Why personal development is critical in RE investing & business

My Journey into real estate investing has allowed me to meet some incredible people. It has also fueled a growing obsession of mine which is learning how the world’s most inspiring people became that way. I used to have the belief that these people had something special that I did not and that they were born with some innate talent or advantage. I also believed that I myself was born as a fairly average human being and would therefore be destined to achieve more or less average results in my life. I no longer believe this to be true.

There have been a handful of books that profoundly influenced the way I now think about things, one of them was the book “Mindset” by Carol Dweck. In this book Carol explained that new research in the area of neuroscience has shown that our brains are greatly more plastic than we previously understood them to be. Neuroscientists used to believe that brain development slowed greatly after childhood and was more or less stagnant once a person reached adulthood. We now know that is far from the truth.

The strangest and most useful idea from this book was that our beliefs around this subject will make a huge impact on our level of success. The person that believes intelligence is fixed from birth will tend to spend their lives trying to looks smart, avoid challenges and will tend to become intimidated or envious when other people around them do better than them. Carol refers to this as the “fixed mindset”. The second type of person is a person who holds the belief that intelligence can be developed. This person focuses their efforts on learning and growth and will tend to seek challenges, push through obstacles and find inspiration in the success of others. Carol refers to this as the “growth mindset”. At some point my own beliefs around this subject began to change, and it brought a cascade of other positive changes with it.

I have spent a great deal of time over the last couple years studying the beliefs habits and routines of the people that inspire me and having a growth mindset is one trait that every single person I have studied has. The more I studied, the more patterns started to show up. It eventually became glaringly obvious to me that an “average” person with the right information could become far from average if they adopted some of these beliefs habits and routines.

In the real estate investing world I have observed that the people who are most successful are the ones who put in just as much time into personal development as they do learning and developing real estate specific technical knowledge and skills. I have come to believe that it is just as important and here is why:

Developing persistence: There is no instant gratification in real estate – it requires consistent daily action over a sustained period of time to achieve good results. 95% of people fail when trying to establish new habits (think new year’s resolution dieters).So how do you effectively develop persistence? One of the most effective tools I found was implementing a daily morning routine/ritual. Hal Elrod’s book – “The Miracle Morning” is an excellent way to get started in this area. An effective morning routine gives you an opportunity to review goals, reflect and refocus on a daily basis.

Dealing with setbacks/Controlling emotions: About 4 years ago I stumbled onto the book 10% happier by Dan Harris. This is another book that ended up having a profound and lasting effect on me. In this book Dan describes his personal struggles with anxiety and his strange and winding journey that eventually led him to take up a daily meditation practice (a practice that I have also adopted).The book is very entertaining and filled with great information about the benefits of mindfulness and meditation. In addition to greatly improving overall health and well-being I truly believe mindfulness can be a bit of a superpower in business and investing. It is incredibly useful to be objectively aware of your own emotions and have increased control over them, especially when in high pressure situations, dealing with conflicts or when there are large amounts of money at stake – all things that an active real estate investor will face often.

Understanding your biases: The human brain is an absolutely amazing machine, however it is far from perfect. The reality is that our emotions play a large role in our decision making and we are all very susceptible to a large number of cognitive biases. Some of these biases are natural biases that we all share (a good example is our natural tendency to pay more attention to negative stimulus than positive), others are learned biases that we develop over time from our experiences. Learning about our biases and learning where we are prone to making judgement errors is very useful and can greatly increase our chances of avoiding critical errors in judgment. My favorite books on this subject are “Mindwise” by Nicholas Eply, and “Incognito” by David Eagleman.

Dealing with fear/pushing yourself out of your comfort zone: Fear is one of the biggest causes of inaction. Learning how to overcome your fears and take action in spite of fear is a critical skill that must be learned if you want to be a successful investor or business owner. A meditation practice will help in this area as well. One of my favorite books that helped me overcome my own fears was “Stop saying your fine” by Mel Robbins. I used to make fun of Tony Robbins but I have come to respect him greatly for his ability to help people overcome their fears. Tony Robin’s book “Awaken the Giant” is another great book for this.  

Scarcity vs. abundance mindset: If you come from a place of lack and scarcity you will be hard pressed to build a successful business. This is as much a belief as it is a habit, but as with the others, it is something that can be cultivated and changed. One key idea for me that helped me to cultivate an abundance mindset was learning about our brains reticular activating system.  At any given point in time our brains are receiving an overwhelming amount of information from our 6 senses. It is the job of our reticular activating system to filter this information and only pass on information to our concious mind that it determines to be relevant and important. The most common example used to explain the reticular activating system at work is when a person buys a new car. Have you ever bought a new car and suddenly began noticing the same car everywhere? It’s not that a bunch of people went out and purchased the same car, they were always there, but your reticular activating system did not attach any significance to that car and therefore you did not notice them. The useful thing here is that you can train yourself to see opportunities that others miss. When the average person sees a house, all they see is a house, when they see a business they likely think about the services that business provides. An investor will likely see something completely different. My favorite book for cultivating an abundance mindset is “The Magic of Thinking Big” by David Schwartz.

Success means different things to different people. I think it is important to acknowledge that financial success alone will not lead to a fulfilling and impactful life. I became interested in real estate investing because I saw it as a means to achieving early financial freedom and more importantly time freedom. It’s what you do with that time that will make the difference. It might be spending more time with your family, traveling and exploring or using that time to do work that is truly meaningful to you. I don’t have it all figured out yet, but it has been an incredible journey so far and I am learning to enjoy the ride. I hope this blog post might inspire you to turn off your TV, put down your phone and pick up one of the great books I mentioned above. I promise it will be worth it :) .

-Ian Reeves

Real Estate Investor - Lenexa KS

BP Podcast Episode - 237