Triggers – Creating Behavior That Lasts, Becoming the Person You Want to Be
If you are a reader of this site it is likely you are a bit of a cerebral person. You are a planner. You pay attention to detail.
You are highly intelligent and looking for the education and edge to be better than you were yesterday.
If you are a reader here then you are the type of person who works hard to shape your own destiny and become the best version of yourself.
I am drawn to this book because it goes deep into exploring what it takes to become that superhero version of ourselves that we all want to be. Triggers does not disappoint.
There are many reasons we don’t succeed with changing our behaviors. I highly recommend reading this one for all the details because it helped me move past a lot of issues that were hindering my real estate business.
First a quick definition according to the book. A “trigger” is any stimulus that reshapes our thoughts and actions. These can be positive or negative. It is all the people in our lives, events that take place, and circumstances we face.
A trigger is anything that makes us feel or think. Nearly everything is a trigger. Since we cannot control everything, we must then control our own mind. Here are my favorite takeaways from the book on how.
Lesson 1 – Develop Your Environment
Our environment is the number one, most potent, and most important trigger we face.
I’ll give you an example. It is easy to maintain a healthy diet if you are at home and don’t have tempting food in the fridge and pantry. If you have salad, grilled chicken, and water for a meal without the temptation of any junk food there is no need for willpower.
However, if you are at a birthday party and someone hands you a delicious piece of cake with everyone else around you having fun and eating it, you’ll eat it. I know that I would.
If you are at work at 9am and your co-workers are all grabbing coffee that might be the drink of choice. There is no temptation to do shots of tequila. Well, maybe you feel like you want to, but you probably won’t be binge drinking on the clock. If you go to happy hour after work on Friday though…
“I believe your atmosphere and your surroundings create a mind state for you” – Theophilus London, Grammy Award winning music artist
Different locations facilitate different behaviors, maybe even pushing on to you different decisions because of what you have for choices.
Same thing happens in real estate investing.
Have you ever spent a few thousand dollars on REI guru courses? I have…
Being at your local REIA meeting, pumped up by the energy of the members around you feels amazing. You hear a success story and think, why can’t that be me?
If someone offers you a course that looks like THE key to success why would you not take it? I’m not against courses or learning new techniques, especially from credible teachers. Do you have that same enthusiasm the next morning when the real work and learning has to start?
In real estate investing there is a lot going on at all times. There is always:
- something to learn
- new strategies and techniques
- better scripts to close sellers
- podcasts to listen to
- networking to be done
- communication to go out to agents, property managers, fellow investors
However, we need to ensure we are getting work done rather than staying busy.
Developing your environment means finding time to do the one thing that is most important to your business and work deeply.
Focus on the marketing technique that you want to be great at and divert all attention to it.
Find the educational outlet that you pay attention to the most and learn from there.
Remove the distractions that might be in the form of emails, calls, and solicitations that you do not need to respond to. What is the core of your business?
Lesson 2 – Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
We have all heard it before.
You can have everything in the world if you want it bad enough and work for it hard enough.
I disagree completely.
No one can have everything they want. Life is short and there is not enough time for everything.
Success means sacrifice. Sacrifice can be a beautiful thing though. It can free you from having to be perfect at everything.
Being comfortable is the pathway to mediocrity. It is outside that comfort zone that you start investing in your future. To move forward you have to create something new.
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” – Neale Donald Walsch
Be great at something you care about rather than mediocre or completely unsuccessful at all the fringe things you don’t need to be good at.
You are the CEO of your business. You should have a competent understanding of all things but focus on honing only a few skill sets that make you the leader. The rest can be done by professionals.
Think about the biggest corporations in the world. They are run by highly successful and intelligent people who are generalists in all things who surround themselves with specialists of specific things.
- Elon Musk doesn’t grab a hose and fuel up Space X rockets
- Jeff Bezos doesn’t pack your Amazon packages
- Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t write the ads that fund Facebook
Remove the busy work and execute on bigger more important tasks.
A recent example for me is that I just had a pipe burst in the top unit of my duplex that leaked into and soaked through a wall in my bottom unit.
I had a plumber replace the pipes once we found out what was wrong but in the process he cut open a hole in the wall that needs patching.
I could patch that wall. I’ve done my own drywall work in the past, it is pretty simple, the supplies are cheap. I am comfortable doing that.
But, is that the best use of my time?
If I was just starting out in a different position and needed to really pinch pennies, yes, I do it. But I want my business to grow!
I have to step out of that comfort zone and focus on things that only I can do. I’ll pay someone else to patch that wall. Not only can someone else can do it, they may do it better and faster than I could.
However, no one else can write this article. My time is very limited so instead of running around and doing the small items, I’d rather focus on the larger goal.
As Peter Drucker (world famous investor) warned, do not sacrifice the future on the altar of today. I am not Shakespeare, but I won’t become a better writer working with drywall.
Lesson 3 – Build the Structure
You can probably tell from my earlier articles I am a creature of habit and discipline. My time in the military ensured that structure was built into my days.
We cannot improve in any endeavor without structure.
It is intuitive in other parts of our lives.
We have workout plans and diets to improve our health.
We plan our wedding days so it goes off like a fairytale.
Yet how many of us treat improvement in real estate investing skills as a hobby without a plan, goals, or structure?
Mentorship provides one for of structure. It is an excellent one that provides guidance, accountability, and a sounding board to bounce ideas. Plus, having a great mentor means cutting down on the learning curve and possibly saving time, money, and hard lessons learned.
One of the most common questions I see is how do I find a mentor?
Unfortunately, one of the most common approaches I see in forums and real estate investing groups is, hey, I am new. Can you please be my mentor? Spend your valuable time to figure out what I need to do to be successful and teach me everything you know (paraphrasing of course).
I know that isn’t done with bad intentions, but reverse the roles. If you were in the position to pass on some knowledge could you just dedicate a chunk of your time to a brand new stranger?
How much of your time would you give up to think of something that this new, untested, and possibly uncommitted person could do to help you that would benefit the both of you?
The better way to go about it is to offer value.
What can you do as someone who wants to learn, to help out that experienced investor to make their business more successful? Always think win/win.
One time I attended an REI class about probates. The presenter knew his stuff.
His PowerPoint slide show however, wasn’t great.
After the presentation I went up to him and thanked him for an informative class. I also let him know I had a background as a Military Intelligence officer for the Army and if there is something we are experts at, it is PowerPoint!
I offered to redo his presentation, no charge, no strings attached, no expectations.
That started a good dialogue and he emailed it to me. I told him I could get it done in a few weeks. The updated, cleaner, and far more impactful presentation was back in his inbox within 72 hours.
Always under promise and over deliver.
- Win for him was that he has a slick new presentation.
- Win for me because I had to redo and rework the slides and really deep dive to learn the probate process, plus gained access to his notes and detailed processes. It didn’t cost me money.
It didn’t cost me buying a course. It didn’t cost me a cup of coffee. Find a way to provide value.
I really loved this book and will continue to implement the strategies and techniques on a daily basis.
Changing things in our lives is often difficult but never impossible. We are what we constantly thinking about and do. If you are looking for that change and want to up your personal and real estate investing life then pick up a copy of Triggers!
Leave a Reply