Summary: Are you happy? You probably don’t hear many people in real estate circles talking about happiness. However, your happiness is probably one of the most important things to you in life. So what does happiness have to do with being a real estate investor? Does success in real estate investing necessarily make you happy? Do the “hassles” of investing in real estate make you unhappy?
Are you happy?
This is a question Leti and I have been thinking and talking about a lot over the last couple of months since attending an incredible Happiness seminar in October.
Now I’m not going to go into the details about the program in this article. Leti is writing a two-part series covering that event over the next few weeks.
Instead, I’m going to talk about happiness as it relates to real estate investing.
This is a topic that has come up more and more in our private communities, and I thought it might be useful to share some of the insights coming out of these discussions.
Real estate investing and the arrival fallacy
Let’s start out by talking about the arrival fallacy.
For those who haven’t heard of the arrival fallacy, this is the belief that you’ll be happy once you’ve achieved a certain goal.
For you achievers out there, you’re constantly chasing new goals. Whether it’s getting into graduate school, getting the job you’ve always wanted or buying that dream home.
For members of our community, the goal is often financial freedom. The belief is that once you achieve freedom, you’ll finally be happy.
However, many of you know the truth. Achieving your goal doesn’t make you happy.
You might be elated for a short period of time but it eventually wears off.
It’s the same with financial freedom. We achieved financial freedom in 2017 but it didn’t make us happy. In fact, I personally felt unhappy and less fulfilled.
So if achieving your goal doesn’t make you happy, what will?
For us, a big part of it was about growth and making progress towards your goals.
Growth leads to fulfillment
Some call fulfillment lasting happiness.
With growth, the fulfillment lasts because there is no end point to progress. There is always room to grow.
In the context of real estate investing, growth can happen by default when something challenging is thrown your way.
Growth can also happen intentionally by setting goals and achieving them.
In late 2018, I set out a goal to buy a 100+ unit apartment complex. I didn’t know how I was going to achieve my goal and thinking about it scared me.
So why would anyone intentionally put themselves in such an uncomfortable situation? These feelings seem to be the opposite of happiness.
Just because you are uncomfortable doesn’t mean you aren’t happy. The feelings of discomfort are usually transient. The feeling might be better described as excitement. This makes sense because whenever you try something new or you’re about to learn something, it can be exciting.
Once you do make progress, this makes you feel fulfilled because you feel good about the fact that you can handle difficult situations or accomplish difficult goals.
Maybe you aren’t the type of person who can go out and buy a 100-unit apartment complex just yet. But imagine when you achieve something like this. How great would that feel to know you’ve become the kind of person who can?
Choosing the right environment
We’ve observed that a big part of happiness is to surround yourself with the right people.
Who are the “right” people?
The right people are those who choose to maintain a beautiful state. Beautiful states are when you’re bathed in positive emotions. Examples are happiness, joy, a sense of peace, feeling grateful, excitement, and love.
You know these people. These are people who are more grateful than not. They appreciate the little things. They assume the best in others. They see every problem as a learning opportunity. They see life as happening for them, not to them. They are loving.
On the flip side, the “wrong” people are those who are in suffering states. A suffering state is living with negative emotions, such as anger, frustration, judgment, anxiety and even hate. You probably know a few of these people too.
Think about the people who you surround yourself with and then intentionally choose whether or not you continue to spend significant time with them.
This process should be intentional.
Nobody is forcing you to stay in the same environment. You can choose. You have the freedom to change your environment.
Real estate provides numerous “learning opportunities”
If you’ve started your investing journey, you know that real estate throws many challenges your way.
Some might call these “problems.” Others call it the “hassle factor” of investing in real estate investing.
The question is, when something happens, how long do you stay stressed, frustrated or angry? How long do you suffer? This is where the beautiful state is so important. What if you could be in a beautiful state for most of your day?
One way to stay in a beautiful state is to choose empowering language. To call something a “problem” or a “hassle” is disempowering. What about calling them learning opportunities or opportunities for growth? It’s the same issue, but a completely different experience.
There are many other tools you can use to maintain this beautiful state. We’ll cover some of these tools that we learned about at the Happiness and Fulfillment program in the coming weeks.
Enjoy the journey
A student of ours recently asked us, should we always re-invest all of the cashflow and tax savings back into real estate? Or is there a point at which you spend some of that money on yourself?
It’s a great question. Obviously re-investing the money will grow your money a lot faster because of the power of compounding. But you’d also be delaying gratification.
What we’ve found is that you need to find ways to enjoy the journey along the way. This is why we added a fifth step to The Fast FIRE System, which we call Experience the Money.
Rather than delaying gratification, we believe it’s important to enjoy the fruits of your labor along the way. If you are earning a certain amount of cashflow each year from your properties, consider setting aside some of it to do some of the things you’ve always wanted to do rather than re-investing the money back into your portfolio.
Happiness and real estate investing
Happiness has nothing to do with real estate investing. You can be happy whether you invest in real estate or not.
But real estate investing can provide you with many opportunities to learn and grow. It can maybe even accelerate your path to happiness. It can strengthen your ability to maintain a beautiful state. And the growth you experience from achieving big things in real estate can ultimately lead to fulfillment.
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