? No, really, think
about it. You're smart. You work hard.
You know you should be saving more,
investing better, making smarter
decisions. So, why isn't it working? Why
are people dumber than you building
[clears throat] wealth while you're
still struggling? Why does your neighbor
who barely graduated high school have
more money than you? Why are you reading
articles, watching videos, trying to
learn, and still not getting ahead?
Here's the answer nobody wants to hear.
Your brain is sabotaging you right now,
every single day. It's making you do
things that feel right but keep you
poor. And the worst part, you don't even
know it's happening.
You think you're making rational
decisions. You think you're being smart
with money, but you're not. Your brain
is running on ancient software designed
to keep your ancestors alive in the
jungle, not to make you rich in the
modern world. And until you understand
how your own mind is working against
you, you'll keep working hard and
staying broke. I've spent seven decades
studying why some people get rich and
others don't. And here's what I've
learned. It has almost nothing to do
with how smart you are, how hard you
work, or even how much money you start
with. It has everything to do with how
you think. The people who get rich think
differently. Not because they're
geniuses, but because they understand
the psychological traps that keep
everyone else poor. And they've learned
to avoid them. So today, I'm going to
show you exactly how your brain is
keeping you broke. Not vague advice, not
feel-good nonsense, but the actual
mental mistakes you're making right now
that guarantee you'll never build
wealth. And more importantly, I'm going
to show you how to fix them.
Before we go deeper, I need to know
something. Where are you watching from
right now? Drop your city or country in
the comments, cuz I want to see who's
honest enough to admit their brain might
be the problem. And if you haven't
subscribed yet, do it now. We're not
here to make you feel good. We're here
to rewire how you think about money so
you actually get rich instead of just
dreaming about it. Get subscribed. Then
let's fix your brain. Here's the first
way your brain is screwing you. You're
terrified of losing money. I mean
[clears throat] really terrified more
than you want to make money. Scientists
have proven this. They call it loss
aversion. Losing $100 hurts about twice
as much as making $100 feels good. Think
about that. Your fear of loss is
literally twice as powerful as your
desire for gain. And this is killing
your wealth. Because here's what
happens. You're so afraid of losing that
you never take intelligent risks. You
keep your money in a savings account
earning almost nothing because at least
you won't lose it. You sell your winning
investments too early because you're
terrified they'll go down and you'll
lose your profit. You hold your losing
investments way too long because selling
would mean admitting the loss. Facing
the pain of being wrong. Every single
one of these decisions feels safe, feels
smart, but they're all wrong. And
they're all caused by the same
psychological trap. Your brain values
avoiding loss more than gaining wealth.
So you end up avoiding exactly the
behaviors that would make you rich. Let
me give you a real example. Let's say
you have two investment opportunities.
Option A, guaranteed return of $5,000.
Option B, 50/50 chance of either making
10,000 or making nothing. Most people
pick option A. feels safer, right? But
mathematically, they're identical. The
expected value of both is 5,000.
[clears throat] But your brain's fear of
the zero outcome, the loss, makes you
choose the guaranteed smaller amount.
Now, flip it. Option A, guaranteed loss
of 5,000. Option B, 50/50 chance of
either losing 10,000 or losing nothing.
Now, suddenly, most people pick option
B. They gamble to avoid the certain loss
even though it's riskier. Your brain is
inconsistent. It makes you risk averse
when you're looking at gains and
risk-seeking when you're looking at
losses. And both tendencies cost you money.
money.
The people who build wealth have figured
out how to override this. They've
trained themselves to think about risk
differently. Not how much can I lose,
but what's the probability of a a gusted
expected return? They take calculated
risks that have more upside than
downside. They don't panic and sell when
markets drop. They don't hold losers
hoping they'll come back. They think
rationally about risk instead of
emotionally. And here's something most
people don't realize. Not taking risk is
itself [clears throat]
risky. If you keep all your money in
cash because you're afraid of losing it
in the market, inflation is eating it
slowly. You think you're being safe, but
you're guaranteeing that you'll be
poorer in the future. Real safety isn't
avoiding all risk. It's taking
intelligent risks that have the odds in
your favor over time. Here's another
trap. You do what everyone else is
doing. Can't help it. Your brain is
hardwired to follow the crowd. It's a
survival mechanism from when we lived in
small tribes. If everyone in the tribe
is running, you better run, too. Don't
stop to think. Don't ask why, just
follow. that kept your ancestors alive
when there was a tiger nearby. But it
keeps you broke in modern markets
because crowds are almost always wrong
about money. When everyone is buying
stocks, that's when they're expensive.
