You can become as wealthy as you want to be through property investment
A while ago I discovered the money secret that separates the wealthy and successful property investors from the average Australian. I found out the biggest obstacle that stopped some people becoming wealthy, and I would like to share my findings with you.
Over the last 12 years I have been conducting property seminars around Australia and south-east Asia. I have been teaching how I have grown my own very substantial property portfolio and how many of my students and our clients at Metropole had used property to develop financial independence.
Some of my seminars have lasted a few hours, others a full day and at times I conducted three- and five-day intensive workshops.
Yet the results have always been the same.
The attendees always got loads of information, tips and tricks. Some people took action after these events and got outstanding results. Yet others who sat right next to these action-takers went home and didn’t do anything different to before.
This always disappointed me, and I wondered what I could do better.
Initially I thought I had to give them more facts, additional tips or extra information. So I packed even more into my seminars, but the results didn’t change.
What was it?
As I studied this phenomenon I came to realise that it wasn’t the quality of the information that stopped some people taking action. It was something inside them – their mindset or what I call their “financial thermostat.”
We all have a financial thermostat inside us that determines the level of wealth we are comfortable with.
What level is your financial thermostat set for?
For example, Donald Trump has his financial thermostat set to billions. Imagine if he was “only” a millionaire. He would feel poor, wouldn’t he?
Some people have their thermostat set for millions of dollars, others for thousands. The average Australian has their financial thermostat set very low.
The problem is that if your financial thermostat is set for a low level, then the way you think and the way you behave will keep you poor.
Even if you have all the information, even if you know all the steps to take, things like fear and doubt will hold you back.
We’ve all heard of people who have come into money, such as lottery winners, and lost it because they just couldn’t handle it. Your wealth usually shrinks back to the amount you can handle.
It’s been said that if you took all the money in the world and divided it equally amongst everybody, it would soon be back in the same pockets it was before. I’m sure that is correct. It is hard to keep that which has not been obtained through personal development.
What this means is that most people will never develop the wealth they truly deserve because their financial thermostat, which was programmed to a low level of wealth when they were children, holds them back.
We are not born knowing how to “do money”. We are all programmed by our parents, our teachers, our culture, our religion, our peer group.
This means that in general we have been programmed by unwealthy people.
Take a minute to think about what you were taught about money.
What did you hear from your parents about money and rich people?
Did you hear things like: Money doesn’t grow on trees. Money is the root of all evil. Rich people are greedy and selfish. Money won’t make you happy. Money isn’t that important anyway.
Do any of those sound familiar?
What did you see at home about money when you were young?
We learn a lot about how to behave in all areas of our lives by modelling our parents. So how were your parents when it came to money?
Did they argue about money? Was one more of a saver or was one a spender and free with money? Were they good money managers or did one or both mismanage money?
It’s interesting how many of us end up becoming so much like our parents in the arena of money. Unless we were very angry as a child and then we tended to rebel and become the opposite of our parents.
How did your parents behave around money when you were young?
Your experiences around money as a child also affect how you were programmed.
Have a think about it.
Did money mean happiness or did money mean arguments when you were young? Was money ever used as a substitute for love or as a form of bribery?
For most of us the subconscious programming we received as a child was and continues to be disempowering.
Your limiting wealth beliefs
These limiting wealth beliefs were instilled in us when we were children and at the time they seemed very true, but they are no longer relevant to us today.
If your experiences were like mine, the people who taught you about money – your parents, your grandparents, your teachers – had the best intentions. They wanted you to succeed financially.
Unfortunately, since they had never been taught about how money really works, all they could pass on was their own beliefs systems, often based on scarcity rather than the abundant thoughts that are necessary to feel truly wealthy.
The end result is often a raft of disempowering beliefs about money and wealth and rich people. Beliefs that are neither true nor false, nor wrong or right. Your beliefs are your beliefs and they work at a subconscious level.
But your beliefs can be empowering or disempowering.
Most Australians will never become rich because of their beliefs.
At some level they believe that rich people and/or money are bad. Or that wealth is beyond their reach. Or that they do not deserve to become wealthy.
Then they find ways of justifying to themselves why they don’t want to become wealthy, or why they don’t deserve to become wealthy.
For things to change in your life, you must change first. You must pinpoint the negative or limiting wealth beliefs that are holding you back from reaching your true potential.
So how do you move forward?
How do you get yourself to take action? You will need to do four things:
1. Develop awareness
The first step is to evaluate your current position. How are you going financially?
Become aware of what’s good – the thoughts, actions and behaviors you want to keep and what’s bad – the things you want to change. Which of your beliefs are not working for you? What lessons about money and wealth were handed down to you many years ago, but have not been updated for your current needs.
2. Discard your non-empowering beliefs
Now that you understand that some of your beliefs about money and rich people are holding you back it’s time to discard your non-empowering beliefs.
3. Develop new beliefs
You then need to adopt the belief systems of successful people. Model yourself on other successful people – people who have already achieved what you want to achieve.
For you to lose weight you would not only need to adopt the actions and behaviours of someone else who lost weight. To keep your weight off in the long term, you would also need to learn to think like a slim person thinks.
The fastest way for you to become financially successful is for you to adopt the thoughts and behaviours of people who are already financially successful. What do these people do differently? And it’s not just the steps they take; it’s what they believe and how they think about money and wealth.
4. Take action
Now it’s time to act on your new positive beliefs. It’s called be, do, have.
You become the person you want to be as soon as you start thinking and acting like that person. If you want to become wealthy, become wealthy in your mind first (be that person). Then do what wealthy people do – act wealthy. In turn, your will have what wealthy people have.
Wealth is a result…
It’s a result of your thoughts and beliefs, which lead to your actions.
It is important for us to understand that we are all fully responsible for our financial results.
If things aren’t working out the way you want them to, you need to stop taking the easy way out and blaming outside factors. It’s not your boss’s fault, nor is it the government or interest rates. It’s not even the lack of content or secrets at Michael’s seminar.
And you need to stop justifying why you are not financially successful.
Most of what you have today you have attracted by becoming the person you are today. If you want things to change in your life financially, you must change first.
The good news is that your life can change because you can change. When we throw out our blame list and start becoming more of ourselves – interestingly, everything will begin to change around us.
Michael Yardney is the director of Metropole Property Investment Strategists, a best-selling author and one of Australia's leading experts in wealth creation through property. He also writes the Property Investment Update blog.