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How to Get Ahead in Life and Exit the “Rat Race”


In a book that I published in 2013 entitled, How to be Happy, I spoke about some of the effects of what psychologist Stephen Goldbart coined as Sudden Wealth Syndrome (SWS). Sudden Wealth Syndrome is something that afflicts anyone who receives a windfall of cash too soon in their lives. When that money wasn’t earned, its presence is abused. This affects everyone from lottery winners, to inheritors of large sums of cash, lawsuit settlement recipients, and so on.
On that same note, in a recent study conducted in 2010 by researches at three universities, which included Vanderbilt University, the University of Kentucky and the University of Pittsburgh, showed that the more money that was won by lottery winners, the more likely a person was to go broke. The researchers split the participants into two groups: (a) those that won $10,000 or less, and (b) those that won $50,000 to $150,000. They concluded that the more money they won, the more likely they were to have filed bankruptcy within 5 years.
People who receive sudden windfalls of cash don’t know how to deal with it because they didn’t have to work hard to make the money in the first place. So, the point here is that, it’s not about having lots of money or receiving it suddenly; it’s about understanding how to build and nurture money from the ground up. To do this, you have to take some necessary steps, institute some important financial traits, and follow a basic set of rules. You won’t get ahead overnight. But, over time, you will most certainly find yourself succeeding.

Must-Have Financial Traits

In order to get ahead in life, then, one must embody a certain set of financial traits. These allow us to lay the groundwork for getting ahead and not succumbing to our every impulse and desire. Of course, mainstream media is no help with all of its portrayals of the rich-and-famous, and neither are all of those offers for credit that stream in moment after moment. But, when you can embody these must-have financial traits, you can get ahead in the long term.
This isn’t about overnight success. Anyone that tries to jump on the bandwagon of some get-rich-quick scheme is likely to fail, because success has more to do with persistence than it does some natural talent or ability. But, by embodying these financial traits, and not giving up, anyone get exit the rat race over time. These are the same financial traits that I discussed in The Millionaire Method

Trait #1 – Honest & Integrity

Exiting the rat race and getting ahead in life takes one major financial trait at the core that you absolutely must harbor, and that is honest and integrity. This trait must be embodied wholeheartedly if you want to get ahead at anything that you do. By being deceitful or deceptive, you might experience some short-term gains, but you will most certainly suffer with some harm to your long-term name.
When you’re honest and conduct your life with integrity, you might experience a slow and steady crawl while trying to get ahead in life, but you won’t suffer the ridicule and embarrassment of what happens to people when they try to take shortcuts. We’ve all seen the successful fall from grace when they attempted to take the dishonest route. From politicians, to athletes, business persons, and celebrities alike, this is something that has affected everyone.








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