How to Become What You Want to Be
Issue #1985
- WEALTHY: Save thousands with this clever real estate strategy (Justin Ford)
- HEALTHY: Panting to stay young (Dr. Al Sears)
- WISE: Langston Hughes on unfulfilled dreams
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- "Becoming" is not the same as "being" (Michael Masterson)
- Feedback Friday: More on ETR’s new look
- It’s Good to Know… about chili peppers
- Add "nugatory" to your vocabulary
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Private Money Bootcamp Update: Use Private Money to Save "Upside-Down" Property Owners
By Justin Ford
Mortgage defaults and foreclosures are on the rise throughout much of the U.S. This is a trend that is likely to strengthen in the next year as bubbles continue to deflate in what were recently the hottest property markets. In this environment especially, cash is king. And that’s another good reason to develop your network of private lenders, as Alan Cowgill explained during Day Four of his Private Money Bootcamp.
For instance, a growing number of property owners facing foreclosure have little or no equity in their properties. In some cases, they have negative equity, owing more than the property is worth. They’re "upside-down," to use an industry term. Worse, they’re in a Catch 22.
They’re behind on their payments and need to sell quickly. But if they sell quickly in a buyer’s market, they’ll take a big hit on the price and will not have enough money to pay off the mortgage loan. In these situations, the owner’s only hope is often a short sale.
A short sale is where an investor is prepared to buy a property if he can get the bank that holds the mortgage to accept less than it is owed. So, let’s say Mr. Smith owes $195,000 on a property that is worth $200,000. He is behind on his payments, and if he tries to sell quickly the most he could get might be $160,000. After commissions and closing costs, he might end up $45,000 or $50,000 in the hole at that reduced price.
Yet a short-sale investor might ultimately get the bank to agree to take $120,000 or so for the loan. The bank is motivated, because non-performing loans on their books restrict how much money they can lend – and that restricts their income. Plus, they can’t be certain how much they’ll get for the property in a foreclosure auction. The bank would also have commissions, legal costs, and carrying costs. And they may have to rehab the property. Ultimately, they might end up netting, say, $140,000 or less.
In that instance, it’s possible that they would be happy to take $120,000 now … rather than an uncertain sum later. This is especially the case in a rising foreclosure environment, where the number of non-performing loans the bank is dealing with is growing daily.
But here’s the snag for most investors: If the bank ultimately agrees to the short sale (to dramatically discount its loan, in other words), the investor usually has to come up with that cash very quickly. Often, he must come up with the money in just a few weeks, sometimes just a few days.
This, again, is where a network of private lenders can be very useful. Investors without this kind of resource can usually forget about even attempting a short sale. Alan himself has often used private money loans to make substantial profits on short sales while helping the property owners (who had little or no equity anyhow) avoid foreclosure.
[Ed. Note: TTo learn more about Alan Cowgill's strategies for building up a multimillion-dollar Private Money network, click here.]
"What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun? / Or fester like a sore / And then run? / Does it stink like rotten meat? / Or crust and sugar over / like a syrupy sweet? / Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. / Or does it explode?"
Langston Hughes
How to Become What You Want to Be
By Michael Masterson
"If you want to be a writer, you have to write."
I was 16 years old when my father said those kind-and-cruel words to me. I never forgot them.
The first time I can remember wanting to be a writer, I was 11 or 12 years old. I’d written a poem for Sister Mary Something at school. My rhyming quatrain (AABB) was titled, pretentiously, "How Do I Know the World Is Real?"
I was at the kitchen table when my father started reading it over my shoulder. I felt anxious. My father was a credentialed writer, an award-winning playwright, a Shakespearean scholar, and a teacher of literature, including poetry. I’d seen him, on Saturday mornings, hunched over student essays, muttering and occasionally reading out loud passages to my mother that sounded perfectly good to me but elicited derisive laughter from them.
My father understood the secret-to-me clues of good writing. I didn’t feel at all comfortable having my fragile young poem exposed to the awesome danger of his critical mind. So there I sat, hoping he would go away. But he didn’t. I felt his hand on my shoulder, gentle and warm. "You may have a talent for writing," he said.
