Feelings Follow Behavior
Recently I have been studying the work of the world renowned psychiatrist Gordon Livingston M.D., I thought this piece might be interesting to our property investors.
Dr. Livingston says:
“Most people know what is good for them, know what will make them feel better: exercise, hobbies, time with those they care about. They do not avoid these things because of ignorance of their value, but because they are no longer “motivated” to do them. They are waiting until they feel better. Frequently, it’s a long wait.
As much as we try, we do not control how we feel or what we think. Efforts to do so are uniformly frustrating as we struggle against unwanted thoughts and emotions in ways that only exacerbate them. Fortunately, our lives have taught us that certain behaviors predictably bring us pleasure and satisfaction.”
I found this very relevant to property investors. Very often, we rely too much on how we feel or what we think when we come to an investment decision, a regulated action plan can take out the feeling and thinking on the day and often deliver a more predictable result.
Take going to the gym in the morning. If your attendance is based on how you feel and what you think every morning when you get out of bed, it’s very unlikely that you will go consistently; hence your day to day feelings dictate your performance and your result will not be as predictable.
The same is true for property investing, if we don’t have an action plan to follow, then we will follow how we feel and what we think on the day. Our feelings change on a daily basis and therefore it follows that frequently there will be no predictability for investing results either.
I often come across property investor clients that I haven’t seen for a few years, they often told me they wish they had invested a bit more a few years ago. When I ask them why they didn’t do so, their answer is usually not because they were not in a financial position to invest, it is usually because “There were other stuff going on in my life at the time, I didn’t feel like doing anything else.”
We all have stuff going on in our lives most of the time, if we have to wait till we feel better to do certain things, we may have to wait for a long time for many of them. Unfortunately, property investors can’t afford to wait, as time is where the money is.
The principle of “feelings follow behavior” also has huge implication for people who have great difficulty starting something new such as:
- Buying their first investment property;
- Doing their first renovation;
- Doing their first development project;
- Taking on more than $1m worth of mortgages the first time;
Let me apply “feelings follow behavior” to this situation:
- Behavior = thinking about them and doing nothing;
- Feelings = fear of the unknown;
Can you see that our feeling “fear of the unknown” actually follows the behavior “Thinking about them and doing nothing”?
So if we want to feel better, all we need to do is to change our behavior to the opposite, in this case that is “stop thinking about them and do something”.
That is why you hear the saying “too much thinking can do your head in”. We are not what we think, we are what we do. We often need to take actions before we even understand why, that is to act first, the understanding will follow.
Taking action is one of the fastest and most effective ways to get out of our own thinking and emotional traps, and having an action plan to follow is the only way to ensure that we can take the planned actions beyond all reasons and excuses.
Investors Direct will be running a 3 hour evening workshops in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth in March, where our team and I will help you develop an action plan for your property investing.
Unlike any other seminars and workshops we have run in the last 5 years, you will need to bring a calculator, pen and paper, and hopefully you can remember your basic property portfolio information otherwise it would be great to bring a summary page with you. We will get to work together.
We will combine all the current investment property mortgage options and residential property strategies available in Australia, and apply the Investors Direct methodology to help you design your own plan. Once you know how to design it, you will know how to adjust it according to your situation in the future.
The details of the workshops are:
- Sydney Tuesday 6 March, 2007 (to book online, please click here)
- Brisbane Wednesday 7 March, 2007 (to book online, please click here)
- Melbourne Tuesday 13 March, 2007(to book online, please click here)
- Perth Wednesday 14 March, 2007(to book online, please click here)
I am looking forward to seeing you, your friends and family on the day.
This article was written by Bill Zheng, founder and CEO of Investors Direct™, a leading property finance company that provides financial solutions exclusively for property investors and non-institutional developers. Bill has been a keynote speaker for numerous high profile property and finance conferences throughout Australia and around the world. For further details about Investors Direct™, please go to www.investorsdirect.com.au.
Copyright © 2001-2007 Investors Direct.
Kind regards,
Bill Zheng
Investors Direct
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