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On The Go Episode: Are You Balanced…or Balancing

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The topic of balance is something we all think about, and strive for. But as we know, it can be elusive. In this episode, recorded on the go, Jeff discusses what it feels like to always be striving for, but often failing to achieve, a state of balance. He explains the difference between balance, the noun, and balancing, the verb, and encourages us to strive for balancing (verb) rather than balance (noun).

Episode Transcript

Hey there. This is Jeff from a thoughtful real estate entrepreneur. Thanks for checking out another episode of racking up rentals. So you might be able to tell already, that this episode is a little different, probably sounds a little different. And that is because I am driving right now. And I’ll tell you why I’m driving and why I will choose to record an episode at a time like this. But actually, I thought that this on the go format would actually fit really well with what I wanted to talk with you about. And the truth is, I’ve thought in the past about doing episodes like this, where I was on the go, and I had something I wanted to talk with you about, but I was afraid to do it. I feel like I’ve set a precedent on the show. And for myself that says, I will have reasonable sound quality, few distractions, certainly no road noise and things like that. But it just seemed to fit actually what I wanted to talk with you guys about today. And that is the topic of balance. And I think in some ways, perhaps, this might be one of the most relatable episodes that we can all kind of connect to that you can feel similarly to how I feel about it. So I’m in the car right now, driving from Bend, Oregon, where I actually live to Portland, Oregon, where I used to live in where most of my properties are, and most of my business and employee and all sorts of stuff. And it’s about a three and a half hour drive. Someone once told me that it’s only people on the west coast to measure distance by how long it takes to drive there, instead of by mile side, let’s say it’s 100, and maybe 40 miles or something like that takes me about three and a half hours. And it goes through a mountain pass. And there might be a little bit of snow today. So I’m not really excited about that. But I have an inspection on a property that I am in contract on. And the inspection is at 10am It’s just a single family home, won’t take that long. But I like to be there, I have a way that I do this that I’ve been doing for a long time, which is I always have my inspector there. I always remind my inspector that I want him to keep his eyes and ears open but his mouth shut. I don’t want him talking his findings out loud to anybody. I’ve got my contractor there as well, I will have my property manager who is my employee in town, swing by as well and, and get a look at the place. And I this is how I do it. And I was just in Portland a few days ago. And so it kind of feels like I didn’t want to drive round trip seven hours again, you know, just a few days later to do this, like 90 minute inspection on this, this house. And I felt like I almost wanted to kind of back out and not go in person. I know that lots and lots and lots of people don’t go to inspections in person. I mean, heck, there’s a lot of people who don’t even ever see the properties that they own. But that’s not me and how I do things. And so I’m going to this inspection. But it leaves me feeling like I’m focused on this topic that, honestly I think about a lot and that is the topic of balance. And I don’t feel really in balance. Right now. I woke up early this morning. It’s about it’s almost seven o’clock. Now. I’ve been driving for about an hour. And so I woke up at about 445 Probably this morning with my mind thinking of all the stuff that I didn’t do yesterday that I needed to do things that I maybe just completely forgot about. I’m also attending this week, three, three days this week, I’ve got a four hour like web zoom based conference. So that’s taking a lot of the time of the calendar. And there’s important things going on oh, and I’ve got the the sale today closing of an $800,000 property. And I need to make sure that that closes correctly. And we get recording numbers and we get the funds wired to us and all this kind of stuff. And so I feel a little bit out of balance and I’m guessing, guessing if you are a human being that maybe you have felt or feel even at the moment, a little bit out of balance. And like you are not able to kind of keep up with everything you’re trying to do now, especially if you are trying to perhaps get involved in real estate investing. And you might have a job. Chances are you very well might have a job. There’s a good chance that you might have a spouse or significant other, maybe some kids, maybe some animals, I don’t even have kids. I do have a spouse and animals that I care deeply about but I don’t even have Kids and I already feel often very out of balance. And so I guess I want you to know that I know what that feels like and that it’s okay actually, to feel like that. And actually, that’s kind of the punchline I’ll get to in a minute. But I just want to talk about this idea of, of balance. And I personally find myself often beating myself up for not having better balance, I have this self image of somebody who should have all his s his stuff, let’s say that his s together, if you know the mean, all the time, it my desk should be perfectly clear all the time with a couple of neat tidy files, and a perfect to do list, a perfect project list that is updated every day and printed a fresh copy. And everything’s nice and neat and orderly, oh, let’s talk about email, an email inbox that is maybe has three or four messages in it, because those messages came in in the last hour. But certainly nothing from a week ago, certainly nothing from six months ago, clean desktop on my computer. And the truth is, I basically have none of that. My inbox is usually kind of a mess, I often feel stressed about that, I often feel bad about that I often feel you know, like, like I’m failing as a result of that, but here’s what I’m working on that I’m hoping will be something useful for you. Sometimes I feel like life is sort of like a game of Whack a Mole, if you’ve ever played that game, whack a mole, if you’re as old as I am, you’ve been to a place called Chucky Cheese, perhaps that game where they give you a little rubber mallet and these, these little moles, like little squirrels pop up, and you’re supposed to hit them before they go back down again. And so it’s this game of like, be reactive and trying to hit the moles real quickly. And as soon as one pops up, then another one pops up, and then the first one disappears, the third one pops up. But life kind of feels like that. And something I identified a while ago, like maybe a year ago that I’m still really trying hard to practice to embody and embrace and internalize is the idea that I don’t have to hit all the moles, that there are most popping up that I feel like I have to hit I feel like society expects me to hit all these moles. But then I realized now that I have the choice of actually not hitting all of the malls. And that I should really only be focused on hitting the malls that really truly matter to me. I’ll give you another visual that I I often feel like my my life is like it’s like a bucket of like nine tennis balls. And I’ve got my two hands to work with. And in my two hands, I can usually hold about about five, maybe six tennis balls, right? And these tennis balls represent these different areas of life. You know, there’s one aspect of business you know, for me real estate investing, obviously, another aspect would be coaching. Another aspect another ball is my relationship with my wife, another ball ball is my health and fitness. Another ball is friend and family relationships and other ball is creativity. Like for me, I like to play the guitar and do stuff like that another ball might be writing. And I feel like I can hold about five maybe six balls a little bit precariously in my hand. But one pretty much always falls out of my hand. And then I reached down while holding this these remaining five balls or so and try to pick one or two more up with my hands that are already busy and put a couple more balls on the pile. And then that means a different ball falls off and what that means is there’s always like three or four balls sitting on the ground. And what I find myself focusing on is that there’s three or four balls on the ground not that there’s five or six balls actually being held in my hand pretty well. But I’m focused on those five or six balls on the ground and so again I wonder if you can relate to this right if you are if you have a ball that has kids, you have a ball that has work and you have a ball that is your significant other and you have a ball that is you know somebody else maybe you care for and a ball that is your fitness and a ball that is some some other thing. Your church perhaps,

