What is your next goal as a real estate investor? Perhaps you want to buy your first rental property, or maybe you want to raise capital to develop a multifamily building. Whether it is in real estate, or any other arena for which you are trying to succeed, you have to stick with it. You must be persistent. If you give up too early, you will not see your goal through to completion. If you are reading this with a small personal goal in mind, perhaps the need to “stay in the game” represents a relatively small amount of time. For example, if you want lose 5 pounds, you could do this in roughly a week or two. It might be uncomfortable, boring, and generally unenjoyable, but if you do the right things for that amount of time success is basically guaranteed. What about those BIG goals in life? That one thing in your life that you REALLY want to accomplish, like starting a business or rebuilding your marriage. How the heck do you stay in the game for the time required to gain some real momentum and see actual results? More importantly, how do you keep pressing forward when things get hard. Like, really hard. For that you are going to need a specific outlook on life and a tool to use when you are faced with real fear, pain, and that all too familiar lack of willpower.
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That Little Fleeting Glimmer Of Investing Hope
Let’s keep it in the real estate bucket, let’s say you want to start a house flipping business (a we buy houses company) but you know that it is going to take a lot of work in order to see this through and build something that can create some freedom in your life. You take some courses, read books, and network with other established house flippers. You find a great mentor and map out what you need to get started on in order to build this thing. A marketing funnel, a website, a solid flyer, a schedule to go knock doors, a framework to raise capital, and on and on. You manage to sit still in your office for a few weeks and get started on some of these projects. Then, the inevitable happens. After some real highs “hey, I can do this!” and “wow, I AM doing this!” that voice in your head shows up. Just as you start to feel how hard this is going to be and realize that your competitors are already miles ahead of you, that voice in your head starts to spin an old narrative. A script you’ve heard before: “You aren’t smart enough to do these deals” and “how the heck will you going to do a deal, you don’t have any money!” That initial enthusiastic voice of possibility quickly becomes a dark and pessimistic voice of impossibility.
Introducing Your Greatest Enemy… Part “X”
What is that negative voice in your head called? Well, it depends on who you listen to. In Christianity it is referred to as Satan or the devil. A voice in your head representing temptation and distraction from your path. In Buddhism Mara is the demon of desire, doubt, and fear. Personally, I like to relate to this voice in our head as Part “X”. This is a concept and term coined by famous Psychiatrist Phil Stutz. He calls it Part “X” because it is only a “part” of our psyche (meaning it is not the entirety of our psyche) and “X” because it wants to “X” out our growth and progress in life. Recently I heard him refer to it as “the avatar of impossibility”. This is a part of everyone’s psyche and it is how we learn to deal with this inner voice that greatly determines our outcomes in life. One of the great secrets of life is that even the most successful people on earth have this self-sabotaging voice inside of their head. It is actively trying to stop even the most successful people in the world dead in their tracks. The only difference between them and you? They find a way to silence it, and move forward anyway. Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels wrote two iconic books together: “The Tools” and “Coming Alive”. In Coming Alive they outline this inner adversary and outline 5 tools that anyone can you use to defeat this inner enemy and move forward in the areas of life that “X” used to hold you back from. I recommend every person reads both of these books. The Tools outlines 5 tools to help you with 5 of life’s most common pitfalls, but it also teaches you about part X and how we interact with it.
So, How Do We Move Forward?
Earlier I said that in order to stay in the game long enough you are going to need a specific outlook on life and a tool to use when you are faced with real fear, pain, and that all too familiar lack of willpower. That outlook involves understanding what part “X” is and listening to what it tells you. This process if called labeling. Bonus points if you write these negative thoughts down in a journal. What happens over time is you start to separate yourself from these thoughts. As you continue to take action and move forward these negative thoughts will have less power over you. This process of labeling is meant to show you that these thoughts are just a part of you and that you don’t have to listen to them. Moving forward in the presence of this negative voice in your head proves the theory to yourself that you can act separately from this voice of impossibility. Labeling part “X”, the practice of writing down these negative thoughts allows you to temporarily defeat part “X” and better understand the complexities of your own psyche. Unfortunately, you can never fully get rid of Part “X”, this voice will always come back. You will fight this part of your psyche for the rest of your life. We all do. It is just something we have to learn to contend with and this constant process of fighting back against this inner adversary is actually part of the process evolving into the person we strive to become. Our higher self. In this sense Part “X” is a teacher that points out the areas of our life we most ardently avoid. Facing these things head on is actually a portal to forward motion in our lives.
