Do you have mental toughness?
Do you have what it takes to bounce back from setbacks with property investment and stay on track with your goals?
Even if you consider yourself mentally tough, it is important that you keep working on this so that you will be able to handle any situation that confronts you in your property investment business.
There are challenges in every business and property investment is no different. Over the years I have had to overcome a number of obstacles to see a project through to successful completion and I am still doing this today.
These challenges and obstacles are a great opportunity for you to grow as a person.
I have been in situations where I really didn’t know what to do to overcome problems that arose. Can you relate to this? But I was always confident that my mental toughness would see me through. And it always has.
One thing that you can almost guarantee with property investment projects is that something will go wrong. Someone is going to let you down, or you are going to discover something about the property that you were not aware of before.
If you are not mentally tough then these things can overwhelm you. They can make you question why you are in the business of property investment and think that there must be an easier way to make money.
I have been there a number of times, but I have always battled on and resolved all of the problems. Here are the 4 things that I do to develop my mental toughness and I recommend that you do this too.
1. Keep your Mindset Positive for Mental Toughness
A positive mindset is vital for mental toughness. Studies have shown that we experience around 60,000 thoughts every day. And of those, 95% repeat every day and around 80% tend to be negative.
That’s a lot of negative thoughts to contend with every day that will test your positive mindset. Wouldn’t it be best to identify these negative thoughts and then eliminate them? It certainly would and the best way to do this is to eradicate limiting beliefs and make a change from “all or nothing” thinking.
Limiting beliefs can really put your positive mindset under a lot of pressure. On the one hand you want to be mentally tough, but on the other hand your limiting beliefs result in you beating yourself up on a regular basis. You may not realise this, but limiting beliefs will hold you back and we all have them.
Here are some examples of limiting beliefs transforming into negative thoughts:
“I don’t have the experience to deal with this”
“I failed at this last time so I will probably fail at it again”
“I was never good at maths in school”
It doesn’t matter what the limiting belief is it will kick off negative thought patterns in your head and they can totally flood your mind. In order to stay positive you end up fighting against yourself each day.
So what can you do about this? Well when I experience negative thoughts like this I will neutralise them with a positive thought. You see these are just thoughts and not your reality. You can and you need to challenge them.
So if I experience a thought like “you failed before so you will fail again” I will neutralise this with “just because I failed in the past doesn’t mean that I will get it wrong this time. I will succeed this time”.
Do you think in extremes? Do you believe that if you didn’t experience total success with something then it means that you failed? If you have these kinds of thoughts then you are participating in all or nothing thinking.
There is no middle ground with all or nothing thinkers. The project was either a total success or a total failure. But this is not true of course. If you made a 9.5% return on a property investment project and your goal was to make a 10% return then 9.5% is still a success.
All or nothing thinking just sets you up for failure. You need to start to acknowledge that there are grey areas between success and failure and perfection and imperfection. This will help you to experience more success and help to fuel your positive mindset.
If something bad happens to you do you tend to dwell on this a lot? We have all done this and let a particular situation dominate our minds. The next time that this happens to you it is important that you work hard to reduce the amount of dwelling time so that you can move forward.
Now I am not saying that this is easy – but it is certainly possible if you practice. Here are some ways that I cut down on my dwell time when a problem arises:
- I set a time limit on the amount of time that I am prepared to dwell on the situation e.g. 60 minutes
- I call my mentor or someone else to discuss the issue with them to gain external perspective
- I distract myself with something else such as meditation so that I can be in the moment and clear my mind
It is going to take time for you to minimise the positive thoughts in your head but it is worth being persistent with this as you do not want to keep putting your positive mindset under intense pressure all of the time.
2. Connect with your WHY
You need a strong WHY to guide you with everything that you do. This is essential for the development of your mental toughness. A challenging and well intentioned goal will be much harder to achieve without a strong WHY.
Without a WHY you will find that it will be very easy for you to become distracted, discouraged and even disengaged from your goal when you encounter problems along the way (which of course you will).
Think back to a time when you were working towards a goal and something happened that made you feel like giving up. What did you tell yourself? “I don’t have the discipline to see this through” or “I do not have the necessary willpower” perhaps?
If your WHY was really strong then you wouldn’t have experienced these kinds of thoughts. It will drain your energy trying to pursue something that you are not totally committed to. You have to muster up the motivation to carry on instead of this coming from within naturally. So create a strong WHY and connect with it.
It is far better to have intrinsic motivation than have to rely on finding other ways to motivate yourself. I read my WHY statement every morning and I am fully connected to it. No matter what kinds of crazy happen during the day I always have the motivation to deal with it because of this.
I create a strong WHY for everything that I want to achieve that has an element of challenge to it. This really helps me to develop sufficient internal or intrinsic motivation to see it through. It will help you too so make sure that you have a strong enough WHY.
3. Have a good Support Team
If you look at all of the most successful people in the world you will find that they did not do everything themselves. They had a team of people helping them to achieve their goals. Bill Gates didn’t create Microsoft and all of its products and services alone for example.
You will strengthen your mental toughness when you have the right people to call upon. These people are on your side and will always be in your corner. Having employees and / or a virtual team that you can turn to for support is highly recommended.
One of the best things that I ever did was to find a good mentor. This is someone that will help you to identify your strengths and weaknesses and help you to overcome those weaknesses. When I experienced some of my darkest times with property investment my mentor was always there for me and inspired me to find a solution.
A great thing about a good mentor is that they can help you to see the bigger picture. Quite often you can get stuck on something that really doesn’t matter that much at the end of the day. They can see this but you can’t.
4. Get straight back up again after a Setback
Nothing tests your mental toughness more than your ability to bounce right back after experiencing a setback. If you want to be truly successful with property investment and achieve your freedom goals then you need to accept that there are going to be a few setbacks along the way. The road to success always has failure roadblocks.
So the next time you experience a setback and feel like throwing in the towel ask yourself these questions:
- “Is my view being distorted by limiting beliefs, negative thoughts or all or nothing thinking?”
- “What is the opportunity with this setback?’
- “Why did I want to achieve this goal?”
- “Who can I turn to for help with this problem?”
These questions will help you to perform a mindset check. If you lose your connection with your WHY or find yourself in a spiral of negative thought then you can easily feel discouraged. Often the inspiration you need to break this negative pattern is easy to find just by asking yourself the right questions.
Always bear in mind that developing mental toughness is not a onetime deal. You need to keep working at it all of the time so that you can build up your resilience and keep marching on when everything around you seems to be falling apart.
