Have you made up your mind that you are ready to move into the field where the big earners play? You’re tired of low-income wages. You’re tired of barely getting by. You’re sick to the teeth of scrimping and never having enough. You are desperate for things to not just be better, but to be really great!

If that describes you, there are some questions you will need to face squarely and answer honestly.

1. If you want to become a millionaire (that’s fairly wealthy, wouldn’t you say), how do millionaires act?

2. If you want to become a big earner, how do big earners think?

3. If you want to be rich, what is it that differentiates the rich from the poor? Most people answer these questions something like this:

1. Millionaires live in big houses and buy luxury cars.
2. Big earners think about how much money they have to spend and where they’re going on their next cruise.
3. Rich are different from poor because they have more money.

Wrong, wrong and wrong!

You Will Never Join the Rich if You Never Know the Rich

Let’s take this questioning a step further. If you wanted to be a corporate executive, wouldn’t you need to know what corporate executives do and what it is that works best for them? If you wanted to be a sky diver, wouldn’t it be in your best interest to find out what successful sky divers do and what works for them? If you wanted to ski double-black diamond slopes, will you just head for the slopes one day and jump in with the veterans? Am I making my point?

If you want to be wealthy (rich) doesn’t it stand to reason that you would learn how wealthy people think? And learn how they are different? To believe you become truly wealthy just because you gain a ton money; is similar to thinking you are an expert sky diver just because you know how to strap on a parachute. There’s so much more to it!

This article is much too confined to do justice to such as study as this, but let’s make a brief, general overview. Hopefully it will create a desire in you to learn more. Just for clarification: we are referring to the rich as those who are wealthy inwardly as well as outwardly. If they lost everything tomorrow, they would have the wherewithal to build it all over again, because it isn’t the money, but their mindset.

Let’s begin by taking the cue from our title: Wealthy people invest in self-improvement of mind and spirit. Poor people invest in things like big-screen TVs. See how it works? Here are a few more.

· Wealthy people are willing to take calculated risks. Poor people want a guarantee (i.e. steady paycheck). They feel that the whole world is out to get them.

· Wealthy people step out of the pack; they are not afraid to work independently. Poor people have a herd mentality; they watch a lot of TV and let the world do their thinking for them.

· Wealthy people are solutions-minded; problems are just an annoying bump in the road. Poor people crash at the first sign of a problem – they were sure it wouldn’t work all along. The problem proved them right!

· Wealthy people are big thinkers; they aren’t afraid of a few extra zeroes in their income level. Poor people think small – after all, it’s safer that way.

· Wealthy people make quick decisions; they are always moving forward. Poor people procrastinate, and then procrastinate some more. They are waiting for the “just right” time to get onto that road to success. If these concepts and this way of looking at life are new to you, it’s time for you to get busy! Stop wasting time. As business philosopher Jim Rohn says: “We all have two choices: We can make a living or we can design a life.”

It’s pretty obvious that wealthy, successful people have chosen the latter. Which will you choose?