Happy Thanksgiving – Two Thankful Lessons to Help You
The key words are “giving thanks”. I’m thankful for being raised by the greatest parents in the world. Growing up with parents that allowed me to live life, test my abilities through success and failure, and teach me lessons along the way made me who I am today. I need to share two of the greatest lessons I learned from my parents so you can utilize them too (these lessons will guide me for life): 1. Pick your battles 2. Always give 100% otherwise, you’ll get hurt
- Pick your battles – This lesson applies to many areas of your life including personal and business.
Personal Example: Let’s say someone severally wrongs you by hitting their breaks while driving in front of you to look at a shiny police car that has someone pulled over. Before you ruin your day and use up your mental energy by verbally berating the terrible driver, stop and think. Most often you’ll figure out it’s not worth the loss of mental energy. Forgive the person and save your energy for bigger priorities.
Business Example: Let’s say you are negotiating to buy a property and the people you are dealing with made a mistake by changing critical information on the contract. When you identify the error (because you read all the details), it makes you uncomfortable to the point you feel like you’ve been lied to. In this case, it’s time to battle. You may want to call out this mistake to the other party, go silent for a day or two so they can think about what they’ve done, and come back with a counter offer. The worst emotional feedback you can give anyone is silence. Not receiving any feedback is more devastating to us than hearing positive or negative words.
Take Away: Be selective when you battle and if you do, win. - Always give 100% otherwise, you’ll get hurt – This is another broad lesson which applies to personal and business.
Personal Example: When I was growing up my siblings, friends, and I would always play sports. This lesson never failed, if a kid was not really trying to play or fully engaged in the activity they would always get hurt. Think about it, you remember the kid on the playground who would kinda sorta try and bam get hit in the face by a ball.
Business Example: When I was getting started (full getting started post here) and decided real estate was where I wanted to invest my hard-earned dollars. I decided to go 100% in and take every available dollar I had to invest in buying my first property. Since I was investing all of my money I was laser focused on protecting the investment and ensuring the best possible opportunity to make a return. I did my homework (running the numbers, checking the local market, checking job and population growth, etc.) before making the purchase so I knew going in I had a great opportunity to make money and my downside risk was low because the market wasn’t likely to turn towards a recession.
Take Away: Don’t play unless you are 100% focused.
