I just bit my lip (accidentally). I was eating a salad and I bit into my lip, which is bad enough because your lip bleeds, it hurts, and I’ve got italian salad dressing on my salad so it really stings as well.

If that were it, then it wouldn’t be so bad. The main problem with this situation is that a bit lip tends to swell a little which makes it even easier to bite again.

And bite it again I did.

It’s the “downward spiral” effect of lip biting that really annoys me. The pain is self-perpetuating because the more you bite it the easier it is to bite again.

Downward spirals…

There are a lot of situations out there like this. Like allergies–you get a runny nose so you blow your nose which makes your nose tickle so you sneeze which makes your nose runs more so you blow it which makes you sneeze…

Or you’re depressed because you’re overweight, so you eat comfort food like ice cream to combat depression but then you gain more weight so you get more depressed…

The big problem with downward spirals is that they’re so hard to break out of. You usually have to give up the good things you have while you continue to live with the pain. In my case, I’ll have to give up eating for a bit while my lip heals. Eating is a good thing, but as long as I’m chewing on something chances are I’ll keep biting my lip over and over again and keep making things worse.

Financially speaking, that’s where a lot of people are right now. A lot of people are in a financial downward spiral, living paycheck to paycheck. They work long hours and only make enough to break even. Financially holding things together takes so much time that they have very little time or resources to do something to improve their circumstances. They then spend whatever spare time they have trying to relax and enjoy life a bit so that they can wake up the next morning and face another day of the same work again.

After a full day of boring/repetitive/back-breaking/mind-numbing (enter description of your work here) work, you just want to escape for a while through some of America’s favorite pastimes: TV, movies, magazines, internet surfing…

You won’t get anywhere as long as you keep doing what you’re doing.

The main problem with this situation is that, just like any downward spiral, you’re going to have to give up the things you enjoy right now to break out of it. If you want to get into real estate investing so you can make better money and get a little time freedom back, you can’t just quit your job (you’ve got to pay the bills somehow) so you’re going to have to give up the time you usually use to relax and use it to study real estate and then start putting that knowledge to work. You’re going to have to invest what little money you have (and probably borrow and go into debt as well) into your education and your first couple deals so you can get things up and running.

The whole point…

The reason I tell you this is because this is the point where most people give up. Most beginners drop out of real estate because they’re not making money very quickly, they’ve sacrificed a lot already, they’ve given up a lot of what they enjoy and the lack of money/lack of time/pain has only intensified for them.

As you’re getting started your family may not understand why you don’t spend as much time with them (mine didn’t). Your friends may give you a hard time for doing something they don’t have the ambition for. Your in laws may tell you to stop wasting your time and just get a second job so you actually make some money (that would be your broke brother-in-law).

I tell you this because you don’t often hear about the difficulties real estate investors face when they first started in real estate.

I know from experience that there are some people on this email list that have tuned me out already. They just want to sit back and fantasize that they’ll be rich some day without doing anything difficult to get there. They’re the kind of people who don’t take action on anything anyways. They’re much more content to receive emails like this and pretend that simply reading this has somehow gotten them closer to their goals for becoming wealthy.

For the benefit of the rest of you who are actually determined to take action and do something about your situation, I want to give you a realistic understanding of what you’re up against. Because the fact is that, though you may be dealing with a downward financial spiral right now, once you’ve broken out of it there are upward spirals to look forward to.

The rich keep getting richer…

You’ve heard the saying that the poor keep getting poorer and the rich keep getting richer, and it’s true. The poor are in downward financial spirals and the rich are in upward financial spirals.

If you’ve got money, then you have a much easier time making more money. You can qualify for loans, you can use your money to make more money, people are willing to work with you and do things for you, you can afford to spend money to learn new things that will add to your wealth and you have the resources to try new things and the luxury of losing money and not feeling so much of a sting.

You tend to get into other upward spirals as well. You begin to value yourself more so you start exercising on a regular basis, which gives you more energy and helps you excel at your business activities so you make more money. You start to eat better. My wife and I recently gave up eating sugar. Why? For me it’s because I have a life worth living and I want to extend that life and enjoy it as long as possible.

Probably the first thing that you come to appreciate when you’re not so stressed about finances is the peace of mind you receive. You can actually relax a bit. This morning my wife was walking around like something out of the “Living Dead” movies because our son kept her up most of the night. I didn’t have anything pressing going on so from 8:30am to noon I watched the kid and took over household duties while she slept for a few hours.

It took me a solid year of working long hours and not getting paid very much to get myself into this upward financial spiral, and my wife didn’t like it very much while it was happening, but she doesn’t complain so much now.

So if you’re trying to break out of a downward spiral and break into an upward spiral, I want you to know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t stop until you get there.

-Jarom Adair
www.RealEstateInvestingForBeginners.com