The Eight Thought Traps (Part 2)
Below are the final five thought traps that hinder your resilience.
4. Blaming
Definition: You don’t take responsibility for errors and mistakes, assigning the fault to other people or outside circumstances.
DDT Examples From My Life: My projects don’t stay on budget because… my contractor can’t manage his money. I’m not making enough on my rentals because… my tenants keep missing payments. My projects go over schedule because… the Baltimore City permit process sucks so much.
Explanation: As an REI entrepreneur, we need to take ultimate responsibility for everything that happens in the business. If we become a victim and we give away that responsibility, we also give away the power to change our situation. For example, in 2018, I’d hear people say they can’t find houses because the market is no longer like it was in 2012. And now today, I hear people say you can’t find deals because the market isn’t like it was in 2018. If you don’t grab problems by the horn and take all the action that’s in your power, you’ll end up on the sidelines listing off 20 reasons why entrepreneurs can’t make it in your market.
Effects In My Life: I’m still tempted to wallow in self-pity when problems come up instead of taking initiative and taking action. Also, I’m slow to improve my own management, because it’s easier to blame my contractors and my tenants.
When Skews In the Other Direction? This particular thought trap is different and doesn’t have an “overly positive skew.” Rather, it gets harmful when we focus 100% of the blame on ourselves without ever giving ourselves a break. This opposite error is called “personalization” and results in beating yourself up for things you couldn’t prevent. Another effect of taking too much responsibility is you hold onto bad contractors for too long and don’t evict tenants quickly enough.
5. Worst Case Thinking
Definition: You predict the worst possible outcome for any situation and then dwell on it. Often you go farther, accepting it as an already established fact. It’s as if you had a crystal ball that only foretold disappointment for your business. (And while it’s important to consider the worst case scenario and take steps to protect yourself, this thought trap rarely results in productive actions. Rather, it causes your mind to spin and leads to paralysis.)
DDT Examples From My Life: Squatter moves into my renovated house? “They’ll destroy the whole place.” Thinking about real estate trends? “The market is going to crash!” My finished house has been on the market for 2 weeks? “I’m only going to get lowball offers and lose $30k on this house.” The neighbor to my renovation calls to complain? “They’re going to report me to the city and cause all kinds of problems!”
Effects: You’ll have trouble tolerating risk and dealing with uncertainty. And as an REI entrepreneur, if you can’t take calculated risks, then you’re dead in the water. Also, worst-case thinking causes you extra worry and lost sleep. Since you waste so much mental energy worrying about imagined problems, you’re unable to use it on real problems that require real solutions.
Effects In My Own Life: As an REI entrepreneur, there have been multiple times I’ve been up at 2am wondering if my rehabbed house will sell, if I’ll ever find a tenant, or if I’ll ever find another deal. My mind will be spinning, trapped in worst case predictions. This is rarely based on actual evidence, but is simply the result of my mind falling into this irrational thinking trap.
When It Skews Overly Positive? You’ll take on projects where the risk is too great and haven’t properly been considered. I’ve seen REI investors do well in the short-term with being overly optimistic, but it eventually catches up with them and they end up losing money.
6. Should Statements
Definition: When directed inward, you try to motivate yourself with exaggerated goals, saying, “I should do this” or “I should have done that.” This causes you to feel overly pressured or resentful, and actually making you less productive. When directed outward (at people or situations), they will fail to meet your unrealistic expectations, causing you to be frustrated or discouraged.
DDT Examples From My Life: “I should be able to work 100% productively for 9 hours straight today.” “I should be farther along in my career by now.” “My contractor shouldn’t have made that mistake!” “It should be easier to find a deal!”
Explanation: This stems from unrealistic expectations on ourselves or others to be all-perfect, all-knowing, or all-powerful. Imagine you’re playing tennis and every time you hit the ball into the net you think, “I shouldn’t have done that!” Think about it reasonably… should you really have not hit the ball into the net, or rather, because you’re an imperfect human being, it makes sense that you should hit the ball into the net sometimes? Whipping yourself with those thoughts are counterproductive - they won’t make you better, but instead slow your improvement.
Effects: Imagine you listen to the guru’s who unrealistically tell you that you can achieve real estate wealth within 6 months by only working 3 hours a week on it. Then when you get into it, you start thinking, “This shouldn’t be so hard! This should be going faster!” And you end up discouraged, resentful, and tempted to throw in the towel too early.
