As we enter the New Year, most of us pause for a moment to take stock of where we are in our lives – and maybe make a resolution or two. It’s a natural milestone to reflect on the progress we have made in our health, our relationships, and our journey towards prosperity.

And when it comes to prosperity, we’ve got some good news for you. But in order to really appreciate the good news, we have to do some critical thinking, and maybe even be a little bit imaginative and, dare we say, courageous. Here’s what we mean.

In a world of Chicken Littles…

Pessimism sells. It’s just an unavoidable fact of our culture and human nature. The pundits who predict financial ruin at every turn will always have an easier time getting our attention – and the headlines and feature stories – because what they tap into is our deep-rooted instinct for survival and desire to know about, and therefore be prepared for, any possible threat to our well-being.

That’s why Chicken Little was an easy mark. The temptation to give in to fear instead of taking a deep breath and doing some critical thinking is a strong one, especially when it feels like we have evidence. After all, an acorn did fall on Chicken Little’s head!

But it was Chicken Little’s pervading sense of impending doom that led it to extrapolate from one fallen acorn that the whole sky was falling. And we know the rest of the story – on its way to alert the king, the hen went on a panicked run through the realm, scaring the heck out of everyone else who had the same underlying fears and inciting mass hysteria.

In such a climate, common sense and historical perspective are not so easy to come by, but we’re here to ask you, in a world full of Chicken Littles, to consider another approach.

…Think like a Forbes billionaire

Every year, Forbes publishes its list of billionaires. And one of the most interesting things about that growing list of luminaries is that you’d be hard pressed to find a pessimist among them. It’s not that billionaires don’t experience challenges or setbacks in building their wealth, but there are a few characteristics that differentiate them from the Chicken Littles:

1. They tend to have a default position of optimism. Truly successful people don’t deny the reality or difficulty of crises as they grow their businesses, but they don’t allow setbacks to derail them. Investors can adopt a similar mindset by putting market downturns into historical perspective as occasional and temporary events that are eventually corrected as the overall market trajectory continues to trend upward over time.
2. They are able to see the headlines for what they are – and what they aren’t. Doomsday headlines may hold a grain of truth, like the fallen acorn in Chicken Little’s story, but they are often sensationalized to play on the emotions of readers, subscribers, and listeners. What headlines are not is the whole story. The whole story takes history into account and recognizes that the calamity of the day may be distressing, but it is also not going to last. Successful individuals don’t make decisions about their businesses based on sensationalized or transitory headlines; likewise, investors with a success mindset avoid making critical decisions about their portfolios based on a fear-inducing news cycle.
3. They are willing to put in the work to imagine a better future – and thus stay in the game long enough to see that future realized. For Forbes list billionaires, this often means having the faith to continue to build their business, investing in identifying growth opportunities despite naysayers. For investors, this can look like staying the course with a carefully crafted plan that focuses on long-term results over short-term fluctuations.

   Whether you’re on the Forbes list or not, it’s easy to find a million reasons things can go wrong. Bad news travels fast and lands hard; as natural worriers people almost look for it, and inevitably find it. You have to look a little harder for the good news, which often develops slowly and builds to fruition without a lot of fanfare. But when successful people are presented with the choice between these two conflicting worldviews, time and again we see them opting for faith in the future – using their imagination and the evidence of historical recovery and progress to lean into optimism.

And it’s history for the win

Here’s the other thing about billionaires: Even when calamities happen, they don’t perceive them as the end of the story. In fact, successful individuals can look back at historical crises and see that each period of catastrophe carried in it the seeds of opportunity for the next wave of progress and prosperity.

Optimists have the faith and the imagination to find the proof in history, using their own deductive reasoning to look back and identify the overall positive trajectory that has kicked back in after each negative incident we can examine so far in the market.

At N1 Advisors it’s our job – and our honor – to support you in faith, imagination, and a commonsense approach to working towards your financial future. To help you balance out the negativity that pours in from every side with perspective and sound planning. To be a voice that cuts through sensationalism and fearmongering with the calm determination that paves the way for long-term success.

We are privileged to be your advocate and ally, and look forward to working with you to make 2025 a prosperous year as we build toward your future of financial freedom!