When everyone is buying real estate,
that's when it's overpriced. When when
everyone says crypto is going to the
moon or tech stocks can't lose, that's
exactly when the smart money is getting
out. But you don't get out. Your brain
sees everyone else making money and
screams at you, "Buy now or you'll miss
out forever." So, you buy at the top.
Everyone's excited. Everyone's making
money. It feels safe because you're
doing what everyone else is doing. Then
reality hits. The market crashes. Now,
everyone's panicking and selling. Your
brain sees everyone losing money and
screams, "Sell now before it gets
worse." So, you sell at the bottom. Buy
high, sell low. The perfect formula for
staying poor. And it's all because
you're letting the crowd run your
decisions instead of thinking for
yourself. I'll tell you something
painful. It's hard to go against the
crowd. Really hard. Not just
intellectually hard, emotionally hard.
When everyone around you is getting rich
and [clears throat]
you're sitting on the sidelines cuz you
think prices are too high, it hurts. You
feel stupid. You feel like you're
missing out. People call you an idiot.
They show you how much money they're making.
making.
while you're doing nothing. The
psychological pressure to join the crowd
is intense, almost unbearable. But
that's exactly when you need to resist
because crowds are wrong at extremes.
When it feels most painful to be
different, that's usually when being
different is most profitable. When
everyone thinks you're crazy for not
buying, that's when prices are too high.
When everyone thinks you're crazy for
buying, that's when prices are low. The
people who get rich are the ones who can
handle the psychological pain of being
contrarian, of watching everyone else
make money while they wait, of being
called an idiot right up until they're
proven right. Think about every market
bubble in history. The dot bubble, the
housing bubble, the cryptomania. Every
single time, the majority was convinced
prices would keep going up forever.
Everyone had a story about why this time
is different. And anyone who said it was
a bubble was mocked, dismissed, told
they don't understand the new paradigm.
Then it crashed and all those people who
were getting rich lost everything.
Your brain wants you to be part of the
crowd because being different is
psychologically painful. But that
psychological pain is the price of
wealth. You either pay it by being
contrarian when it feels hard, or you
pay a much bigger price by following the
crowd off a cliff. Here's another one
that's probably costing you money right
now. You value today way more than
tomorrow. Psychologists call it present
bias or hyperbolic discounting. $100
today feels real, tangible, valuable.
You can hold it, spend it, enjoy it
right now. $1,000 10 years from now
feels abstract, distant, almost
fictional. Intellectually, you know
that's wrong. But emotionally,
psychologically, your brain can't help
itself. This is why you can't save
money. Not because you don't want to,
not because you don't know you should,
but because spending today feels good,
and saving for 30 years from now feels
like nothing. The pleasure of buying
something today is immediate and
intense. The pleasure of having money in
30 years is abstract and weak. So, you
spend on things you don't need, on
experiences that don't matter, on stuff
that feels important in the moment but
meaningless a week later, and you stay
poor. Let me paint you a picture. You're
thinking about buying a new car. You
don't really need it. Your current car
works fine, but this new one is nice. It
would feel good to drive it, to show it
off, to have that new car smell. That's
immediate gratification. Your brain can
taste it. Now, compare that to this
thought. If I don't buy this car and
instead invest that $30,000, in 30 years
it could be worth $200,000. Which
feeling is stronger? The immediate
pleasure of the new car or the abstract
idea of money three decades from now?
For most people, the car wins every time
because your brain is wired to heavily
discount the future. 200,000 in 30 years
feels like less value than 30,000 of
immediate pleasure. That's insane if you
think about it rationally.
But that's how human psychology works.
And it keeps you poor. The people who
get rich have figured out how to
[clears throat] make the future real.
They've trained their brain to value
tomorrow almost as much as today. How?
By calculating. By making it concrete.
Every time they're tempted to spend
money on something stupid, they
calculate what that money would be worth
in 20 years if they invested it instead.
They write it down. They visualize it.
They make the future tangible
[clears throat] and real. And suddenly
delayed gratification becomes easier.
I'll give you an exercise. Next time you
want to buy something expensive you
don't need, do this calculation. Take
that amount of money, assume an 8%
annual return over 20 years. Write down
what it would be worth. That $1,000
purchase, that's $4,600
in 20 years. That 30,000 car, that's
$140,000 in 20 years. Now, the decision
becomes real. You're not choosing
between a car today and abstract future
money. You're choosing between a car
today and $140,000 in 20 years. Which do
you want more? Most people never do this
calculation, so their brain never has to
face the real tradeoff. They just spend
and wonder why they never get ahead.
