How to Become a Real Estate Warrior

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By Terrie Schauer, Author of Mindful Landlord 

Spinning, spinning, spinning—from one phone call to the next, one e-mail to the next, while the tiny red notification bubbles multiply on your smartphone screen. It is a game of whack-a-mole—no sooner does one to-do disappear, five more pop up to replace it! In between, you rush to drive the kids to soccer practice, stress to take phone calls at the gym, and wolf down something sort of healthy in the car. 

Why do we end up with this lifestyle? As aspiring investors, we feel pressure to attain our full potential, pressure to secure our family’s financial future. Fear of failure and worry is there too—what if our latest project blows up? What if the economy tanks? 

Before bed, as we scroll on our Instagram feeds, dreaming a distant dream that—one day—we too will have photos of beautiful beaches and far-away destinations to post.  

Can you relate?  

For many of us aspiring Real Estate investors, this is the mental ecosystem we inhabit.  

Mindfulness Training for the Aspiring Investor 

It doesn’t have to be like this!  

I wrote my book, Mindful Landlord, to help other investors create a mindful relationship with Real Estate that boosts financial growth, while increasing well-being.   

Succeeding as a Real Estate investor doesn’t have to be a trip to the anxiety- and performance pressure theme park!  

Way of the Warrior Investor 

In my life as a martial artist, I learned how the ancient Samurai trained their minds. I worked their ideas into a system called the Way of the Warrior-Investor.  

The ancient Samurai had a way of life that revolved around sword-fighting. Death could strike at any moment. If fear and attachment clouded a warrior’s reactions, the outcome was disaster. 

To check the mind’s capacity to spin out of control, the Samurai trained. They worked to see the world as it is, not as they would wish it to be. They learned to feel calm even in the most dangerous situations. They did this by reducing friction—from fear, from monkey-mind, and from preconceived ideas about success. 

How to Become More Mindful  

These ideas can be adapted to the world of Real Estate investing. In a nutshell, the Way of the Warrior-Investor involves practicing mindfulness techniques until you begin to understand how your mind works. With a trained mind, we gain efficiency and well-being.  

Developing a mindfulness practice can help us:    

• Manage acute fear- and panic responses. (This is important because fear can prevent so many of us from reaching our full potential as investors).  
• Understand how the fear of death can make us afraid of life.  
• Limit identification with a solid Ego; this idea of a solid self is so often what holds us back!  
• Let go of a limiting self-concept and beliefs that don’t serve us.  
• Cultivate a growth-mindset instead of a fixed one. 
• Silence mental chatter. 

Train as a Warrior-Investor, and you will level-up your game without losing sight of what is truly important to you. 

Mindful Landlord’s Playbook 

You can’t lose weight effectively without a diet-and-exercise plan. Succeeding financially in the Real Estate world is no different. You need to follow a set of best business practices honed by other successful investors and you need the mental fortitude to execute the plays, even when it is difficult! My book, Mindful Landlord, the Post-COVID Edition, provides a blueprint for doing just this.   

Good decision-making has two basic tenets—sound information and a calm mind to do the right thing, with what might be insufficient data. My mental training program addresses how to be comfortable inhabiting a space of uncertainty—especially in today’s uncertain world.  

I believe that the true prize of success in the Real Estate field is a balanced life filled with connection, well-being and meaning, not just a bank account full of dollars—although a full bank account isn’t a bad thing either!  

Measure with the correct metrics—fulfillment, meaning and connection—and not just the three D’s of dollars, deals and doors. 

Want to learn more? Check out Mindful Landlord, at www.mindfullandlord.com. 

About the Author 

  Terrie is an investor, a property manager, and a real estate broker. She’s spent twenty years getting income properties to cash-flow, both for herself and for her clients. It’s shown her that investing isn’t about the money. For Terrie, the ultimate goal of being a landlord isn’t the dollar sign, it’s a full, happy, and financially free existence. 

Terrie is very passionate about this particular distinction. For her, the razor’s edge of this nuance, between money-motivation and mindfulness, is what makes the landlord’s life either fulfilling or nightmarish. This is really important! Terrie is tired of watching too many would-be investors let their projected real estate empire affect their lives in a very negative way.  

Her book, Mindful Landlord, is meant as a tool to give perspective on how acquiring and running profitable buildings needs to be about freedom, not just money.