How to Become a Whole Life Billionaire
The Hyperfocused Entrepreneur
June 27, 2023
Read time: 12 minutes
The word “Billionaire” is a pretty loaded term.
For some, it elicits deep feelings of anger, resentment, and unfairness. A belief that nobody should have so much while others have so little.
But for others, it’s a term that inspires hope and drives ambition. A belief that if you work hard on the right things, you too could get ahead in life.
Then again, there’s a lot of room between the pedestal and pit, which is probably where most of us fall when we think of billionaires.
They are not good or evil… they just are…
Now, the big mistake many of us often make is in using billionaires as some sort of watermark of success. A standard against which we can measure our own progress.
For many people, the word billionaire is synonymous with the word success.
And while it’s true that roughly 3,000 people on the planet who’ve amassed more than a billion dollars in net worth ARE in fact winning the money game… it’s a mistake to conclude they are therefore a success.
The mistake we must avoid is in conflating success with financial abundance.
This is a mistake I’ve made frequently over the years.
In my 20s, when I was young and broke, I’d look at my friends who’d gotten great corporate jobs and were making solid money and think they were somehow further ahead in the game of life than me.
That they were more successful.
Even after I crossed the millionaire mark, I’d still frequently find myself using the numbers in my bank account as some sort of proxy for success.
Because that number was bigger than the year before, I was obviously more successful, right?
Wrong.
Dead wrong.
See, life is vast and multifaceted and the truest wealth cannot be measured in fast cars, opulent estate, or seven-figure salaries.
The currency of genuine richness goes far beyond the tangible. Beyond something that can be measured on the Forbes Wealthiest 100 List. It includes wealth in the areas of Mindset, Health, Relationships, and Skills – realms we can’t necessarily touch, but one we can certainly feel.
True wealth isn’t just about money. It’s about the quality of our lives and the impact we can make on the world.
There are plenty of miserable billionaires out there that you would never, in a million years, want to trade places with.
So let’s change the narrative and stop using money as the scoreboard for life’s success…
And instead, let’s pursue something of genuine value.
Introducing: The Whole Life Billionaire.
The Bank of You
Imagine life as a conglomerate of interconnected banks, each representing an essential domain of existence:
- The Bank of Mindset
- The Bank of Health
- The Bank of Wealth
- The Bank of Skills
- The Bank of Relationships
The Whole Life Billionaire doesn’t just max out one account while overdrafting another.
They are an asset-rich titan, making daily deposits across all banks, reaping dividends not only in their pocket, but in every aspect of life.
The allure of this model is not just the promise of vast wealth. It’s in the shift in perception that comes with recognizing that the most valuable aspects of life are rarely the ones with a price tag attached.
It’s the freedom and security of knowing your wealth is not solely dependent on the size of your bank accounts, but also on the strength of your relationships, the agility of your mindset, the resilience of your health, and the versatility of your skills.
Ultimately, becoming a Whole Life Billionaire is a journey of transformation. It’s about recognizing the myriad forms of wealth we can amass, and the multifaceted nature of success.
It’s about challenging societal notions of success and carving your OWN path…
One that leads to a richer, fuller, and more rewarding life.
To be a Whole Life Billionaire is to be rich beyond measure, not in terms of money, but in terms of a well-lived, well-rounded, and meaningful life.
It’s a lifestyle choice…
A decision to maximize the depth and breadth of your life experience.
And the best part?
This opportunity is available to us all.
Here’s how to capitalize on it:
The Mindset Bank
In many ways I believe this is the most important bank of them all.
This is the cornerstone upon which all other domains are built.
In a very real way your beliefs and perceptions of the world shape your reality.
After-all, the entirety of your human experience, from the day you were born to the day you die, is being rendered “real” inside your brain.
There is no such thing as objective reality.
There are 7.8 billion subjective realities.
You are a Universe of One.
Which is to say no other human on the planet sees the world as you do.
This gives us a tremendous amount of power and responsibility in crafting the world of our desires because:
If you do not have what you want, it’s because you did not do what was required to get it.
This perspective is the FIRST deposit you must make in the Mindset Bank.
Now, to become a Mindset Billionaire isn’t about being the smartest person in the room.
It’s about developing a growth mindset, cultivating resilience, finding peace amidst the chaos, and learning from failures.
So let’s unpack what it means to make a deposit by developing a Growth Mindset, as coined by psychologist Carol Dweck.