Tools For The Fight
Outlining every Tool that can help you along your investing journey is too much to write. Again, if this interests you, I recommend reading the books. Instead, I will review the tool that I use the most in my own journey of investing and business building. This tool is from Phil and Barry’s first book called “The Tools” and it is called “The Reversal of Desire”. The tool is a visualization exercise (all of their tools are) that helps us desire pain. This sounds crazy, why would anyone desire pain? Well, the main reason is because we all avoid pain, it is human nature. “This allows is to feel safe, but in reality, it keeps our lives small” Barry Michaels says in the book The Tools. This feeling, being safe, is also called the comfort zone. The problem with living inside the comfort zone is that we cannot grow, experience new things, and accomplish the goals we have for ourselves. It keeps our lives small and familiar. Everything that you want in the physical world, maybe it’s a higher paying job or to leave your spouse, exists outside of your comfort zone. Sounds easy enough, right? Just push yourself outside of what is comfortable and you can change your life. Easier said than done. Why? Because in order to do this you have to deal with fear, uncertainty, stress… in other words you have to deal with pain. The idea behind the tool is that if you can teach yourself to desire this pain, you can actually train yourself to move towards it. Once you do that you can experience the pain and discover that you can move through it. When you move through these painful moments in your life, what do you think the reward is? As Jerry Seinfeld jokes “the Kingdom of Heaven”. The comedian does say this in jest, but it he really that far off the mark? Before I describe my experience, I want to make it very clear that I am nothing special. Most people would look at my life and consider it very average, because well…it is! All I can do it write about my own experience and the things I am pushing through in my own life. That being said, my world has opened up in tremendous way since I have learned to systematically work through my own pain avoidance. By no means have I experienced heaven on earth, but I have found the strength to start my own business, work on my marriage, and most importantly start a family. All things that I used to think we not in cards for me. In that sense, these tools have been profound for me. Seeing I consider building a business to be a creative and spiritual endeavor this whole thing has certainly opened up a heaven like existence for me. One that is much more fulfilling, purposeful, and exciting.
The Reversal Of Desire
Here is how to tool works:
- Close your eyes (when it is safe to do so, not when you are driving for example)
- Visualize the pain you are avoiding as a dark cloud in front of you
- Scream silently “BRING IT ON!”
- Feel yourself physically move toward the dark cloud (this is important, I find it useful to try and recreate the feeling when you had when you took a big leap forward in your life, a time where you did something because it instinctually felt right. Pick a time in your life where you moved forward even though you didn’t want to. Took a leap of faith. It could be big or small, but try to recall what that felt like).
- Go inside the cloud and feel yourself at one with pain. Say to yourself “I LOVE PAIN!”
- Now visualize yourself being spit outside of the cloud into a realm of pure light. I picture a bright blue sky. Say to yourself “PAIN SETS ME FREE”.
- Move immediately into doing the task you have been avoiding.
- Use the tool every time you are tempted to succumb to distraction
That whole thing should take 7 seconds. When you first start to use it, it may take longer. Just keep using it. Remember these que’s: BRING IT ON, I LOVE PAIN, PAIN SETS ME FREE.
Forward Motion
We all need to feel that we are moving forward in our own lives. When we are stuck inside of our comfort zone, this becomes impossible. In order to break free and get our lives going again we have to face the pain of exiting our comfort zones over and over again. Each tool Phil and Barry outline in their first book “The Tools” is designed to connect you with what they call a “higher force”. In my experience this is a way to tap into the universal benefits that the universe provides to us. This is a little bit out there, but the concept is basic. The universe is always moving. In order to tap into this motion and get our own life moving forward we have to be in motion ourselves. Moving forward through the pain in our own lives puts us in sync with this universal motion and with it comes a sense ease in doing the things we once resisted. As Phil puts it, “you will feel the wind at your back.”. I don’t expect this to make sense, but if you stick with it you too will see the power of this tool and all the others. This is the only practical method I have discovered that has helped me do that. I use it for chores that need to be done around my house I don’t want to do and when I need to have an uncomfortable conversation with my wife. In business I use it any time I have to do something I don’t want to do but has to get done. Which is a lot, because that what starting your own business is. A thousand tiny steps, most of them painful, added up over time. Good luck. Bring it on!
