Stop Making Wealth Your Goal, Focus Instead on Solving Problems That Affect Millions of People

The money will then arrive as a positive consequence.

You want to become rich.

I'm not a mind reader, but if you've come to read this article, you're probably one of the majority of people who have made financial wealth one of the major goals of their lives.

First of all, you should know that there is nothing wrong with that. Everyone has the right to have their own goals in life. I am not here to judge you. I am nothing more than a writer who shares his ideas and opinions in his articles.

So far be it from me to tell you that you should aim for this or that type of wealth. You and you alone decide what is best for your life.

Becoming obsessed with getting rich will only take you further away from your goal

In your quest to become rich, you've probably read a lot of articles and books telling you how to get there. You've probably read the classic of the genre by Napoleon Hill: “Think and Grow Rich”.

It's a book that I loved reading and that I re-read frequently.

After reading this book, you started telling yourself constantly that you were going to get rich. You get up in the morning thinking about it. You go to bed at night thinking about it. It became an obsession. You've tried everything, but so far you haven't succeeded.

That's where I come in.

I'm not rich, but I think I can give you some ideas on how to change your way of doing things. When I have a specific goal to achieve, my reflex is always the same: I look to see if other people have succeeded before me in doing what I want to achieve.

If so, I will study at length how they managed to achieve my goal.

You must study those who have already succeeded in doing what you want to do

If your goal is to become rich, the best thing you can do is to start by looking at the list of the world's richest people. Forbes provides a daily updated ranking. This list must be updated frequently because the wealth of these people is mainly made up of the value of their companies which are listed on the stock market.

Their wealth can therefore change significantly from day to day. Here is the current ranking:

Elon Musk is now the richest man in the world in October 2021 with a fortune of over $201 billion. That's pretty huge, as his fortune was no more than $30 billion at the beginning of 2020. If the success of his companies has led him to this rank, the Tech bubble that formed in the stock market has also favored the exponential increase in his fortune.

Behind Elon Musk is his great adversary in the space race: Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder has a fortune of $186 billion and had surpassed $200 billion in wealth by the summer of 2020.

Next in line are the boss of LVMH, Microsoft, and Oracle. At the end of the Top 8, you find younger heads with the bosses of Facebook and Google.

The world's richest entrepreneurs have made solving other people's problems their priority

Now that you have discovered this ranking, you must ask yourself what all these successful entrepreneurs have in common.

Do you think that getting rich was their primary motivation? The answer is obviously no. If it was, they would have stopped working long ago. Yet they continue to work relentlessly. Here I take the example of Jeff Bezos, who is leaving his position as CEO of Amazon not to take a golden retirement, but to devote himself fully to Blue Origin, which has fallen behind in the space race against SpaceX.

Their common ground lies elsewhere.

All of these entrepreneurs were primarily concerned with solving problems that affected the lives of millions of people. Elon Musk revolutionized the world of electric cars and space travel.

Jeff Bezos created the world's largest library and then turned it into the world's largest marketplace for commerce, but also a giant in the cloud and many other areas. With Amazon, Jeff Bezos has made the customer his priority. He goes into every area where Amazon can add value for consumers.

With LVMH, Bernard Arnault has created a luxury empire that brings a lot to all luxury lovers.

Bill Gates revolutionized the world of personal computers with his Microsoft Windows operating system. Behind him is the boss of Oracle, who revolutionized the world of databases. Whether you like Mark Zuckerberg or not, he was a pioneer in the world of social networking.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized the world of online search, before turning Google into a Web giant with a presence in many fields.

In short, these personalities sought above all to make a positive impact on the lives of millions of people. In doing so, they went on to become immensely wealthy. However, money was never their priority. The money was only a positive consequence of what they brought to as many people as possible.

This is the pattern you will have to follow to become rich yourself.

Solving problems that affect the maximum number of people will then bring you wealth as a positive consequence

Rather than making money your primary goal, you need to focus on adding value to others. By solving a problem in a way that helps the most people possible, you will make a positive difference in people's lives, which will ultimately bring you the wealth you were originally seeking.

This wealth is in the end only a positive consequence, nothing more. It is up to you to put things in the right order to achieve your goals in life.