#68: how to get rich
the best part is not knowing how it will all come together... until it does (+ go to Xandra's art show in NYC)
Hello and welcome or welcome back to Caught Up in Char’s Web!
If you are new here, my name is Charlotte and I post about once per month - you can expect to find reflections on personal growth, meaningful connections, how to get creatively unblocked, and finding wonder in everyday moments as we navigate the very messy, beautiful journey of becoming more ourselves.
Today’s newsletter digs into ambition, obsession, and the myths we hold about success. It’s about curiosity as a compass, and how tinkering with your interests expands your surface area for luck. And it’s a reminder that the dots only connect in hindsight… which is the very best part and kind of the whole point.
ALSO our resident art curator, Xandra Beverlin, is opening a show next week in NYC and if you are in town YOU MUST GO (flyer with details in her curation section of this!)
Alright… let’s get into it!!
Above is an audio recording of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!
I saw a YouTube video titled "How to Get Rich" pop up on my feed the other morning and obviously clicked it as fast as I could while sipping my morning caffeinated beverage. This was an Ali Abdaal video that was actually more about the UNFORTUNATE TRUTH about how to get rich which is... to become unhealthily obsessed with getting rich. He has gotten rich over the past few years from becoming a successful YouTuber and building businesses off of it. And when you get rich, you start finding yourself hanging out with a lot of other rich people, which allowed him to observe a shared trait between them all. Every rich person he knows has or has had an unhealthy obsession with getting rich. He kept on repeating this phrase and now John, who was sitting next to me on the couch, also sipping his matcha, was tuned in. Why does it have to be an unhealthy obsession with getting rich? - we both asked ourselves and each other.
The implicit explanation was because in order to get rich, you have to spend a LOT of time and energy playing the game of getting rich and that necessitates spending less time/energy on other areas of life. Ali Abdaal has noticed that a lot of the rich people around him have sacrificed the first 10 years of their kids lives, their relationships, their closeness to their family, and a lot of other "work life balance" things in pursuit of becoming rich. But he wasn't placing a moral judgement on it. He wasn't saying that this pursuit is wrong... he actually was just trying to point out that getting rich is a 1% goal.
There are a lot of 1% goals - becoming a professional athlete, an actor, or the best in class at anything. In order to achieve ambitious goals, we have to sacrifice some other areas of life. Ali has a friend called Jane who wants to get rich because she wants the freedom that it provides. But if you look at how she spends her time, it's not very congruous with this goal. She is scattered, spread thin, and consumes no content about how to get rich. So there is a big gap between her actions and her goal and it makes her feel... miserable! Which is the case anytime there is a large gap between who we want to become and how we spend our time.
There are two ways to solve for this, neither of which is right/wrong/good/bad. It all just depends on your values and capital-T True desires. One way of combatting this misery is by spending time working towards the ambitious goal of your choosing. The other way is to change the goal so that it allows you to spend your time differently.
I loved the framing of this because it felt like it cut through so much bullshit that spins around our heads, demanding an answer to the question: how are we possibly going to achieve the things that we want without a massive smattering of LUCK? After watching this video and talking about this concept with several friends, here's what I arrived at.
First, take a beat. Understand what is driving your goal. Decide again if it's the right goal to go after (you can always change your mind later too if you gather new information that makes you think otherwise). And then start spending your time in a way that is congruous with your goals.
If your goal is to get rich, hell yeah! Start consuming content about it (some of my favorite finance books/resources below). Learn how to invest and save money and maybe talk to a financial advisor and consider if the career trajectory that you are on will allow you to achieve this goal. If your goal was to get rich but then you realized it's not actually going to deliver on the things that you really want, also hell yeah! Adjust your mentality accordingly and spend time in a way that is still congruous with your goals. The point is... it doesn't really matter what your goals are so long as you are spending your time in a way that is in alignment with where you want to be going.
And beyond this goal conversation, there's something larger at play. Which is the factor of LUCK. We often think that getting rich (or insert any goal) is a matter of mysterious luck and that it either happens to you or it doesn't. And that is true for a minuscule percentage of people. But for others, luck is still at play. It's just a different type of luck.
There are 4 main types of luck, according to Mark Andreessen (paraphrased by Naval Ravikant).
Hope luck finds you.
Hustle until you stumble into it.
Prepare the mind and be sensitive to chances others miss.
Become the best at what you do. Refine what you do until this is true. Opportunity will seek you out. Luck becomes your destiny.
