When faced with the choice between the most certain outcome revealed over years and decades or a lesser certain outcome that you find out right away, most people choose the latter.
Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, two of the richest men the world has ever seen, had been asked countless times when they started whether they would become rich?
Each time they answered with some variation, “I always knew we would become rich; I just never knew when.” “I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.”
How can someone be that certain when it comes to obtaining the ultimate wealth creation?
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% of new businesses fail in the first two years, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years.
An incredible 87% of real estate agents fail after five years in the industry.
Here’s why Buffett & Munger became the richest men in the world and why most people fail.
Most people’s expectations exceed their joy in the work. Most people expect that as soon as they do something, they should get immediate feedback if they won or lost. The best part about school, sports, and games is that we find out at the end whether or not we won or lost. The problem is that most things in life that create wealth, not results have no end and will never reveal the result until you quit.
65% of businesses fail, and 87% of agents fail because they couldn’t tell if they were winning or losing and quit.
The people that succeed in achieving wealth and abundance are the people who practice for the sake of practice itself, not for the result. All significant results are composed of a belief in compounding and mastery. Mastery reveals progress in brief spurts followed by long periods of work. The long periods of work give feedback on failed accomplishments. The brain will feel stuck and frustrated, leading to a loss of focus and avoidance of the work required to achieve mastery.
The plateau is the moment when you are doing the work, and the progress is so small one can’t recognize it. You have to have self-efficacy, a belief in yourself to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments.
Ask any successful person what made them who they are today. Ask about their defining moments. Not one person will talk about their achievements, awards, or reaching a goal. They all will tell you about times when the challenge was high, the outlook bleak, and despite that, they continued and did the work, not knowing when the positive result would reveal itself.
The progress was the goal, not the result.
They can tell you story after story about times when they seemingly failed, and on the backside of that failure lay their greatest wins.
Our endurance is one physical and mental feat that no other species can equal. A cheetah can run 70 mph; a gorilla can lift 1,800 pounds but neither can focus on a problem day after day and year after year until it is solved, adjusting along the way.
Your greatest ability is to focus on the task and detach yourself from the result.
Nick McLean
Nick McLean Real Estate Group
Cheplak Live Coach
Real Estate Greatness