Serendipity

Hello! David J here again bringing you more of the steps on my journey toward financial independence.

Found an e-mail from my coach in my Inbox today. In that message, he asks these two questions:

(quote)
What are the 5 main concerns that you have as a real estate investment beginner?

Also, what questions do you think a beginner would have?
(end quote)

... to which I responded:

(quote censored)
Wow, Man!

You sure know how to ask questions loaded with dynamite!

I'll have to work on this over the weekend, but I can start out with this:

One of the beginner's biggest fears is going to boil down to "fear of the unknown".

Now, when I say that, I'm sure the first thought which flashed through your mind was related to "fear of doing something they've never done before", "going where they've never been before", "having what they've never had before", and so on.

When I say "the unknown", however, what I mean is this: there are essentially two levels of "the unknown" to which I refer:

1. Stuff you know exists but you know that you don't know it.

This is sometimes referred to as "conscious incompetence". There is knowledge available which you know you need to acquire and which you also know you don't currently possess.

2. Stuff you don't know exists, and which is necessary for what you're doing or trying to do, and which you don't currently know.

This is sometimes referred to as "unconscious incompetence". There is knowledge available which you DON'T know exists and which you DON'T know you need to acquire, thus you also don't know whether you currently possess that knowledge or not.

Probably the most paralyzing fear is the fear that there's something out there which can hurt us a lot if we don't know it, but we don't currently know what it is and we don't know how to discover it.
(end quote)

As I've been preparing the upcoming post, "The First Thing", I've been going over everything in my head and prioritizing what should be first, after we've set up our business entities.

One of my earliest adopted mentors took a very special approach to this topic. His real estate investing seminar was entitled, "Wealth Training" rather than including anything directly indicating real estate in the title. The whole first day was dedicated to addressing the many issues we all seem to "grow up" with:

- Never enough money

- Study, get your degree, get a good job, live below your means, save for retirement

- Lather, rinse, repeat with your own children

Most of us are raised with the idea that scarcity and struggle are the way of the world. Our teachers and employers further indoctrinate us into that mindset.

No one teaches us that not only CAN we break free of those bonds, it is natural for us to do so.

Our natural drives guide us TOWARD financial independence. Many of us can remember having a lemonade stand in our youth. We still see them today as pass through our neighborhoods in the summertime.

All the while, however, our environment molds us to be dependent upon an employer or someone else for our income and livelihood. We literally have to be trained to be "employees".

As I write this on a cool Saturday morning - 41 degrees with a good breeze and sunshine muted through high clouds - I'm thinking that the first thing to address is our mindset.

We need to prepare ourselves for financial independence.

Now, be realistic here. This is not a topic that can be addressed comprehensively in a blog post, or even a many hundred page document.

We can, none the less, "draw back the curtain" and discover some of what has kept us where we are, and kept us from becoming what we want to be, doing what we want to do.

Look for that to be coming soon.

We'll talk again soon!

Take care - be well!

Much Success!