Start making the future real and watch
how your spending habits change. Let me
show you another mental trap. You only
see what confirms what you already
believe. It's called confirmation bias.
Your brain doesn't want truth. It wants
to be right. So once you believe
something, your brain actively looks for
evidence that supports it and ignores
everything that contradicts it. You're
not doing this consciously. It's
automatic. Your brain is literally
filtering reality to support your
existing beliefs.
You think you're smart, so you only
remember your good decisions and
conveniently forget the bad ones. You
think real estate always goes up, so you
notice every article about rising prices
and ignore every warning about bubbles.
You think you're a good stock picker, so
you remember the three stocks that
doubled and forget the seven that went
to zero. Your brain is literally lying
to you about your own track record, and
you believe it because the lie feels
better than the truth. Here's how this
[clears throat] plays out in real life.
You buy a stock because you believe the
company is undervalued. The stock goes
down. Do you reconsider your analysis?
No. Your brain goes looking for reasons
why you're still right. The market is
wrong. It's temporary. Other investors
don't see what you see. Your brain finds
articles and opinions that support your
view and ignores everything else. So,
you hold the stock. It keeps going down.
Your brain keeps finding reasons why
you're right. You lose 50%, 70%,
70%, 90%.
90%.
And the whole time [clears throat] your
brain was protecting you from the truth,
you were wrong. This is [clears throat]
deadly for wealth building because if
you can't see your own mistakes, you'll
keep making them. If you can't update
your beliefs when reality changes,
you'll hold bad investments forever.
You'll keep using strategies that don't
work. You'll stay stuck in patterns that
keep you poor because your brain won't
let you see that they are not working.
The people who [clears throat] get rich
are brutally honest with themselves.
They keep track of their mistakes, not
in their head where their brain can
rewrite history, actually written down.
They do postmortems on bad decisions.
What did I believe? Why did I believe
it? What actually happened? Where was my
thinking wrong? They actively seek out
information that contradicts their
beliefs because they know their brain
won't show it to them naturally. Warren
Buffett and I have done this for 60
years. We keep a record of our
investment decisions and the reasoning
behind them. When we're wrong, we study
why. We don't make excuses. We don't
rationalize. We look at what we
believed, what happened, and where our
thinking was flawed. That's how you get
better. That's how you stop repeating
the same mistakes. But most people can't
do this. Their ego won't let them. So,
they make the same financial mistakes
for 40 years and wonder why nothing
changes. Here's one that's costing you
money every single day. Anchoring. Your
brain latches onto the first number it
hears and everything else is judged
relative to that anchor. This happens
automatically. You can't stop it, but
you can be aware of it and correct for
it. You bought a stock at $50. Now it's
at 30. You won't sell because you're
anchored to 50. You're waiting for it to
get back to where you bought it. In your
mind, you haven't really lost money
until you sell. So, you hold hoping it
recovers. But the market doesn't care
what you paid. The only question that
matters is, is this a good investment at
$30? Would I buy it today at this price?
But you can't think clearly because
you're anchored to that $50 price in
your head. That's your reference point
and it's completely irrelevant. Or
you're shopping for a car. The salesman
shows you one for 40,000. That's your
anchor. Then he shows you one for
35,000. Your brain thinks you're getting
a deal because it's 5,000 less than the
anchor. You feel smart, but maybe that
car is only worth 30,000. You're
overpaying, but you feel like you're
winning because you beat the anchor. The
salesman knows this. That's why he
showed you the expensive one first. He
set your anchor high so everything else
looks like a deal. This happens with
salaries. The first number mentioned in
a negotiation becomes the anchor. If you
say I'm currently making 60,000, that
becomes the anchor for the negotiation.
If they say this position pays between
60 and 80,000, that becomes the anchor.
Whoever sets the anchor has a huge
advantage. [clears throat]
This happens with houses. The asking
price is an anchor. Even if you know
it's overpriced, that number is now in
your head. An offer of 10% below asking
feels like you're getting a deal. even
if it's still 20% above fair value.
The way to beat anchoring is to
completely ignore the first number you
hear. Wipe it from your mind. Then do
your own analysis from scratch. What's
this really worth? Not what someone
asking, not what you paid, not what it
was worth last year. What's it actually
worth today? That's independent
thinking. That's how you avoid the
mental trap. Here's another one. Sump
cost. This might be the most expensive
psychological mistake people make.
You've already spent money or time on
something, so you feel obligated to
continue even though it's clearly a bad
decision going forward. You're
emotionally attached to money that's
already gone. And that attachment is
costing you a fortune.