Effects In My Life: I get overwhelmed because I overestimate how much I can get done in a day, which leads to procrastination. Also, I get frustrated too quickly at contractors or vendors, because for some reason I don’t think they’re allowed to make a mistake. This causes important relationships to break down. Finally, I get discouraged and think I’m running my business the wrong way. Why? Because I compare my messy daily reality with the glitzy exterior’s of others’ businesses, and I think, “I shouldn’t be having these problems.” Let me tell you, it’s much harder to deal with problems if whenever they appear you think, “This should not be happening!”
When It Skews Overly Positive: You have too low of expectations of yourself or others. This leads to laziness and poor performance.
7. Mind Reading
Definition: You wrongly assume that other people have bad intentions or think poorly of you. And you’re so convinced of it, you don’t even bother to check it out.
DDT Examples From My Life: Contractor goes over budget? “He’s using my money for other jobs.” Walk into an REI meetup and feel insecure? “Everyone’s probably looking down on me.” Don’t hear from the realtor for multiple days during a negotiation? “He’s probably mad at me.” Want to ask a more experienced person for advice. “They’ll think I’m clueless.” Tenant doesn’t call me back? “They’re ignoring me on purpose.”
Effects: During a particularly stressful time, an REI friend of mine had difficulty delegating extra tasks to his assistant. He was afraid she’d think he was lazy. In reality, though, she was wondering why he wasn’t delegating it, and assumed he thought she was incompetent. Mind reading happens all the time, and often the only way to overcome it is to have an honest talk with the person. However, we rarely do this, and to our own detriment.
Effects In My Life: As you see just from my examples above, it has prevented me from asking for help, made me feel like an imposter, robbed me of expert advise, and caused unnecessary issues with realtors, tenants, and contractors.
When It Skews Overly Positive? Normally this results in an unaware person who think they’re the sh-t. They assume everybody is in awe of them, they’re always giving unwanted advice, and never have a clue contractors or tenants feel unfairly treated by them, causing unnecessary churn.
8. Mental Filter
Definition: You focus exclusively on the bad and dismiss any of the good. It’s like you’ve got a magic pair of glasses that allows you to see only the negative things in yourself, your life, and your business. And because you’re not aware this filtering process is happening, you really are convinced that this negative bias reflects reality.
DDT Examples From My Own Life: One example is I often wrestle with the thought “I don’t have what it takes” or “I’m not a good enough blank.” That blank could be “REI entrepreneur,” “manager,” or even “husband and father.” This stems from only focusing on my shortcomings and discounting all my strengths, as well as focusing exclusively on my past failures while ignoring my past successes. Here’s a second example. When facing a problem that needs solving, the mental filter trap causes me to see only the resources I’m lacking instead of embracing the resources I do have. I repeat the DDT, “I don’t have the right contractors,” “I don’t have enough funds,” or “I don’t have the knowledge required,” and I really believe that’s why my problem can’t be solved.
Explanation: Everyone falls prey to this thought trap. It’s a part of human nature. Think about the last time you gave a presentation and received both positive and negative feedback. Which one stood out in your mind? The nine compliments you got or the one criticism? I’d bet my house your answer is “the one criticism.” As humans we’re hard-wired to pay more attention to negative things than positive ones. It’s the same reason that science has shown if you criticize your spouse one time, it takes five or ten genuine compliments to balance it out.
When you direct the mental filter at your business or a rehab project (instead of at yourself), you only see the negative things in them. And when everything in your life seems to be going wrong, it puts you into a funk. This saps your energy and drains your motivation.
Effects In My Life: When I direct it at myself, It also robs me of the needed confidence to face problems, since I’m convinced “I don’t have what it takes.” When I direct it at my job, I have trouble getting up to face the day (hello doom-scrolling social media), and even when I do finally face my work, I’m in a funk and not very productive.
When It Skews Overly Positive? When directed internally - you fail to see your own shortcomings and don’t work to correct them. When directed externally - it’s rose colored glasses. And while that might be a helpful lens to use when evaluating your spouse, it won’t help you in correcting underperforming areas of your business. If you’ve got those on, you might not have difficulty in your business right now, but you will soon.
Recap
As you’ve studied these eight thought traps, all eight might apply to you equally. It’s more likely that you’ll have three or four that are the worst offenders for you. Make sure to pay extra attention to those as you train your mind to think in a new way.
Remember, the first step to defeat DDT’s is to recognize them. And when you become familiar with these eight categories, it’ll be much easier to do that. For ease of reference, click here for a condensed summary of the eight thought traps.