A person with a growth mindset sees challenges as opportunities for learning rather than insurmountable obstacles.
They believe that intelligence and talent are not fixed traits but can be developed over time with effort and persistence.
Cultivating a Growth Mindset is a process of constant learning, pushing boundaries, and embracing discomfort. It’s about understanding that your abilities can stretch and expand.
It involves replacing the fear of not being good enough with the courage to start and the determination to continue.
The third contribution is fostering Optimism and Positivity.
Now, I’m not saying you should go through life with a delusional ignorance of reality and its difficulties, but the research is pretty clear…
Optimists are healthier, happier, and more successful… which makes this an investment with an incredibly high return.
There are dozens of ways to make deposits into the Bank of Mindset, but I want to share just one more with you that I think has the potential to pay massive dividends: Developing Self-Awareness.
I believe self-awareness is the most underrated (and misunderstood) superpowers.
Most of us think we are self-aware… but what makes this such a tricky superpower is that if you lack self-awareness, then you probably also lack the awareness necessary to recognize this fact.
With that said, the people who most clearly understand their strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and reactions are able to play the game of life on a whole other level entirely, which in turn makes it more likely you can achieve the coveted status of a Mindset Billionaire.
Here are some tactical ways to make daily deposits into the Bank of Mindset:
- Journaling
- Meditation
- Mindfulness
- Gratitude Practice
- Challenge Limiting Beliefs
- Daily Discipline Practice
The Bank of Health
The most luxurious mansion or fastest sports car in the world means absolutely nothing if you lack the health required to enjoy them.
Winning the money game means nothing if you lose the health game.
This seems pretty obvious, right?
And yet, so many of us are fixated on putting more dollars in the bank while completely ignoring our most precious asset: Our Bodies.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about the Health Bank:
“Your body is like a bank account where everyone can see the balance.” – Shaan Puri
Want to be a Health Billionaire? Here are the three deposits you need to make daily.
- Nutrition
- Exercise
- Sleep
The first deposit comes in the form of what we’re putting into our mouths as this is literally the fuel propelling us through life.
If you put junk in, you’ll get junk out.
Now, I’m not suggesting there’s a particular diet fad you should adhere to. Nutrition is actually an incredibly complicated topic and often overwhelms more people than it helps.
I recommend keeping it basic and focus on the fundamentals. Eat nutrient-rich foods, consume an appropriate amount of protein to maintain muscle mass (this becomes crucial as we age), stay hydrated, and avoid substances that are actively harmful (like alcohol).
The next contribution to the Bank of Health is exercise.
I recently read Peter Attia’s excellent book Outlive which is all about how to increase both our lifespan (how long we live) AND our healthspan (how well we live). Highly recommend checking out that book, but in it he makes a very compelling case that the research suggests that if the goal is to live longer and healthier lives, then pretty much nothing is more important than exercise.
In particular, there are four types of fitness we should be striving to develop weekly:
- V02 Capacity
- Strength
- Mobility
- Endurance
There’s too much to unpack on this crucial topic in this article, but if you’re interested in diving deep, again, I recommend you check out Peter Attia’s book or podcast (both are fantastic).
The third deposit we can make into the Bank of Health is into our sleep.
I don’t know about you, but for decades I had a pretty horrible relationship with sleep. I fell into the trap of believing the Hustle Porn hype saying things like “You can sleep when you’re dead” or “Sleep is for the weak”.
It’s hard to calculate how much damage this perspective has ultimately done to people. The health consequences of chronic sleep deprivation are severe, but they’re easily overlooked or dismissed over the course of days, weeks, months, and even years.
But rest assured of two things:
If you are not getting enough good sleep you 1) are not operating anywhere near your peak cognitive capacity and 2) will eventually have to pay the piper when the bill ultimately comes due.
And if you don’t have enough in the Health Bank to cover that expense when it’s finally time to pay up, you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble, because once your Health Bank goes into the red, it’s incredibly difficult to ever get it back in the black.
The Bank of Wealth
We’re not gonna talk about how to make more money here today. We’ve covered that topic at length in previous articles, which you can check out here:
The Bank of Skills
Investing in your skills is like expanding your personal toolbox for navigating life’s challenges and seizing upon its inevitable opportunities.
Now, your Bank of Skills has a pretty unique feature that none of your other banks have…
In fact, when you really stop to think about it, the Bank of Skills is the MOST lender friendly of banking institutions.
