Mental Models That Create Wealth

The wealthy aren't playing the same game you are—they're seeing patterns you've been trained to ignore.

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A chess grandmaster looks at the board for three seconds and sees twenty moves you’ll never notice.

Not because they’re smarter. Because they’ve learned to see patterns instead of pieces.

Same board. Same rules. Different game entirely.

That’s what mental models do. They don’t give you new information. They change what you see when you look at the same situation everyone else is staring at.

Most people inherit their mental models about wealth from people who never built it. Parents. Teachers. The “conventional wisdom” that worked in 1975 but traps you in 2025.

The wealthy rebuilt their models from scratch. Not because they’re smarter. Because they learned to see patterns everyone else is blind to.

Here’s what they see that you don’t.