but you can’t quite keep all the balls in your head if you find yourself looking at the ground and thinking about the balls that somehow you’ve dropped. You might end up feeling like like I have felt and you So I wanted to share something with you that I think is is helpful. I heard this recently, actually, yeah, I heard it on a podcast recently. And that is the difference between balance and balancing. This person, the speaker said, you know, if you were to stand up and stand on one foot, would you be balanced? And the answer is no, you wouldn’t be balanced, but you would be balancing right you can almost feel like the, the Twitch and your calf muscles and your shins and stuff as it tries to balance you. And so it just got me thinking about balance is a noun. But balance is also a verb. And I’m personally always so focused on balance as a noun. And always feel like I’m failing at balance as a noun. When perhaps what we should be thinking about is balance as a verb. Balance is something you do not something you have. And I feel like if we can shift our standard for what success means from balance the noun to balance the verb or balancing as the verb, we’re likely to be probably quite a bit happier, we’re likely to feel less like we are failing all the time. Because I think when we when we focus on balance as the noun, as this perfect ideal, and we feel like we’re always failing at it, that’s a very discouraging place to live, right? Because I’ve, I have lived in that spot a lot myself. It’s a very discouraging kind of state of being. And so what if we could all instead focus on balance as the verb, and set that as our goal? So I could look at today, and I could say, You know what, today is not perfect. There’s some stuff that I’m just like slapping my forehead that I didn’t do yesterday or forgot to do. And it wasn’t perfect. And instead of, you know, beating myself up for not having been perfect yesterday, instead of giving myself credit for the fact that I was balancing. Yesterday, I was focusing on what was most important in the moment yesterday. And I’m focusing on what’s most important in the moment today. And I’m doing my very best to do everything else as well. But I am balancing and that is what matters. And so that’s my encouragement to you today is if you feel like you’re on the go. If you feel like you would have to record a podcast episode in the car, because there’s no time to do it anywhere else, no place to do it anywhere else. If you’re trying to get some letters out and you feel bad that you haven’t gotten the letters out to sellers, because you know that that’s how you like to buy real estate like me. If there’s a seller who you haven’t called back yet, who you know, you need to, if there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that you need to do questions from your bookkeeper, you need to answer that’s certainly something on my list. I think we need to try to give ourselves a little bit of grace and focus on the idea of balancing versus balance. And that is my thought for you today. Like I said, I think it’s a little fitting that I would record a an episode about balancing in the car, because I feel like I am balancing things right now. And I don’t want to feel like I’m failing all the time. I’m guessing you don’t want to feel like you’re failing all the time, either. Because really, if we’re making progress on the most important things, even if the other stuff is messy, that is okay. And we’re gonna do our very best to do that. So I hope this applies in your real estate investing life. I hope it applies in your personal life, maybe other aspects of your work life. And let’s do it together. Right, I’m going to need a reminder some time that I’m doing my best at balancing. And then I don’t have to be perfect in the balance all the time. And I’m guessing you will need that reminder too. So let’s do that together. All right. Thanks for listening to another episode of racking up Reynolds. I really do appreciate it. Hope you like this one that’s a little bit different. I certainly will ask for your feedback and your take on all that. And I hope you have a great day. Please don’t forget to subscribe to the show. If you could take a second to rate review it and then just really means the world to me helps other people find the show as well. All right, go out there and do some balancing. Take care bye bye


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