The last two are by far the most fun. But only if approached from a true place of curiosity and passion. I had lunch with my friend the other day and he was telling me all about his new job. He absolutely loves the position that he is in and feels his beginner's mind thriving in this new environment. BUT he recognizes that there is a different type of person that he is ultimately drawn to working with. And the reason he knows that is because he spends time with them in the foundation that he volunteers for. The feeling of having his financial and career growth needs being met by his current job and the itch for the type of person he's drawn to being scratched by the charity work makes him feel electrified. The reason he enjoys this so much is because he can feel himself being in the midst of the mystery of how his career is going to unfold. He has no idea what room he will find himself in or what conversation he will have that will lead him to his next position or some once in a lifetime opportunity. But he can feel the energy of expanding his surface area for luck by following his interests in multiple avenues and seeing where it will lead.
I have noticed recently that many of the people I look up to found their success in their 4th, 5th, 6th, or 10th venture/incarnation/career stage. It wasn't the first startup that made them successful or their first job that launched them to the moon. It was the repeated tinkering and testing of different ideas that put them at these random crossroads in which opportunity struck and they became successful in a niche. And that type of shit excites me more than anything! Because there is mystery involved. And the reason that feels so good is because it's awe inducing. It's the feeling of homecoming. Of OHHHHH I always knew I wanted to do that or feel that but I had no idea how it was going to come together. And the story of how it unfolds is what feels so good.
It is so damn easy to forget this. To feel like we are not in the midst of a story or somehow broken if we can't see the end of the tunnel. But this is a reminder that not knowing how it's all going to play out is the best part !
We live in a world that is maniacally fixated on finding our passion as though that is the end goal in itself. It's really not! The end goal is being able to look back and go OHHHHHH that's why that happened. That's why I said no to that thing and yes to that thing and had that falling out with those people and quit that job and took that trip and started writing this blog because I wanted to and then look where it led... My story is still unfolding! I have no idea where this will lead. I just show up here and write because it feels damn good to do so.
Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how she spent 3 years writing a book that was based in 1930s Russia and then when the Russia/Ukraine war broke out, she felt called to scrap it. To some, that may feel like a devastating & destabilizing tragedy. To her, it was fine! (Granted she is financially successful enough to not need to worry about it). But she says that the time she spent writing her book in those 3 years were her favorite moments. Not a moment she spent writing is ever wasted because to her, it's not about the outcome. It's about the joy that she gets from writing itself.
And not everyone feels passionate about something like writing or playing football or the flute. But we all are 'natural' at something. Naval Ravikant talks about how the #1 thing people get confused about on the path to becoming successful is how to leverage their specific knowledge. Specific knowledge, he says, is the thing that you are innately good at - something that you look back on in your childhood and go "oh yeah, I've always been weirdly into that in ways that other people found boring or exhausting or dumb."
By the time we are 19-21, we already pretty much know what these things are, and they tend to only be obvious in hindsight.
For me, I've always been an avid reader and writer and could spend 600 million hours on the phone talking to friends, family, and strangers about their very vulnerable triumphs and tribulations in relationships and struggles with creativity/passion/purpose. I also am a natural host and cook and love bringing people together in intimate settings. And I don't quite know where these things will lead yet but I do know that they will play a big role in the unfolding of my story.
The best part of specific knowledge is that you can build upon these specific knowledge areas with good trainings and the right environments but in order for new material to benefit you, the foundation must already be there. This is a good thing because it means you already have an advantage!
For instance, imagine person #1 is born with a knack for selling things goes on to get a psych degree. This equips person #1 with the tools and leverage they need for a kick ass career in sales. But another more introverted person #2 could go get that same degree and would pale in comparison to person #1 because sales is just not innately who the introverted person #2 is.
Spend some time reflecting on what your specific knowledge is. And do not shame yourself for one second about what that thing is. Then spend some time doing it. Because the more time you spend in flow, the more clear you become about what matters to you, the more understanding you are of your goals, and the more in sync you feel with the path that you are walking... without needing to know where exactly it's leading.
From that place, you get to relax back into the mystery. The mystery is why we are here. It's not "for the plot." It's for the reveling that we get to do when we look back and are baffled by the luck that we created and "how" it all unfolded.
I used to think that the opposite of fear was courage. I don't anymore. I know that it's curiosity. Because the other day I attended an event that involved 2 journaling prompts. The first was to imagine FEAR walks through your door, sits down across from you, and says... Dear Charlotte, I am your fear. Here's what I need you to know about me. I am afraid that... I am afraid that... I am afraid that... - write out these bullets for 5 mins with no judgement of what comes up. Feel how that feels in your body.
The person prompting us then read theirs outloud and instructed the people there to Zoom react with hearts when a fear that they wrote down was called out by the speaker. The Zoom of 500 people was flooded with hearts, representing strangers of all demographics having the same underlying fears. Which is so ironic because fear has a way of creeping on in and telling you that you are TERMINALLY UNIQUE, you are completely alone, and your fears will kill you! Which is so not the truth, as evidenced by the fact that we are so united in our fears.