Here’s why:
The Bank of Skills makes it very difficult to actually overdraft.
Once acquired, a skill is quite a hard thing to lose.
Now, most skills erode slowly with time and disuse, but barring significant physical or cognitive impairment, thanks to a psychological principle called reminiscence it’s easier to relearn a skill than it was to learn it in the first place.
This is what’s meant when they say: You never forget how to ride a bicycle.
And this is a powerful truth because it means every deposit we make into our Bank of Skills is likely to compound every day until we die, regardless of whether or not we actually maintain that skill to the best of our ability.
Now, of course it would be best not to acquire skills and then just let them go to waste, but as we age and our toolboxes get more and more full, it’s impractical to keep all our skills in tip-top shape.
With that said, if we can stack skills in a synergistically complimentary way, then we level-up our potential with each new ability unlocked.
When coming to the Bank of Skills to make an investment, there are two types of accounts paying dividends worth considering: Soft Skills and Technical Skills.
The skills that stack the highest are called Soft Skills.
Unlike technical skills, soft skills are the personal attributes, personality traits, inherent social awareness, and communication abilities required for success in ANY domain of life.
This includes skills such as leadership, communication, problem-solving, decision making, adaptability, learning, and focus.
Technical skills, by contrast, are specific tasks tied to your professional development.
These skills include things such as coding, writing, language, data analysis, or design.
Now, becoming a Skills Billionaire isn’t just about acquiring a long list of abilities and hobbies.
It’s about ensuring you are a versatile, adaptable individual capable of handling whatever the world throws at you.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.”
– a famous misquote of Charles Darwin that I find to be helpful for our purposes here.
The Bank of Relationships
The Grant Study was one of the longest running (75-years) and most comprehensive studies of human development.
They studied healthy male Harvard college students over the course of their lifetime to assess psychological, physical, and anthropological traits. (Interesting side note: John F. Kennedy was one of the participants).
So, after studying these gentlemen for the better part of seven decades, researchers had a mountain of data to sift through…
And one of the primary questions they sought to answer was this:
“What’s the key to health and happiness in old age?”
They answered this question in the very first line of the research article:
“Happiness is love. Full stop.”
The data is compelling and states unequivocally that warm relationships between parents, spouses, children, and friends have the greatest impact on your health and happiness in old age.
So what does this mean for us on our quest of becoming a Whole Life Billionaire?
It’s really simple:
If relationships are the lifeblood of a happy and healthy existence, then we must prioritize cultivating deep connections with the people around us.
The first deposit to make here is of time and energy.
Relationships require regular care and attention to thrive. Something I’ve personally struggled with over the years.
Listen, I get it.
Life gets in the way and people will inevitably drift in and out of our lives.
And sometimes it feels as though the reason they drift away is because we no longer have a place in their life and that they just aren’t interested in maintaining the relationship.
After-all, if they really cared, wouldn’t they make more of an effort to reach out and connect?
Well, that blade cuts both ways, my friend. Something I’ve learned the hard way over the years.
Something I’ve come to realize in recent years is that if the relationship is important to me, then it’s my responsibility to put in the time and energy required to make sure it continues thriving.
This can take many different forms ranging from regular check-ins (a quick call or text to say “Hey, I’m thinking about you…), or prioritizing spending quality time together (clear one night a week and make time for investing in a key relationship), or just showing up and being present in a loved one’s time of need (never assume someone will ask for help when they’re struggling. Be proactive).
One of my biggest regrets from my 20s is not investing in my relationships sooner.
Here’s a video where I break that down:
Everybody talks about how you need to start investing when you’re young because the sooner you start, the sooner you get the magic of compounding interest working in your favor.
People love to point out how if you can invest $20 every month starting when you’re 20, then you’ll be a gazillionaire by the time you turn 65.
And while this is true, the great mistake I made is in thinking this advice only applied to money.
The truth is if you want to be successful in life, then investing your capital is only one part of the equation.
To truly win at this game of life, you’ve gotta start making contributions to the Bank of You now.
The sooner you start investing in your Mindset, Health, Wealth, Skills, and Relationships, the more compounding interest you’ll accrue, and the sooner you’re ultimately going to achieve the goal of becoming a Whole Life Billionaire.
Good luck, my friend.
Stay Hyperfocused,
AV
From YouTube This Week:
30 Life & Money Habits to Master Before 30
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