☀️ Micro Morning Meditation: How To Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky)

"He who has need of riches feels fear on their account."

Your 3-Part Micro Morning Routine

1. 🧘 Morning Contemplation

🎧 You can find the audio version of this morning’s contemplation below.

Good morning.

In 2018, the entrepreneur Naval Ravikant sent out a series of tweets with the title “How to get rich (without getting lucky).”

 The tips —which include things like “Ignore people playing status games” and “Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and, above all, integrity”—have since been shared hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter and elsewhere, and have taken on somewhat legendary status among fans of Naval.

I thought it would be a fun and interesting exercise to consider what the equivalent Stoic advice would be.

So, courtesy of mostly Seneca (which is somewhat ironic as he himself was very wealthy) here is an alternative answer to How to get rich (without getting lucky) that you can put into practice today.

How to get rich (without getting lucky):

1. Desire less:

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

— Seneca, Epistles 2.6

If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.

—Epicurus, quoted in Seneca, Epistles 21.7

1a. To desire less, consider freedom:

Freedom is attained not by satisfying desires but by removing them.

—Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.175

He who has need of riches feels fear on their account. But no man enjoys a blessing that brings anxiety. He is always trying to add a little more. While he puzzles over increasing his wealth, he forgets how to use it.

—Seneca, Letters 14.18

1b. To desire less, consider the negative effects of riches:

Riches puff up the spirit and beget pride. They bring on envy and unsettle the mind to such an extent that a reputation for having money delights us, even when that reputation will do us harm.

—Seneca, Letters 87.31

1c. To desire less, remember the best things are free:

The things that are indispensable require no elaborate pains for their acquisition; it is only the luxuries that call for labor. Follow nature, and you will need no skilled craftsmen.

—Seneca, Letters 90.16

1d. To desire less, despise things unneeded:

It is in the power of any man to despise all things, but of no man to possess all things. The shortest way to riches is to despise riches.

—Seneca, Letters 62.3

1e. To desire less, redefine "rich":

We talk much about despising money... that mankind may believe true riches to exist in the mind and not in one's bank account, and that the man who adapts himself to his slender means and makes himself wealthy on a little sum, is the truly rich man.

—Seneca, Letters 108.11

1f. To desire less, put to use what you already have:

No person has the power to have everything they want but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.

—Seneca, Letters 123.3

Congratulations - you are now rich, without getting lucky:

What I will teach you is the ability to become rich as speedily as possible.. I will lead you by a shortcut to the greatest wealth... not wanting something is just as good as having it. The important thing either way is the same – freedom from worry.

—Seneca, Letters 119.1–2

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2. 🎧 Morning Meditation