With a title like that you might be thinking, ‘What on earth is he talking about…leverage your future self?’. Well bear with me and I’m confident it will make sense and pay off for those who read on.
First to quickly circle back to last week’s post on deal flow management [I’ll put a link at the bottom of the post if you missed it]. That post received a lot of great comments and response so thanks for that, it clearly resonated with many of you. In follow up to that post, here’s the update- one deal we were hopeful about fell out of the shortlist and this week the one we had a last ditch attempt at with a second offer came through! So, we had our offer accepted on a commercial deal whilst also nudging two other potential deals an inch further. I won’t share more detail on the shop and uppers deal yet as the paperwork isn’t formalised but will look forward to doing that in the weeks to come.
So back to the quirky theme of this week’s post. These two techniques I’m going to share will take you being a little more open minded and certainly being a lot more proactive….if you’re interested. They come courtesy of Darren Hardy, one of my favourite authorities in the personal development and business leadership space.
TIP #1: YOUR BEST MENTOR IS YOU 10 YEARS FROM NOW
Here’s how to leverage that concept – add 10 years to your current age and fast forward in your mind to that time. Visualise how you are living out your best life ie what you have already accomplished, what you are now working towards, how you speak, how you act, what behaviours you demonstrate, what choices you make.
The you 10 years from now knows exactly what to do now. So, if you’re up for it, take the time to visualise the future you, in your minds eye ask questions of your future self and take your own advice.
As Hardy advocates, “Your goal is to live up to the person your 10 year future self knows you can be.”
So in the context of your own property investing journey, what does this look like? Are you wondering what your next move should be? Or maybe it’s your first move in property that’s the question. You might be wondering what property strategy to allocate your time, energy and resources to. The answers will come be asking yourself how you want to be involved in your property business, the kind of conversations and activities you want to engage in, and how it all aligns with your values and your financial goals. Only you can answer those questions and in particular your 10 year future self will know what to do now. Give it a go.
[By the way this is a more customised take on another effective exercise you may have heard about where you can visualise your own private boardroom of advisors and you choose whoever you want sat round the table ie Branson, Gates, Bezos, Buffet, Huffington…. and you imagine what advice they would give you.]
TIP #2: GIVE YOUR FUTURE SELF A GIFT
This second tip is super effective for helping you deal with tough ‘in the moment’ decisions. For example, you’ve got an hour scheduled in your diary to call and email leads to generate direct bookings to your serviced accommodation properties – you could get stuck into those calls or you could start google researching various search terms to ‘kid’ yourself you are busy.
Everyone will have their own version of this in their business and personal lives. In the moment you are doing battle with emotions to overcome this and ideally give your future self a gift ie in the example above it would be more direct bookings. In other words you want to be thinking, how can I be a hero to my future self by doing X task in the present. A simplified example might be that even though you are tired after cooking a big meal for the family, by clearing the kitchen before bed you can wake up to a fresh start the next morning (your future self will thank you for it, especially when the head is a little dusty from the night before).
What you’re doing is flipping the conversation in your head so that instead of the task being drudgery in the moment, it feels honourable because you are not putting off something your future self will have to deal with later.
This is not rocket science, it’s the essence of delayed gratification. You’ve heard it before packaged in different ways but more often than not we need reminding of what we know more than we need new information, and sometimes hearing it from a slightly different perspective is what it takes to finally action it.
I recall at the beginning of this year I heard Dan Pattrick share one of his favourite quotes which really resonated with me, and it follows the same message. Here’s the quote –
“Do something today that you will thank yourself for tomorrow”.
What are you going to do today as a gift to your future self?
P.S. Last week’s post on deal flow http://adaeroproperty.com/the-importance-of-deal-flow-for-property-investors/