The 4 Letter F Word

Dear ,

Now, if I haven’t scared you off with the subject of this e-mail, let me assure you I’m not about to drop the “F-Bomb”!

The 4 letter F word I’m talking about here is “fear”.

The Fear of Failure.

The Fear of Change.

The Fear of Success.

Fear is a much dirtier word than the  “F-Bomb” if you ask me!  It sounds extreme, but fear is debilitating.

Fear stops you from making a decision.

Fear stops you from moving out of your comfort zone.

Fear stops you from saying “yes” or “no”.

Fear stops you from being a successful property investor.

It’s not just you – we all have it.  Including me.

Now there’s two types of fear.

Emotional fear and physical fear

Speculative Fear

Speculative fear is the fear of “what if” – the fear of things going belly up.  What if I lose my job?  What if my car breaks down?  What happens if lightning strikes me? What if an earthquake destroys my property portfolio?  What if the dish runs away with the spoon?

This fear is all speculation and it can be solved very easily. Here’s how:

  1. Pick a situation you have some fear around and write it down in the header section of a page in your notebook (that one you were recording your observations in).
  1. Now underneath that I want you to write the worst possible thing that could happen if your fear came true.
  1. Then, a few lines from the bottom of the page, start writing down the best outcome you could imagine if your fear came true.
  1. Finally, I want you to look at that space in the middle of the page, and there I want you to write a middle-of-the road outcome – not a good or not a bad outcome, but a middle of the road outcome that would happen if your fear came true.
  1. Put a circle around the middle-of-the-road outcome and cross out the other two.  Chances are, that the middle of the road response is the most realistic thing that could happen.
  1. Make a note of 3 action items you could take immediately to make that middle-of-the-road outcome easier to deal with and less impactful.
  1. Go make those 3 things happen!

That’s pretty easy to deal with, because the fear is all in your head!

Situational Fear

This is a different fear – it’s because of an actual threat to your safety or the safety of a loved one.

Imagine you’re in a life-threatening situation – like being face to face with a lion.

If you don’t do something, it’s going to eat you.

Your adrenaline kicks in and you manage to run away to safety.

That’s where real fear comes into play.  But there’s a catch.

The fear doesn’t kick in before the lion was there – otherwise you would have avoided it.  The fear doesn’t kick in while the lion is there – it’s your adrenaline that kicks in and tells you whether you fight or flee – your survival response kicks in.

So when does the fear kick in?

Here it is – the fear kicks in after the event… when you reflect upon it, recall it and remember it.

Well, that’s not much use afterwards is it?

So as you can see, fear is not really that useful as an emotion – even if you’re face to face with a lion!
Fear is a reactive emotion, when it is situational – that means it kicks in after the event.

Fear is a precautionary emotion when it is speculative, which means it is telling you to put measures in place to so that your fears don’t eventuate.

Over 90% of the fear you face is going to be speculative – meaning that it’s all in your own head… and now you’ve got a killer technique for dealing with it!

Activity

Between now and the next e-mail I would like you to spend some time daily evaluating every fear you have around finance, wealth creation and property investing.

Deal with them one at a time, and start by asking whether this is speculative fear (in your head) or situational fear (actual danger or threat to safety).

Remember, over 90% of the time, it will be speculative.

Then go through the exercise that I outlined earlier in this email and put your action steps into place.

If you find that you don’t have fear, then ask yourself “what is holding me back?”  Again, write down 3 actions that you will take to put yourself in action.

So get started with that now, and I’ll share some more with you in our next e-mail.

To Your Success,

P.S Next I’ll share with you the story of a couple who were in their early 40’s when they started down their investing journey and how they bought 5 properties in 12 months!