Are You an Open or Closed Door Person (& Why it Matters)?

An open door is a symbol for boundless opportunities, a chance to do something worthwhile, to make life count. It beckons to the great adventure of life.

The big question is: What do we do with open doors when we come across them? Do we walk through them or do we stay in the house, where it’s comfortable?

I’ve found that my life evolves to greater heights only AFTER I decide to walk through open doors. Whenever I question, fear, postpone, or ignore the open doors, my life goes nowhere.

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Recognizing Open Doors

With regard to making major life decisions, someone once told me that the issue is NOT that we don’t know what we should be doing. The problem is that we simply don’t do that which we know we should be doing.

I chatted with a well-paid accountant who told me that she loves teaching and really thinks she should be a teacher. In fact she was just recently asked to consider a full-time teaching position at a local community college.

She’s felt like this for a while but has never acted on it. Why? Because she doesn’t know how to pay the bills being a teacher. She doesn’t know how life would work with her being a teacher.

Closed Door Thinking

Closed-door thinking is characterized by fear, procrastination, wanting something and doing another thing, and an overwhelming desire to stay safe. I think that closed-door thinking is the most dangerous thinking of all because it leaves greatness on the other side of the door. It keeps us from living to our fullest potential.

Open Door Thinking

Here are some characteristics of open-door people.

Open Door People Embrace Challenge

The issue for most people is that they fear change in general and challenges in particular. Challenges push you beyond your comfort zone and you risk failure.

Open-door people welcome challenge because they see it as a growth opportunity. You can’t grow without stretching yourself.

Open Door People Act Without Being Fully Prepared

We want to know what’s behind the door before we step through it. We want to be fully prepared.

As we were expecting our first child, a friend of mine asked, “Are you ready for fatherhood?” My immediate response was, “Absolutely not!” Yes, I read some books and attended a class, but ask me if I felt ready to parent a newborn life into adulthood? Are you kidding? If we felt we needed to be absolutely ready to be a parent, none of us would be parents!

It’s the same thing with open doors: we can never be fully prepared before we step through the door.

I’ve met countless real estate investors who attend class after class but never actually implement anything they’ve learned. It’s not that the system they’re learning doesn’t work, it’s that they feel they’re not fully prepared to take action.

And that’s a big mistake.

The truth is that even the most successful people were never fully prepared when they first started doing whatever brought them to success today.

Open Door People Don’t Wait for the Perfect Open Door

The perfect opportunity doesn’t exist. If you wait for the stars to align perfectly, you will never do anything.

I would say NO deal I’ve done was perfect. There was always at least one thing I didn’t like about the deal. Had I waited for the perfect deal, I wouldn’t have done a single one.

People tell me they’ll get started with apartment building investing once they have enough money saved up. When they get a raise. When their kids graduate from college.

Really?

Open doors are rarely perfect. See door. Walk through it.

Open Door People are Unhindered by Uncertainty

When we face an open door, we want to know for sure what’s behind it. We want to know ahead of time. But of course we never know. If we knew in advance what we were getting into, we probably wouldn’t get into it in the first place.

I’ve had some challenges in my entrepreneurial ventures, some that even cost me lots of money and emotional distress. Had someone sat me down and told me about all of the trials and tribulations I would face, I probably never would have started.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

It’s not that open door people LIKE uncertainty; they’re just not paralyzed by it.

Conclusion

Open doors are the gateway to the great adventure of life, but they can also be scary. Develop an open door mindset by acting without being fully prepared, embracing challenges, not waiting for the perfect opportunity (because it doesn’t exist), and not being paralyzed by uncertainty.

I believe this is a skill you can develop. Start with a small door. Just walk through it and see what happens. Then keep it doing it again and again. I guarantee your life will never be the same.

What open door are you facing at the moment?

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.