You've been in a career for 5 years that
you hate. It doesn't pay well. You're
miserable. But you don't quit because
I've already invested five years. I
can't throw that away. Those five years
are gone. They're a sunk cost. The only
question is what should you do from
here? If the answer is find a better
job, then do it. The five years you
already spent are irrelevant. But your
brain can't see it that way. Your brain
treats those 5 years as an investment
that would be wasted if you quit. You've
put 10,000 into a failing business. It's
not working. You're losing money every
month. But you keep putting in more
money because I've already invested
10,000. If I quit now, I'll lose it all.
That 10,000 is already lost. Putting in
more money won't bring it back. It will
just mean you lose 20,000 instead of 10.
But your brain can't accept the loss.
So, it throws good money after bad,
trying to avoid admitting the original
investment was a mistake. You bought a
stock at $100. It's now at 20. You
refuse to sell because if I sell, I lock
in the loss. But if I hold, it might
come back. It might or it might go to
zero. The question isn't whether you've
lost money. You have. The question is,
is this stock worth $20 right now? Would
you buy it today at 20 if you didn't
already own it? If not, sell it. But
most people, they're psychologically
trapped by the sunk cost of their
original investment. I've walked away
from investments I'd put millions into,
not because I didn't care about the
money, but because I understood that the
money was already gone. Staying in would
just lose more. The rich understand
this. When an investment goes bad, they
sell. When a business isn't working,
they shut it down. When a strategy stops
working, they change it. They don't care
how much they've already invested. That
money is gone. The only question is,
what's the smart move from here? That's
rational thinking. That's how you build
wealth. And here's one more that's
keeping you poor. Overconfidence. Your
brain thinks you're better than you are.
This isn't arrogance. This is human
nature. Studies show 90% of drivers
think they're above average. That's
mathematically impossible. 70% of high
school students think they're above
average in leadership ability. 94% of
college professors think they're above
average at their job. Everyone thinks
they're special, smarter, better,
different. So, you read a few articles
about investing. You pick three stocks.
Two go up. Your brain concludes, "I'm
good at this. I have a talent for
picking winners." You don't. You got
lucky, but your brain can't tell the
difference between skill and luck when
the sample size is small. Now you're
confident. You take bigger risks. You
invest more money. You ignore advice
because you think you know better. You
expand into areas you don't understand
because you think your intelligence will
figure it out. And eventually reality
hits. Your talent disappears. Your picks
start losing money. But by then you've
invested so much that the losses are catastrophic.
catastrophic.
Your overconfidence cost you everything.
And the worst part, you still don't see
it. Your brain still thinks you were
right and got unlucky.
So you'll do it again. Or you start a
business in an industry you don't
understand because you think you're
smart enough to figure it out. Everyone
who failed just wasn't as smart as you.
You're different. You're special. You're
not. 90% of new businesses fail within 5
years. And most of those founders
thought they were special, too. Or you
think you can time the market because
you successfully sold before a crash
once. You can't. You got lucky. Timing
the market requires being right twice.
when to get out and when to get back in.
Even if you're right once, you'll
probably be wrong the second time, but
your [clears throat] overconfidence
won't let you see that. The antidote is
intellectual humility. Knowing what you
don't know, actually writing down your
areas of ignorance and staying the hell
out of them. Warren Buffett and I have
passed on thousands of investment
opportunities because we didn't
understand them, not because they were
bad. Some of them would have made us
even richer. But we passed because we
knew the limits of our knowledge. We
knew that confidence outside your
competence is just arrogance. And
arrogance is expensive. Here's a simple
test. For every investment or business
decision you make, write down three
reasons why it might fail. If you can't
think of three good reasons, you're
overconfident. You're not seeing the
risks. Your brain is showing you all the
ways you'll win and hiding all the ways
you'll lose. Force yourself to see the
downside. Force yourself to be a
pessimist about your own ideas. That's
intellectual humility. That's how you
avoid catastrophic overconfidence. Now,
let me tell you about the most wealth
destroying emotion there is. Envy, not
greed. Greed at least points you toward
wanting more for yourself. Envy makes
you care what other people have. And
that's poison for wealthb buildinging.
You see your neighbor buy a new car. You
feel inadequate. Your car suddenly feels
old and embarrassing even though it was
fine yesterday. So you buy a new car you
can't afford just to keep up. Your
coworker gets a promotion and starts
talking about his salary. You feel poor
in comparison, so you spend more on
clothes, on restaurants, on a nicer
watch. to feel successful again. Your
friend posts vacation photos from
Europe. You feel like you're missing out
on life, so you book a vacation you
can't afford and put it on a credit
card. None of these purchases made you
happier. You didn't even want them until
you saw someone else had them. You're
not buying based on your own needs or
desires. You're buying based on
comparison, based on keeping up, based
on not feeling inferior. Envy has turned
you into a spending machine and it's
keeping you broke. The insidious thing
about envy is that it's never satisfied.