I wrote lots of poetry in the months that followed, and began to think of myself as a writer. I liked that feeling. But soon other interests – touch football, the Junior Police Club, girls – crowded themselves into my life. Gradually, I wrote less and less. I still yearned to be a writer and so I began to feel guilty about not writing.
To assuage my guilt, I promised myself that my other activities were "life experience," and that I needed life experience to become the good writer I wanted to be. In developing this excuse for not writing, I was building a structure of self-deception that many people live inside when they abandon their dreams. From the outside, it looks like you are doing nothing. But from the inside, you know that you are in the process of becoming, which, you convince yourself, is the next best thing to being.
That was the shape of my delusion when my father said, "If you want to be a writer, you have to write. A writer is someone who writes."
So many people live their lives failing to become what they want to be because they can’t find the time to get started. How many times have you heard someone say that, one day, they will do what they always wanted to do – travel the world or paint paintings or write a book? And when you hear sentiments like those, what do you feel? Happy because you are confident that one day they will accomplish their long-held goal? Or sort of sad for them because you are pretty sure they never will?
And what about you? What is it that you want to be but haven’t become? What goal or project or task do you keep talking about accomplishing yet never do?
When my father told me that "writers write," he was saying two things:
* I had lost the right to call myself a writer when I stopped writing.
* I could regain the title the moment I started writing again.
If you spend a while ruminating on this, you may find it both disturbing and liberating.
I was disturbed, because I wanted my father to say that the way to become a writer was to read books about writing and then take courses on writing and then perhaps become an apprentice to a writer and then begin writing little bits here and there. And that, finally, after 3 or 10 years of education, preparation, and qualification, I would somehow automatically be a writer.
But as long as I was studying writing or preparing myself to be a writer – and yet not actually writing – I wasn’t a writer. It was as simple as that.
Lots of people feel that they can keep their dreams alive and derive some of the ego satisfaction they hope their dreams will give them simply by living in a state of becoming. "I am not yet the person I want to become, but so long as I continue to express a wish to become that person, I keep that possibility alive and deserve credit for doing so."
To become a writer, the first thing I had to do was refuse to accept any psychological credit for wanting to be a writer. After the initial disappointment of giving up the delusion that becoming was as good as being, I had no choice but to jump over the becoming stage and simply be.
I did that by writing. Every day. And when I learned the secret of getting up early and writing first thing in the morning – hours before other people trailed into work – that’s when I began to really live my dream.
These days, I usually get to the office between 6:30 and 7:00, and the first thing I do is fire up the computer. There is no better feeling than to get going when the office is dark and quiet, usually by making entries into my journal but sometimes by tackling something tougher, like a book chapter. Of the many pleasures of being a writer – finishing a manuscript, collaborating with editors, seeing a copy of the book for the first time, and even making it to best-seller lists – the purest and finest for me has always been the first few hours of the morning when I am in that writerly groove.
The best part about being a writer, I have discovered, is the writing. (It is also the worst part, but that’s another story.) And this is true, I think, for every skill or profession.
The easiest way to become something special is also the fastest: Just start doing it. Don’t wait for the "right" time. Don’t worry about not being qualified. And don’t worry about getting paid for it. Just start doing it.
You want to become a musician? Start playing that piano.
You want to become a philanthropist? Start investing your money.
You want to become a basketball player? Start shooting those hoops.
Don’t spend another minute talking about what you will do… one day.
[Ed. Note: Learn how you can be part of an exclusive group of 25 to 50 ambitious businesspeople that Michael will be leading through an elite 5-day program that can help you dramatically increase the profitability of your business HERE]
Virtually Un-tapped!
Limitless Supply of “Investor Friendly” Cash
All too often, real estate investors struggle to find deals, only to be frustrated with financing them. That’s especially true for investors looking at larger deals such as commercial property or apartment complexes. But it doesn’t have to be that way!
