Posted by Today, 10th October is World Mental Health Day, and I like to mark the occasion every year. It’s a massively important topic and one that we should all make more time for.
This year’s theme (set by the World Federation of Mental Health) is workplace mental health, and I think that’s a great topic to look at this week. But rather than talking about mental health in terms of how it relates to how organisations take care of their employees, I want to look at how your ‘work’ mindset.
I work with a lot of people looking to build a property portfolio and a career in real estate so they can earn more money, without staying chained to their desks until retirement. If you’re a novice, that’s a lot to learn in the first place, but it’s also important to remember that you might need to do some work on your mindset and emotions as well, especially those ideas around the concept of ‘work’.
So, this week, I’m taking a look at your work mindset and the questions you should ask yourself if you want to get ahead!
What’s your why?
If you go to work every day without knowing your why, you’re basically a hamster on a wheel going round and round getting absolutely nowhere. If you’re going to work every day and slogging your guts out, you have to know why you’re doing it.
Now, I’m not talking about paying your mortgage or things like that, I’m talking about your goals, or more specifically your BHAG, your Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
Your BHAG is a compelling, long-term goal that drives you out of your comfort zone, and helps you create your unique strategy for success. Your strategies have to be unique: there’s very little point in copying others, because what works well for others won’t necessarily work for you.
You need a BHAG, because it’s going to become your North Star. Without one, you might find you’re a bit rudderless and just drift along with no key objectives in place: the hamster on a wheel. Developing a strategy to achieve your goals (and especially your BHAG) is difficult to do at times, but you need to visualize what the future looks like when you achieve everything you want to.
It’s not good enough to say, for example, that you want to develop a career in Real Estate, or that you want to build a portfolio. You need to be really specific and identify exactly what it is you want, then you need to build a strategy around that, because without a strategy, you risk working really hard only to end up with something you might not want.
How are you measuring success?
A lot of people measure success in monetary terms. How much is their salary? What is their portfolio worth? How much disposable cash do they have?
The problem with doing that is if for some reason, your circumstances change, what then? Say you lose your job, or the market collapses. Does that mean you’re automatically a failure? Of course it doesn’t, but if you’ve been measuring your self-worth in terms of your self worth, you might think so.
The key here is to not to rely on external factors for validation, which can be easier said that done. So rather than using your bank balance as a yardstick, you could try asking yourself:
- How much have you learned this year, or what new skills have you developed?
- How have you pushed outside your comfort zone?
- Do you have time for things that matter to you outside of work and are you able to pursue hobbies and interests?
- Are you taking care of your physical and mental health?
- Are you making progress toward your personal goals?
- Can you appreciate what you have right now?
If you can find other ways to measure success, you can become more resilient and better able to deal market fluctuations and challenges. True success should be personal to you, not what others say or think. which leads me to my next point…
Who are you listening to?
This one could apply to work as much as it could to your personal life. I don’t mean listening here in the literal sense; I’m talking more about influence.
We’re all influenced by external factors to a certain extent: whether you’re looking at someone’s social media, thinking that you’d like some of what they have, or we’re taking advice from people we perceive to be more successful than us. But you have to stop and ask yourself how this relates to you.
If you’re looking at someone’s flashy holiday on Instagram and feeling envy, like it’s something you want (or think you should have), stop and ask yourself why that is. Do you actually want a flashy holiday or do you feel like you’re missing out on something.
If someone’s giving you advice, stop and think before you act on it. Who’s giving you the advice? Do you know and trust them, do you know they have your best interests at heart?
Say you’re sitting at a restaurant and overhear the people at the next table talking about the stock market and how it’s a great time to buy a particular stock. The next day, you’re walking down the street and a homeless guy is asking for money. As you give him some change he says, “Thank you very much sir, I’m going to give you a stock tip, you should go and buy shares in this company, it’s going do really well”. You thank him and walk away, thinking nothing of his ‘tip’, but after a minute you realise that it’s exactly the same information you heard the day before.
The man in the restaurant was well-groomed and talking to other business people – he seemed like he would know what he’s talking about. Because the other information came from a guy on the street you automatically assumed it wasn’t valid. This is authority bias – don’t let it trip you up.
Are you above or below the line?
This is another thinking trap that could be impacting your mindset and holding you back, and it all comes down to whether you’re holding yourself accountable.
Picture this – you’re late for a meeting. You’ve left 5 minutes later than you should have, but as long as the traffic’s OK, you should just make it by the skin of your teeth. As it happens, there’s a bit of a tailback on the way there and you end up being 15 mins late. Do you blame the traffic, or do you admit that you didn’t leave on time?
Or perhaps you’re having to work late because there’s a problem at the office. It turns out that one of your direct reports has made a mistake somewhere and it’s had a knock-on effect that you’re now having to fix. Do you get pissed off about how incompetent your team are or do you stop and consider whether you’d shown them how to do what you needed and properly made sure they understood?
In both examples, when you blame someone else, that’s ‘below-the-line’ thinking. Taking accountability is ‘above-the-line’.
I don’t mean you should automatically take the blame for things that aren’t your fault! However, you do need to look at your part in events. The minute you start looking at whether you look for accountability rather than looking for someone to blame, it’ll transform your thinking and give you more agency to pursue your goals.
Are you too impatient?
You’ll often hear me say that ‘time in the market beats timing the market’ and you should apply the same sentiment to your work life. Now, I don’t mean slog away and not reap the rewards until you retire! But you do need to think about whether you’re too focused on instant success, or whether you’re playing the long game.
You have to remember that everything takes time. When I was a younger man I was very successful very quickly, and I thought I was a property genius who could do no wrong… and I was very quickly proved wrong!
Now that I’m older and wiser, I recognise that if it’s worth having, it’s worth waiting for, and that’s especially true when it comes to real estate. Markets, like everything, go in cycles, and it’s only when you’ve experienced full cycles that you can really start to see how things work. Inexperience can lead you to make some really unwise decisions that could end up losing you a lot of money.
Putting it into practice
I hope you’ve found this helpful. Remember, your work mindset isn’t just about how you approach your 9-to-5 – it’s the foundation for building a successful real estate portfolio and creating the life you really want for yourself. By understanding your ‘why’, measuring success outside of solely financial terms, being aware of who’s influencing you, taking accountability, and learning how to play the long game, you’re setting yourself up for success.
Next steps
If you recognise yourself in any of the above then it’s time to take action, but if you’re wondering where to start, then take a look at my new FREE training: Your Real Estate Roadmap (link below).
Watch the video and download the PDF to learn the 5 key steps to building wealth through property and how to scale your real estate investment portfolio.
Inside I cover who I am, how I know what I’m talking about, why you should build a property portfolio and how to go about it, as well as the key steps to take you to the next level on the road to success.