Through the process of achieving financial freedom, you’ll see great progress over time. In the moment, it is difficult to see and reflect on this progress because of your intense desire to keep pushing ahead. While I’m a strong believer in never settling or getting too comfortable, something I didn’t do for some time was recognize the progress I had made along my journey. I’ve learned over time that this is a detriment to my motivation levels and confidence and when I actually look back and reflect, I really have come a long way. A lot of people with a similar mindset to what I have can feel like they haven’t really done or accomplished anything when this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The feeling of stalemate
Sometimes, it can be difficult for people to see the progress they’ve made through their endeavors and life can almost feel like a stalemate. I experienced this personally in my first year of full time real estate investing. For the first few months of 2022 I bounced all over the place. I tried to wholesale real estate locally, I tried buying several properties with a partner in Upstate New York, and I hired a cold calling VA for a wholesale business I started in Florida. In the first 6 months of the year I didn’t make any money and it felt like nothing was working. While I was going through this slew of different phases in real estate rather quickly, it was hard for me to see that I was making progress because there was no hard evidence in the form of compensation that I was. What I didn’t recognize was how many lessons I was learning along the way and what that would do for me in the not so distant future.
From there, I joined forces with a few people I met in the real estate mentorship I had joined in March, Subto With Pace Morby, and set out to use what I’d learned so far to tackle some deals and acquire some real estate. For the better part of three months, we ate dirt constantly overcoming headache after headache. Again, it was getting very hard to see the progress I was making because of the lack of reward I could tangibly touch. All of this poetically culminated into me closing on a handful of properties between the middle of December and the beginning of January. All of a sudden, I owned 11 buy and hold properties and one flip house. Who could believe it? Just a short year ago I owned nothing and didn’t really know where to start. Now I own 12 properties and counting.
Over the course of the last year, it was extremely difficult to recognize my progress because I couldn’t yet see any of the culmination of that progress into a tangible reward just yet. Little did I know or understand how much progress I was really making taking my bumps and learning as the year went on. For me, that feeling of stalemate vanished in the beginning of 2023 when it clicked on how much progress I’ve made over the course of the last year and how the hardship had been worth it. For a whole year, I operated solely on blind faith that what I was doing was working, it had to work, there was no other option but for it to work. That alone got me to where I am now, but I didn’t have to make it so hard on myself. Taking time regularly to reflect on the progress you make will rejuvenate you as you keep heading in the right direction. Knowing that you’re on the right track is a huge confidence boost and it takes a combination of belief and reflection on your progress to keep pushing forward.
Tools to help recognize progress
One of the best methods for reflecting on and tracking progress is to keep a journal to log daily in (or as often as possible). Unfortunately, I’ve only had a journal since July that I write in regularly and there was a gap between late October and late December where I didn’t really journal much because I was going through what felt like a big rough patch. I didn’t want to write that much because I was afraid that putting my thoughts on paper would make them a reality. However, I sincerely regret this now. Journaling when you’re experiencing a low is the best time to journal because when you finally reach that high you can always hold on to that feeling and recognize how far you’ve come. The journal entries that I do have show how much progress I’ve made in a more broad sense and reviewing past entries every so often is a great reminder of where I came from and the difference between my state of mind then compared to now. Use this tool as guidance and motivation to keep yourself on the right track. Ask yourself, would past you be proud of present you and how far you’ve come? The answer to that question will determine progress more so than any external reward possibly could.