Tom Corley is the author of the Rich Habits Study, “Rich Habits”, Rich Kids”, “Effort-Less Wealth”, “Change Your Habits Change Your Life”, “Rich Habits Poor Habits”, and “Rich Habits Wealth Academy”. Tom is also a CPA, CFP®, and has a Masters in Taxation.
Most people treat their careers as a series of tasks. Self-made millionaires treat theirs as a pursuit. In Tom Corley’s five-year Rich Habits Study of 233 wealthy individuals—including 177 self-made millionaires—and 128 people living in poverty, one statistic stood out: 92 percent of the self-made millionaires said they were actively pursuing a dream. Not a casual hope. A specific, long-term vision that drove their decisions, energy, habits, and time.
They did not stop at the dream itself.
Eighty-two percent set annual goals created around that dream.
Eighty percent broke those into monthly targets.
Eighty-three percent wrote their goals down.
Seventy-one percent spent a year or more focused on a single major goal tied to a dream.
The dream supplied direction, inspiration, persistence and focus. The goals determined the action needed to be taken in order to realize the dream.
Without both, the dream and the goals, effort tends to scatter. With both, ordinary days become a laser-focused cumulative progress.
The poor group in my Rich Habits study showed almost none of this pattern. Only a small fraction reported pursuing a clear dream or the pursuit of goals. Most were like leaves on a fall day, aimlessly blown around by the wind. The difference was not intelligence or starting resources. Forty-one percent of the self-made millionaires had grown up poor.
Besides daily habits, the #2 thing that separated the rich and the poor was having a very clear vision of who or what they wanted to be 5, 10, 15 or 20 years into the future.
With their crystal-clear vision, the self-made millionaires in my study were able to focus their energy, for many years, on the pursuit of the multiple dreams that made that ideal life possible.
This matters because dreams and goals change how the brain filters information. When a person has a written, specific target, opportunities that support it become more visible and distractions become easier to ignore. The millionaires described their days as purposeful rather than reactive. They reviewed progress regularly, pivoted to adjust tactics or a process they were following, and just kept moving. Over years, that consistent action to realize their dreams and achieve their goals, produced results that looked, from the outside, like luck.
Anyone can follow this same playbook.
#1 Clear Vision – Start with a clear vision of your ideal, perfect life – who or what you want to be. Write it down in 500 words or less.
#2 List Dreams – Identify each one of the dreams that need to be realized in order for you to be living your ideal life.
#3 Pursue Goals – Then create goals around each dream. Break those goals down into Daily Goal Habits.
Each goal you achieve moves you closer to realizing a dream. Each dream you realize moves you closer to that clear vision of your ideal life.
My Rich Habits research shows that people who consistently organize their lives around a vision, outperform those who do not. Ninety-two percent of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study did exactly that.
