[The Psychology of Money- Seek More (Better) Problems]

One of the highest-value activities that I started doing before my investing career took off, is to work on my psychology/mindset. Just about everything in life requires your mental readiness first before it can happen physically.

This is one of my all time favorites. Intuitively, many people want to avoid problems. To make matters worse, the human brain is literally wired to seek comfort, avoid risks and achieve homeostasis/equilibrium. So what we need to do is to actively work on increasing our ability to deal with discomfort. Like Tony Robbins says, the quality of your life is directly proportional to your ability to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

Here is an example from my own life. Right now, I have the following on my plate (Just real estate):

1- Moving 1 deal I signed last week through to acquisition phase and get it to closing

2- Creating scope of work and lining up crews for that deal

3- Renovating 2 other properties

4- Turnover 3 other vacant properties

5- Lining up tenants for 4 total doors

6- Refinancing 3 properties.

7- Finishing 2023 RE taxes

8- Negotiate pricing on 2 deals in the pipeline (made offers last week) and verifying all rehab numbers

9- Exploring new operational models for RE

10- Hiring and training new VA

11- Getting building permits completed for 1 full gut-rehab property

12- Section 8 rent re-evaluation

13- Section 8 process evaluation

14- Preparing a turnover for upcoming vacancy in Sep

15- Finishing 4 maintenance requests

16- Re-evaluating acquisition pipeline for 2024

Probably missed another 5-6 tasks there. The list usually keeps growing.

Now, I am not really sharing this to impress you but rather to explain a very important concept. Success in anything in life comes with a price. In order to succeed long term, you have to be willing to pay that price everyday consistently.

The good news is, unlike inflation, the price tag to success gets progressively cheaper. How? Well, when you start seeking problems to resolve , your ability to handle problems (and usually stress as well) dramatically increases. Your psyche and your understanding of your own capacity to resolve problems also expands. Early in my life, getting a driver license was a big problem. Buying a car was a huge problem. Figuring out how to live on my own was a big problem. Moving to a new country or city was insurmountable problem. As you move up the chain, and get competent at resolving these problems, suddenly they aren't perceived as problems. Now they are experiences that made you grow. Building wealth using Real estate assets is no different.

Take a closer look at how you look at things right now. Do you believe investing in RE is gonna come with headaches? Are you afraid of lawsuits, evictions, messing up the numbers, buying somewhere you don't know, managing properties remotely along with a slew of things? Good, I did too.

Now, work on re-framing your mind-set. Start framing these issues as higher-quality problems that you need to start seeking. Put it on paper, print it out and look at it everyday. Changing your own mindset starts with awareness. And even if you are not fully convinced at first, once you start referring to these areas as higher-quality problems (rather than crippling fears) your language changes. With language changing, your conscious understanding changes, which then leads to your subconscious changing and suddenly you start perceiving things completely differently.

Remember on the other side of higher-quality problems lies your path to growth.

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