How To Get Rich On The Path of Least Resistance
Just like water flowing in a river or electricity through a wire, your life moves down the path of least resistance. And most of us don’t really choose where that path goes. Your circumstance - where you grew up, what your friends did, what your parents did - determines much of where your life leads.
Unless, of course, you choose to change it. And to change the path of least resistance, you must change the underlying structure of your life - your desires, beliefs, assumptions, aspirations, and how you view the world.
Because it’s this structure that determines your behavior. You’ll never be rich if you don’t believe you can get there. You’ll never try to get rich unless you believe it can happen.
So, here’s how to get rich on the path of least resistance.
The Path of Least Resistance.
The Path of Least Resistance, written by Robert Fritz, lays out how you can change your life’s destination. Here is Fritz’s basic argument:
Energy moves down the path of least resistance, be it water in a river or electricity through a circuit.
Your life is the same way - it moves down the path of least resistance.
And what determines the path of least resistance is the structure of your life.
You have the power to change the underlying structure of your life to create the path of least resistance that leads in the direction you want to go.
You have to know where you want to go, but once you do, you can create the structure that will take you there.
Fritz says that structure ultimately determines behavior. The structure of your life is made up of your desires, beliefs, assumptions, aspirations, and objective reality itself.
You can control and create the structure that leads to your objective by managing and manipulating these components. Behavior is a by-product of structure.
Structure Your Life To Make Money.
This idea of creating a structure that leads towards what you want reminds me of what Naval Ravikant says about getting rich - that it’s a skill set you can learn.
Here’s what Naval has to say on How To Get Rich (without getting lucky):
“A lot of people think making money is about luck. It’s not. It’s about becoming the kind of person that makes money. I like to think that if I lost all my money and if you drop me on a random street in any English-speaking country, within 5, 10 years I’d be wealthy again, because it’s just a skill set that I’ve developed and I think anyone can develop…I, in fact, have too many ways to make money, I don’t have enough time.”
What Naval is talking about is structuring his life to become someone who makes money. It’s a skill set that he has developed - a worldview, a belief, an assumption - that creates opportunities for him to make money. And over a long enough time period, he can’t help but become rich.
He’s talking about a structure, just as Fritz is, that leads him down the path of least resistance to his goal (wealth).
Invent the Process As You Go Along.
Fritz also tells us that process is invented along the way.
You should not limit yourself with preconceptions about how to achieve your goal. Just follow your curiosity and your instincts to see where you end up. If it feels like you’re getting off-track, just go with it because instinctively it may be where you want to be.
Curiosity leads to obsession, which leads to mastery. And only through mastery do you become the best in the world at what you do - and get paid well for it.
As Naval says:
“If you aren’t curious about it, you’ll never be good at it.”
Focus on outcome over process.
Don’t get so hung up on how you get to where you want to go. Just try different ways to get there.
There are lots of ways to get rich. But if you determine you are going to get rich by investing only in common stocks listed in the United States, you are vastly limiting the number of iterated games you can play in any given year.
You’ll reject many other asymmetric opportunities that present themselves because you’re hell-bent on common U.S. stocks.
If your desired outcome is to create wealth, the process should be fluid as you explore different paths to get there.
Choose a path you enjoy.
While the creative process should be outcome-driven, Naval reminds us that it needs to be a path that we enjoy walking:
“I think if you go around trying to build it a little too deliberately, if you become too goal-oriented on the money, then you won’t pick the right thing. You won’t actually pick the thing that you love to do, so you won’t go deep enough into it.”
You need to give yourself enough freedom in the process to find the path to your goal that you most enjoy - which will ultimately be the path of least resistance - so you continue to find joy as you dig deeper and deeper.
If you can structure your life towards your outcome, and find a process that you enjoy, you can get rich on the path of least resistance.
You can create the life you want.
Fritz says that you need to be the “predominant creative force in your own life.” This creative force is internal.
Most people spend their lives reacting to external circumstances. They “solve problems” - which is the opposite of creating. To solve a problem is to make it go away - to negate it.
You must organize your life around what you want to create, not around your circumstance.
To create wealth, you must organize your life around creating wealth.
And you should know exactly how much wealth you want, and when you want it by.
This will help create what Fritz calls structural tension, which is the discrepancy between what you want and what you currently have.
It’s a powerful force for a creator - one that can help drive the creative process. It’s like a form of cognitive dissonance, where your ideas and aspirations are disconnected from the reality of your situation. Your mind doesn’t like this disconnect, and will subconsciously work towards resolving it, either by changing your reality (creating wealth), or changing your aspirations (giving up).
Don’t give up. It won’t be easy and it won’t happen quickly. But it can happen.
Keep going.
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SOURCES
The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life, By Robert Fritz - PDF Summary by Blas Moros
How To Get Rich (without getting lucky) by Naval Ravikant