There's always someone with more. You
buy a nice car, but your neighbor has a
nicer one. You get a promotion, but your
friend got a bigger one. You go on
vacation, but someone else went
somewhere more exotic. The hydonic
treadmill never stops. You're running
faster and faster trying to keep up and
you never arrive because there's always
someone ahead.
Meanwhile, all the money you're spending
trying to keep up is money that's not
invested, not compounding, not working
for you. You're sacrificing your actual
future wealth for the appearance of
current wealth. And the appearance
doesn't even make you happy. Studies
show that people who care more about
relative status are less happy than
people who focus on their own absolute well-being.
well-being.
Their eyes on the high from the people
who get rich have killed this instinct.
They genuinely don't care what other
people have or think. They don't need
external validation. They're not
competing with their neighbors or
co-workers or friends. They've defined
success on their own terms and they're
living according to those terms. That's
incredibly hard to do. The social
pressure to keep up is enormous, but
it's necessary because you can't build
wealth and play status games at the same
time. You have to choose. I've lived in
the same house for 70 years. Not because
I can't afford better, but because I
don't need better. I'm not trying to
oppress anyone. I don't care if someone
thinks I should live in a mansion.
That's their problem, not mine. I
defined what enough means for me decades
ago. And once I had enough, I stopped
caring about more. That freed up all my
mental energy and all my money to focus
on things that actually matter to me.
That's the secret. Define enough. Reach
it. Then stop competing. Let me give you
one final trap. You love stories. Your
brain is a story making machine. It
wants everything to fit into a neat
narrative. Causes and effects, reasons
why things happen, heroes and villains,
simple explanations.
But reality is messy, complex, random.
Most things don't have simple
explanations. But your brain can't
accept that. So it makes up stories. And
those stories feel true even when
they're complete fiction.
The stock market goes up 10%. Your brain
creates a story. The economy is strong.
Consumer confidence is up. The Fed's
policies are working. The market goes
down 10%. New story. Investors are
worried about inflation. Geopolitical
tensions are increasing. Recession fears
are growing. Next week, the same exact
facts exist, but the market does the
opposite. Your brain creates a
completely different story to explain
it. These stories feel like
understanding, feel like you know why
things happened, but you don't. You're
just pattern matching after the fact.
You're creating narratives to explain
random short-term noises. And those
narratives are dangerous because they
make you think you can predict what
happens next. You can't. This is why
people lose money listening to financial
news. Every single day there's a
confident explanation for why the market
did what it did. Stocks rose today on
strong earnings reports. Stocks fell
today despite strong earnings reports.
The same data gets spun into opposite
narratives depending on what the market
did. And it all sounds so logical, so
convincing, but it's mostly just
storytelling, randomness with a
narrative grafted on after the fact. The
problem is your brain learns from these
stories. It creates rules. When earnings
are strong, stocks go up. But that's not
actually true. Sometimes strong earnings
lead to sell-offs because they weren't
strong enough relative to expectations.
Your brain oversimplifies.
It creates false patterns and then you
make decisions based on those false
patterns and lose money. The rich learn
to ignore stories. They focus on
fundamentals, on actual business value,
on long-term trends that actually
matter. They don't care what story the
market is telling today. They don't care
what explanation the financial news has
for short-term movements. They know it's
mostly noise. They know that what
matters is the actual value of
businesses over years and decades, not
the stories people tell about daily
price movements. Now, here's what you
need to understand. Knowing about these
biases doesn't automatically fix them.
You can understand every trap I just
described and still fall into them. Why?
Because these biases are emotional, not
intellectual. They happen fast,
automatically below your conscious
awareness. Your rational mind is slow
and lazy. It takes effort to engage and
most of the time you're running on
autopilot. Your intuitive brain is
making decisions based on emotions and
patterns. And your rational brain only
gets involved if you force it to. So you
need systems. You need ways to force
your rational brain to check your
intuitive brain before making important
decisions. Let me give you some
practical tools. First, never make a
financial decision in the moment. Never,
I don't care how good it looks, I don't
care if you might miss out. Wait at
least 24 hours. Sleep on it. Because
your intuitive mind might be caught up
in excitement, in fear, in a compelling
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