It’s often amazing to see how people get stuck in their life because they don’t want to get out of it. People live in the status quo and are afraid to break it even though they don’t usually admit that they’re afraid. Here at Think Big Think Money, we choose to think outside the ‘ordinary’ box and strive to do something different that would change our lives significantly – by getting rich with character.

Let me ask you this:

How often do we act in a way that others expect us to act?

Pretty often I’d say. I was watching this video by Malcolm Gladwell from TED, which he talks about how people act irrationally to satisfy the status quo, and he said:

If I asked all of you, for example, in this room what you want in a coffee, you know what you would say? Everyone of you would say, “I want a dark, rich, hardy roast. It’s what people always say when you ask what they want in a coffee: dark, rich, hardy roast. What percentage of you actually like a dark, rich hardy roast? According to Howard, somewhere between 25 and 27% of you. Most of you like milky weak coffee, which you will never ever say to someone who asks you what you want that I want a milky weak coffee.

Enough said.

Why break the status quo?

If you or me choose to do something that conforms to the society standards, whatever they may be, we should call ourselves crazy. Why? Well, why would you want to live according to the society standards, when the society doesn’t really care about you? I’m not being cynical or skeptical about the goodwill that people have, I do greatly appreciate that. But the fact is that most people don’t really care about you personally, unless they’re your good friends or family. They don’t care about your individual values, they don’t care about your individual needs, they don’t care about your individual wants.

People care in general

In general though, a lot of people care enough to volunteer their time and money to help the community. But that’s general help, not individual. What you and I need are the ultimate personal way to gain happiness, which could be only done by getting rich (define rich with your own number) and building character (again, define character based on what’s important to you). And only we could help ourselves.

Be extraordinary

You need to challenge yourself to do something that’s different from everybody else. Nobody’s gotten rich by being ordinary. They might appear to be ordinary, but they’ve done a whole lot backstage that you don’t see (which most people call an “overnight success” or “he’s lucky”). And building character isn’t about being like your neighbors, it’s about constantly challenging and committing yourself to new goals that would get you one step closer to your dream.

How can you live for yourself?

There are a lot of wonderful ways for you to develop personally , and if you look at the number of personal development blogs out there you’d be stunned. Everybody shares with you something that worked for them that might work for you. But you know that it ain’t gonna work if you don’t separate yourself from the crowd and dare to do something different which truly works for you.

Burning Desire

So, how do you do it? Burning desire is No. 1 trait that you need to possess in order to break that thinking status quo and become rich, according to Napoleon Hill, the author of “Think and Grow Rich”.

If you have the burning desire, you will be able to find ways to make whatever you desire happen. You will see things in ways that you’ve never seen before because your mind has turned on the switch to ‘search’. You’re in the zone. Anything you experience could very well give you some wonderful ideas to work on to achieve your goal. And that’s also how people get rich! They get rich by first having the desire to get rich, to desire to earn $1 million, the desire to be financially free.

A good example would be Warren Buffett. He loves money. He loves getting rich. He started doing business since he was young and his burning desire was to earn a lot of money. And he did, he’s the 2nd richest person in the world. And he’s never been an ordinary rich person either. He lives in an ordinary neighborhood. He would read company annual reports every day whenever he’s not playing Bridge online. He would have his board meeting in an ordinary coffee shop in Omaha. But those are not the status quo of the rich! And he didn’t care.

Sadly, status quo is everywhere

Almost everybody else wants you to think like them, because that’s how it’s been for years! If that was true though, you wouldn’t be reading all the personal development blogs on the internet because all of us would not have our own opinions and ideas. We’d be just following our parents’ ideas of going to school and getting a degree and then a job, and stop learning.

So, next time you find yourself thinking like the rest of the crowd, pause and ask yourself: Are those thoughts really yours? Do you really want to think like the crowd, act like the crowd, and be like the crowd? If the answer is no for many times, it’s about time to distance yourself and think about what you personally want. And that’s how you would find your own happiness – to be the person you want to be, not the person everybody else thinks everybody else should be.

What’s your personal burning desire? Let’s share it in the comments.

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