The 5% that know WHY

Is yours a success mindset? Or are you part of the masses so busy doing that you have lost sight of what you are actually chasing and why that matters?

I learned from Burt Gulick, a multimillionaire networking guru that he divided people into two basic categories:

• there’s  5% of people who know WHY they are working (the dreamers)
• there’s  95% of people who know HOW to work (the doers).

It was an interesting perspective for someone like me that had spent most of his career to that point completely focused on the “how” to get ahead in a corporate environment. He opened up a whole new way of thinking for me.

Dreams

Talking about “dreams” was tacky stuff that “us corporate people” smiled at condescendingly…. “show me how to make the money” was where I was coming from.

Since then I’ve heard success defined as the progressive realization of a worthwhile set of dreams. There it is again. Dreams, hey?

What was the success mindset of these 5% and 95% of people?

Well, there were a few home truths for me in what he said:

a)      The 95% of the people who know HOW usually work for the 5% of people who know WHY, and that the 5% who know WHY make 95% of all the money. Wow! That got my attention.

b)      That the 5% of people who know WHY spend good money on getting the best advice, while the 95% who know HOW listen to and take advice from each other’s opinions.

c)       That the 5% who know WHY have a defined set of dreams (or goals) that give their life’s work purpose and direction that they valiantly chase down, while the 95% who know HOW often drift through life aimlessly month by month, year by year wondering what is in store for them.

d)      That the 5% who know WHY invest heavily in themselves, in their own personal development, while the 95% who know HOW spend most of their money on lifestyle and often “run out of money before they run out of month”.

e)      That the 5% who know WHY invest consistent proportions of their income into compound growth generating investments making them independent of their income, while the 95% who know HOW spend most of their income on lifestyle, and remain dependent on their income to get by.

f)       That the 5% who know WHY would retire in comfort and in style on their planned and preferred terms while most of the 95% who know HOW would retire below the subsistence line.

g) That the 5% who know WHY would work initially for someone else to learn the ropes while creating the means to get into their own business while the 95% often leave their career management to those that employed them until they were no longer required….

I’m sure you could probably add quite a few more relevant differences, couldn’t you?

Success Mindset – Which Group Are You In?

What a remarkable comparison; all very logical and probably quite easy to substantiate, would you agree? It certainly had a profound impact on my outlook on “the business of life”, and I have tried very hard over the last 20 years since I heard it to implement that transition.

Yet even once one is aware of this, how many of us actually convert that from “that’s a good idea” into implemented reality?

• Some might deny it, or start with wondering whether that’s even possible for them.
• Others believe it possible but wonder how they would go about achieving that transition.
• And a small group (namely the 5%) have actually begun the journey or are already a fair way down the track to achieving it.

Which group do you think you find yourself in?

So What Next?

The purpose of this blog is to create an awareness between these two groups. If there were a simple checklist of how to achieve it, I would list it here and we could all do it and go away and live happily ever after.

Of course it’s not that straight forward, otherwise we would all have already done so, wouldn’t we?

However, can you see how they differentiate most of us from the few of us? Can you sense that transitioning from one to the other is a worthwhile journey that starts with a choice to change an attitude and then pursues a bunch of strategies that will manifest in that longer term shift from one to the other?

It comes down to choice, doesn’t it?
What do you think it is going to take for you to make some of those choices?