The second prompt was the antidote to this. We were guided to invite CURIOSITY to walk through our door, sit down across the table, and write... Dear Charlotte, I am your curiosity and here's what you need to know about me. I am curious about.... I am curious about... I am curious about... We wrote for 5 minutes and the feeling that I had in my body writing about my curiosity was so dramatically different than it was when writing about my fear. I felt open, relieved, awe-inspired, mystified. The unknowns delighted me.
There was a ton of overlap between fear and curiosity because it's all related to uncertainty. From the standpoint of fear, uncertainty feels like death. But when the same unknown is approached with curiosity, it feels delightful. It feels like a mystery that's waiting to be uncovered.
So this is an invitation to you. To take a good hard look at your goals. Analyze whether they are still true or need an update. Spend time doing something that delights you. Literally anything, no shame is invited. And then approach your goal from a place of curiosity and get excited by the open-ended outcome of how it will all unfold.
There is nothing to fear. Only more to be revealed.
AND if you read this going… “okay sick but I have no idea what my goals are nor do I feel connected to some special knowledge”… you are perfect. And you are so not alone. I have been in that spot so many times and likely will return there again. My best advice for getting your clarity back again is to do the following: a) call a family member/friend/mentor/someone who has known you for a while and ask them what things you have been interested in over the years or what they notice about you, and b) start building a digital garden - a place where you collect notes, images, links, anything that you want to leave a trace of as a breadcrumb to explore later and find relations between. That is what I do to write this newsletter and it’s one of the greatest sources of my ongoing curiosity. Curiosity is a muscle - it atrophies when we let it lay dormant for a while and also builds itself back when engaged in the right ways.
I have so much more to say on the topic of building back your curiosity and reconnecting with your special knowledge but I will save that for another newsie. Some resources to explore this further in the meantime are linked below! I am also thinking about hosting a small group to do The Artist’s Way together and if that is something you’d be interested in, reply to this email!!!
That is all for today. Thank you for getting Caught Up in Char's Web with me! I will catch you here soon.
With love,
Charlotte
Xandra’s Curation Corner
Xandra Beverlin is an incredible art curator at Pace Gallery, co-founder of PULSE, and dear friend, who so generously pulls pieces for this newsletter each week. The poster above is for her upcoming show: Opening Tuesday, May 6th, during Frieze New York, FEVER DREAM examines the evolving language of Surrealism, illuminating its significance in a contemporary context. DO NOT miss this one! Below are her beautiful curator notes.
Reading through your summary notes for this letter echoed the sensation of a handwritten letter, one that whispered truths of how we can, ostensibly, achieve the coveted sensations of Joy, Happiness, or Satisfaction. There’s always been a certain magic attached to willful, dogged aspiration for the future (one that this country so urgently proliferates to fall in step with the goals of late-stage capitalism), but what’s so powerful about this letter is the reminder not to plan ahead, or even live in the now, but to take definitive time to pause, reflect on what it is we’ve done so far with our “special knowledge” you’ve defined so well.
Quite elegantly, this brought me to Transcendentalism and the intuition that is often associated with this type of subject matter. Specifically, I think of Hilma af Klint, whose work entered into the public sphere as conventional landscape paintings, but ultimately evolved into the more unusual spiritual abstractions she is known for. Her paintings blended subjects as diverse as religion, botany, and atomic matter, but were ultimately disregarded entirely at the time: Rudolf Steiner famously told her no one would understand her work for at least 50 years. Only by following her innate vision and eschewing any requirement for external validation was Klint able to define a genre that inspires so many artists to this day.
Quote from her: “The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke.”
— Xandra Beverlin
Books + Frameworks for Understanding and Pursuing Your Financial Goals:
I will teach you to be rich by Ramit Sethi
how to get rich (video by Ali Abdaal)
how to get rich (video by Naval Ravikant)
the millionaire fastlane by MJ Demarco
the psychology of money by Morgan Housel
die with zero by Bill Perkins
the almanack of naval ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
skin in the game by Nassim Taleb
rich dad poor dad by Robert T Kiyosaki
the 5 levels of wealth exercise by
Resources for Reconnecting with Your Curiosity and Rediscovering Your Special Knowledge:
Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity by David Whyte
This list of the best 30 nonfiction books in the last 30 years
Anna Howard’s video about falling down curiosity rabbit holes
All past issues of Char’s Web are available for reading here. A few samples below…
#49: we have to be orderly on the instant
"from there you get to relax back into the mystery" a million time yessssss. loved this one, char <3