How Optimism Makes You Wealthier

The habits of optimists naturally build wealth so effectively that it may be worth becoming an optimist to build a wealthier (and healthier) life.

Optimists live longer and healthier lives than pessimistic counterparts, but those same habits that lead to a healthy life can also lead to a wealthy life.  We often discuss money mindsets and our specific relationships with money, but our general disposition may have a greater impact on all parts of our lives than we realize.  It turns out optimists have an easier time building wealth, so much so that it may not only be worth studying how they do it but also taking the first step on the journey to become an optimist yourself.

How Optimists are Different

Optimists tend to have a strong internal locus of control, meaning they believe they have greater control over the outcome of events when compared to more pessimistic individuals.  An optimist will believe their actions can change their reality for the better, while a pessimist believes outside factors are too impactful for any individual actions to significantly impact their reality.  Realists, those in the middle, will carefully assess how much individual actions versus outside forces are likely to make changes.  The optimist’s outlook may seem a bit controversial, and many pessimists and realists will criticize an optimist’s dreamy perspective of what they can achieve as unrealistic or even narcissistic.

I considered myself a realist for years.  Over time, I adopted more optimistic perspectives.  As my optimism grew, my opportunities grew.  My baseline reality kept reaching new heights.  Newly attainable positive outcomes would have seemed like dream scenarios a couple years prior.  Achieving something that once seemed impossible trains you to achieve something even greater than the previous achievement.  Whether or not we are ready to admit it, we place many limitations on ourselves based on our understanding of how much the outside world limits our choices.

If achieving more and living a healthier and wealthier life is as simple as becoming an optimist, why doesn’t everyone decide to become an optimist?  Our brains train themselves over time to adopt more optimistic or pessimistic perspectives, and shifting away from a default perspective takes many repetitions.  Repetitions take time.  If your brain has been trained for years to take a pessimistic view of the world, assuming terrible global realities prevent you from improving your situation, it will take years to make a gradual shift towards optimism.  Fortunately, we can retrain our brains, and it may be worth it for our health and wealth.

Why Optimists are Wealthy

There are many problems with the current capitalist system that fails to prioritize regulations for safety, tax extreme wealth, and promote general equity for workers.  For a pessimist who has a natural tendency to assume that preexisting conditions dictate their potential, that reality can be too much hardship to overcome.  Even for a realist, current economic conditions may outweigh any dream of having an opportunity to break from the standard of working hard to achieve a paycheck that is quickly spent on basic necessities.

An optimist is not blind to the realities that leave a pessimist or realist stuck.  The difference is an optimist sees a terrible capitalist system that seems to block them from being healthy and wealthy and asks, “How can I act differently to escape this expected discomfort?”  Rather than giving up when conditions seem impossible, they ask how to overcome the impossible.

Optimism pushes a person to question their own behavior constantly, particularly if a behavior is expected of them.  Their internal locus of control, that enduring belief that their actions can be impactful, pushes optimists to constantly consider how they could shift their actions in unexpected ways to achieve surprising results.

For me, my gradual journey into optimism led me to realize I could retire early.  My whole life, I was taught to do well in school, go to the best college, and get a job that could earn me money if I worked hard for a 40-year worklife.  That was my goal when I left high school, left college, and even left graduate school.  However, that path began to feel restrictive, and I started to investigate life as a digital nomad to see if I could travel while working to get a bit more joy out of life.  Becoming a digital nomad did not end up being the right lifestyle for me, but it was the first step of questioning the status quo that eventually brought me to discovering I could retire early to maximize life rather than work.

I bring up my story because I find it important that I did not ask the right question at first.  Just asking a question was enough to start my questioning of the 9-to-5 reality for 40 years of life.  My belief that I could forge a different path than those around me, who seemed unhappier than I wanted to be, was enough to guide me to something that worked for me.  Optimists ask the initial question.  Questioning how they can be different to be happier is both what makes them happier in the long run and what keeps them optimistic.  That first dose of optimism can be the catalyst for much more.

Optimism and Everyday Wealth

This concept of optimism to build wealth has grown in recent years, sometimes in hokey ways that push potential optimists back into their pessimism.  Current fads include making “vision boards” to practice “manifesting” wealth, building a business, or some other goal.  In my opinion, this is overdone and misses the point.  Cutting a bunch of pictures from magazines is probably not going to make you wealthy.

The reason optimism makes someone wealthier is because an optimist is on a lifelong journey where they take on increasingly more challenging efforts, proving to themself that they can achieve more with each success.  Optimists manifest wealth, but they do it by more than just thinking about becoming wealthy.  Optimists manifest wealth by learning how to create a little wealth, creating that little wealth, and then working to figure out how to create a little more.

Optimism is a mindset.  The more you embrace it, the more it will impact your everyday life.  Optimism makes you question whether you have to live paycheck to paycheck or whether you can be happy with some free or less expensive activities while you save up a six-month emergency fund.  After creating a little bit of wealth by having an emergency fund, you learn you have a bit more freedom.  That little bit of freedom may be just what you need to question your boss when they deny your holiday leave request.  You push back and say you will leave your job if that leave request is not honored.  Usually, you will learn you still have a job to come back to after your leave because your boss just wanted to control you.

But you do not let your boss, company, society, economic system, or anything else control you at this point because you are fully committed to the optimist’s journey!  When someone says no to something you want, you ask why.  You ask how you can compromise to find a solution that helps both of you.  You know you can figure out a way around any arbitrary, human-made restriction put in your way.  You are an optimist who will achieve your goals because you never question if something is possible.  You question how something is possible.