What if I told you that the most important qualities or keys to financial success and to building wealth are persistence and resilience?
A recent study by researcher Sarah Stanley Fallah, author of The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth, discovered that among the 600 millionaires she studied, they each had two things in common: persistence and resilience.
But being persistent and resilient is often easier said than done. I’m here to tell you it takes conscious effort.
So how can we become persistent and resilient? What habits, mindsets, and actions should we be implementing to actually persist and overcome setbacks? Today we’ll look at both persistence and resilience more closely to develop and sustain these qualities in your own lives in order to reach your ultimate financial goals.
What Are Persistence and Resilience?
Before we dive deep, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Persistence and resilience are similar, but how are they defined? Persistence means always striving and working toward your goals—never stopping until the goal is realized. Resilience, on the other hand, is the ability to persevere (or persist) in the face of setbacks.
Of course, persistence and resilience are valuable in every area of our lives. But the truth is they are foundational to financial goals. The market can be fickle and uncertain, so despite our accumulated knowledge, its unpredictability makes setbacks all but a guarantee.
In order to move past the inevitable setbacks, we can see clearly how both of these skills need to work together to help you earn the desired outcome—your personal vision of financial independence.
And this makes sense, as it tracks with our other experiences. Big gains and self-actualization have occurred for us as doctors. In medicine, if we were not able to grow beyond our setbacks we wouldn’t be in medicine thriving. The same goes with our families. Some of you might be parents, and you know first hand the need to persevere past those tough moments. I’m looking at you, toddler years.
Think about how many doors you had to knock down, how many obstacles you have to overcome. There are probably some of you that have never had difficulty excelling. I feel like my wife is one of those people. While others, like me, didn’t have a clean or as easy a journey to success. Either way, we all had a path that led to being successful in medicine.
So the good news is this: We are already equipped with the skills of persistence and resilience. But how can we strengthen them while on our financial journey?
How to Increase Your Persistence and Resilience
Okay, so we know that persistence and resilience are fundamental skills to turbocharge our financial journey. Now it’s time to strengthen both skills. How? Here are a few ways.
1. Maintain a Positive Mindset
A common reaction to a setback is to limit ourselves from seeing it as an opportunity for growth. That’s a negative mindset. To combat that—and to build persistence and resilience—sustain a positive mindset.
Having a positive mindset means always thinking about what you are getting from a potential setback. What are you learning? What new perspective has revealed itself? How can you redirect your goals?
Maybe some of you have already experienced an investment that didn’t go well. That can be difficult to stay positive about, and it may result in feeling discouraged. But it’s vital to reassess the situation using positive qualifiers and questions.
Being positive in a realistic way needs to become second nature, a habit. Practice it daily on small setbacks (like traffic) to build that positivity muscle. It might take some time, but this practice will reroute your brain and help you become stronger in the face of setbacks.
2. Build Self-Confidence
Having self-confidence means believing in yourself—that you have the talent, intelligence, and wherewithal to make your dreams a reality. It means not viewing a setback as some insurmountable flaw in who you are.
Despite the fact that, as doctors, we have demonstrated higher-than-average success, over 70% of the world’s most successful people still suffer from Imposter Syndrome. So, if you don’t feel the most confident, you’re not alone.
Recognize that it’s common. Getting informed is one of the best ways to feel more confident in your abilities. That skill can transfer to your financial education. The more you learn about markets, investments, or industries of specific investments, the more informed you’ll be. And that means the more equipped you’ll be to make confident decisions.
When you have self-confidence you won’t make excuses, lose traction on taking action, and you won’t give up. With self-confidence you can achieve your goals.
3. Stay Organized
When you aren’t organized, you are much less likely to follow through on a plan for success. And without organization there is no preparation for setbacks. When those setbacks are encountered, there is no next step or alternative path to help you stay on the road to financial freedom.
Be highly detailed in the organization of your thoughts, tasks, and end goals. This will give you something to refer back to for next steps when something goes wrong.
For me, I write everything down. It sounds simple but the physical step of writing things down is kind of the first step of self-actualization. First the plans and goals are thoughts in my head, then written words, and those words will soon transform into action, and those actions will soon generate life-changing results.
4. Find Motivation
Nelson Mandela once said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” So how do we motivate ourselves to see something through?
Motivation is all about having an understanding of the big picture. When end-goals are crystal clear, we are also clear about what is motivating us. Whatever our financial goals are for—traveling, more time with family or friends, early retirement, or anything—knowing them keeps us fulfilling the hard and difficult work needed to earn financial freedom.
Hopefully your goals make you excited because excitement is a key component to motivation, persistence, and resilience. How bad do you want it? The more you want it, the greater the motivation you’ll have to achieve it.
Part of this is being excited about how you achieve your financial goals. Will you enjoy the process of earning your dream lifestyle? Does real estate investing sound exciting to you? Are you passionate about starting your own business? Start by finding answers to these questions. You’ll maximize motivation when you’re passionate about your answers.
When you are motivated by both your goals and the process toward your goals, you have a winning combination that increases the chances of success.
5. Network
Most successful people are supported by other successful people. They have a network of folks with similar goals and similar mindsets. When you find yourself in a room of people who display high levels of persistence and resilience, it’s difficult not to absorb those same skills and mindsets.
This is also true of staying close with people who, perhaps like you, are struggling to begin. This type of network is more highly conscious of the important first steps in finance, such as making sure clear financial goals and a positive attitude are at the forefront.
It might seem unusual for a lot of you to be open with others about finances. In reality, it’s imperative. I have a small group of investing friends that, every single quarter, shares finances with each other—from assets to liabilities to new deals. It provides a valuable learning experience and reinstills a camaraderie of helping motivate each other. When you find your groups, you have to trust one another and operate judgment free. It’s about helping each other.
Without a network, your ability to learn, grow, and witness success will be inhibited, likely leading to a limited belief that your dreams can’t be realized.
There are many trustworthy networks you can join right here as Passive Income MD to get started!
Our communities—which were created as educational tools and to help folks realize they can be supported in their financial endeavors—include the Leverage and Growth Accelerator Community, Momentum MD Mastermind, and the Platinum Investors Club. We hope to see you soon!
Leveraging Persistence and Resilience
Always remember that your financial goals are achievable. It’s about building persistence and resilience by having the right mindset, staying organized, sustaining motivation, and joining the right networks.
You can do the daily work to cultivate all of these skills. Just keep plugging away and success will find you. “The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying,” as John C Maxwell said.
To sign off, I have one simple but powerful and important message: You’ve got this! Keep the course; you’re doing amazing work. The next time I see you, my hope is to see that you’ve made strides on your journey toward your financial goals. Thanks for reading.
Peter Kim, MD is the founder of Passive Income MD, the creator of Passive Real Estate Academy, and offers weekly education through his Monday podcast, the Passive Income MD Podcast. Join our community at the Passive Income Doc Facebook Group.