Alan Cowgill has perfected 16 methods for attracting wealthy individuals anxious to loan him all the money he needs and more to do every residential and commercial deal he finds. Learn his secret for raising unlimited cash, with no qualifying and investor-friendly terms.
Justin Ford
Editor, Main Street Millionaire
Anti-Aging Tip: Rage Against the Dying of the Lungs
By Al Sears, MD
Your lungs shrink as you get older – a physical change that has far-reaching health consequences. But if you can increase your lung capacity, you’ll be able to oppose and successfully reverse this biological result of aging.
To restore some of the lost lung volume of your youth, you need to create an "oxygen debt" by making your body ask for more oxygen than your lungs can currently provide. You do it by exerting yourself to the point where you have to pant and catch your breath.
Now, it would be dangerous for you to go out and sprint or shovel snow if you’re not used to it. But it’s not dangerous to challenge your lungs a little bit at a time. I originally developed my PACE (Progressively Accelerating Cardiopulmonary Exertion) exercise program to allow you to do just that.
My recommendation is to use an exercise machine that can read your heart rate – like a stair-stepper, elliptical machine, treadmill, or stationary bicycle. Warm up for two minutes at a leisurely pace. Increase your speed to 75 percent of a full sprint for two minutes. Then immediately go to a 90 percent sprint for 30 seconds.
Note your heart rate when you stop. If it continues to climb a few more beats per minute after your sprint, during the "recovery" period, you have successfully created an oxygen debt. Now you can hit the shower! You have sent your body the message to get to work building you a bigger lung capacity – while you rest.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears, a practicing physician and the author of The Doctor's Heart Cure is a leading authority on longevity, physical fitness, and heart health.]
Feedback Friday: More on ETR’s Makeover
Feedback Friday: More on ETR’s Makeover
Three months into 2007… Three months since we revamped ETR’s website and e-letter… And we’re still getting comments from readers…
"Very sharp! Great combo of color and layout. Proud and thankful to have been invited to subscribe to you guys. It is always a good dose of practical, productive, and profitable information."
- Alex Velasquez
Baton Rouge, LA
"Those damn flashing ads in the sidebar are very annoying. Otherwise, a thumbs up. Perhaps you should do two versions like most others these days. Plain text for the likes of me and HTML for those who love the flashing lights, bells, whistles, and everything else that offers a distraction from the main purpose."
- Pete Moring
"My only suggestion is to make the top section ‘clickable’ so you can jump straight to it. For some reason, I always want to read the word of the day first, followed by the good doctor, then on to the longer essays."
- Marianne ten Kate
London
"I love the new look of the ETR newsletter! However, it didn’t matter to me how it looked, because it’s the content that satisfies and motivates me daily.
"I just recently was laid off from my job and have decided to start a brand-new career in real estate sales and, in 3-5 years, real estate investments. As a single mom, few people can relate to my goals, especially since I am without an income right now. But, thanks to your newsletter and my personal commitment to the success of my ‘next’ step in life, I remain encouraged and dedicated. I have successfully completed 2 out of 3 of my pre-license courses, and am looking forward to passing my state exam this month.
"Thank you for being an inspiration and a viable source of knowledge for me every day!"
- Kim Tullis
Atlanta, GA
It’s Good to Know: About Chili Peppers
Chemist Wilbur Scoville developed his namesake scale and test that is used to measure the amount of capsaicin – and, therefore, heat – in a hot pepper. Tabasco sauce is rated at 2,500-5,000 SCUs (Scoville Heat Units), with the Naga Jolokia pepper of India, at 855,000-1,000,000 SCUs, the hottest in the world.
(Source: Wikipedia)
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Word to the Wise: Nugatory
Something that’s "nugatory" (NOO-guh-tor-ee) – from the Latin for "trifle" – has no real value or importance.
Example (as used in a New Statesman article by John Lloyd): "Socialism no longer restrains; trade unions do so much less than they did; moral inhibitions over the acquisition and display of wealth are nugatory."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007
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