It's insane how you can live with a certain mindset, and one day wakeup to understand that your success is on the other side of unlearning.
I spent most of my life believing that my success was one of those things that were out of my control. Most days I asked “ Why couldn't I have been one of those born into wealth?” Based on the location of my upbringing and social class (my environment) I was destined to be a victim of life, and have no control over the outcome, as so many tend to believe.
I remember that from the time of my childhood all the way to becoming a grown man; when I thought about wealth, as a minority, or money in general, the thought was that wealth was just not for people like me. Unless I became a famous entertainer that is. I remember even the thought of someday being famous (which I thought was the only way to wealth) would make my family chuckle when I said it out loud. Because of these types of reactions from those closest to me when success was mentioned, I developed an inferiority complex, and I believed that achieving riches and wealth was impossible for me.
As a young adult, I dove into the world of entertainment and began involving myself in the music business with hopes that someday I would be rich and I would buy my Mom a huge house thus sweeping her away from the poverty she knew. I was into music production and songwriting, so I could only envision achieving wealth through music. Even back then, while grinding on my “music hustle", I remember always saying, “I only need to find success through music to create wealth, but I don’t want to be an entertainer, I want to be the guy behind a desk writing checks.” In other words, I always wanted to be a boss. With time I developed somewhat of an entrepreneurial spirit, and took a crack at many little business endeavors, from unmentionable ideas I'm not proud of, to food stands, to selling Cds on the street. All this helped me visualize myself attaining a certain level of success and arriving at that boss position I yearned for.
As it commonly happens, life changed the direction of everything I thought my future would be. Not only did I become a parent at a young age, but in my early 30’s life transitioned me into single parenthood, and with that came financial difficulties and losing everything I had worked for until that time. At the age of 33 I decided to start a new life, and felt that in order to fully begin a new life, I needed to move away from where I had built my life in Puerto Rico and begin from scratch in the city that birthed me; New York City. I want to be clear that the only reason why I share this is because I want to lead by example; that nothing has been handed to me thus far, that I had to pick myself up, start a new life, set goals, and work towards them without expecting anything from others, or from the government. I know that if you are currently in a difficult situation, you can also do the same. I, like many, grew up thinking that unless you were an entertainer, got lucky, or inherited money from someone wealthy, there was a very, very, very slim chance of achieving it. I noticed that every time I would take another step towards bettering myself, the word “lucky” was thrown around a lot. Never had I noticed how annoying it can be to work hard for something, and hear people attribute it to luck. I also was one of those that often attributed the success of others to luck and not their persistence and hard work.
One of the most important terms that I learned from Gary Vaynerchuck after stumbling onto some of his content on YouTube, was the term “self awareness”. Boy did that change my life. Granted, when I moved to NY, I would often talk to myself about the changes I needed to make in myself. I told myself that I would find happiness, and I made the decision to be happy, and stay happy, even during difficult times (like the death of my mother but that's a topic for another time). By the age of 35, I remarried. I married a beautiful woman whom I had met close to 20 years prior when she was only a teenager. Funny how life works. Learning about self awareness made something in me click, and it shifted my thoughts on personal development, business, investing and overall growth. I focused on working on myself while also working on obtaining a business degree ( As a personal goal) and began to write down my goals for each year and actively work on the obtainable ones short term, without losing focus on the ones I consider long term.
On the morning of Sunday March 15 2020 this is where the real shift began.I woke up from a dream where I saw myself as a real estate investor, and even though I didn't fully understand what this meant, I began searching online on the topic. This happened right before the NYC mayor announced that there would be a nation wide lock-down and we would be quarantining, and working from home for the next few months. I have to be honest, I felt my heart sink with the thought of losing my job, but thankfully I was one of the blessed few that were able to continue working from home. With that fear though, came a realization that I needed to establish other sources of income, and understood that if there ever was a good time to learn something new that could help me grow personally and financially, it was definitely now. I did tons of research on real estate, investing in assets and personal development. I listened to a variety of podcasts on real estate investing and business, I watched videos, and purchased every book I heard of, that would help me gain the necessary knowledge. From that day forward I decided to make a change in my life, unlearn all that I knew that held me back and embark on the journey to financial freedom, buy my time back and begin to build generational wealth.
I only hope that you, the reader; take the time to self analyze and identify any limiting thoughts you might have been taught. Understand that it's never too late to unlearn anything that holds you back, and even if you're not exactly where you want to be; today is a great day to start your journey.
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