What Do You Feed Your Mind?

One of the best questions I was ever asked as a mentee by a long-time coach of mine (going on nearly 30 years), Dan Kennedy: “What do you feed your mind?”

Think about that. Is it a steady diet of doom, gloom and dour thoughts and negative information? Nightly news that shows the world is crumbling? Or, is it secretly just flat-out bad stuff like the garbage you can find online? Are you what my daughters, Mady and Lynia, refer to as a “doom scroller” on insta or tik-tok (2 apps you’ll never find me personally – nor will you find me using flakebook. I will confess – I do use X. I find it’s the fastest news source and one can, if they choose to, curate all 3 sides of an argument – the liars, the stretchers and just base-line information.)

Think about this carefully: What you choose to take in, in the way of information, frames your reality; for better or worse. It’s your choice. You can pick up the Bible if you want, a book on negotiating, or, a magazine on building wooden sailing ships. One will feed your soul, one will help you in business and generally in  life and the other can fuel a desire, add knowledge or develop an interesting hobby.

The next time you decide to work with a real estate broker – resi, commercial, leasing agent, what have you – ask them about the 3 most recent books they’ve read or are actively reading. More importantly, ask them how the books have affected their approach to the craft/trade they’re in. My guess is you’ll be pleasantly surprised and learn something or, you’ll be disappointed to find they “don’t read.” Sadly, more than likely, the latter. 

i’ve known a lot of people over time that didn’t read books. Now, every day, after they’ve understood the benefits, a book is peeled open. So many benefits I can name have come from reading. To include a curiosity about life and places that was never there. 

The new generation want something different. They do not read. They watch. And worse, they watch short, attention-grabbing videos that do little to grow their brain. In fact, if you were to buy a book or go to the library where books are FREE to read, you’ll learn that this kind of thing isn’t good for brain development. We are breeding and training a team of lab mice to be more like Mice than Men, that’s it. Thank you, Communist China and tik tok.

Back to my title: What are you feeding your mind? Here is a list of books I’ve read recently: The Only Negotiating Guide You’ll Ever Need, Die with Zero, I’ve started a book from Tom, my best friend, Say Nothing. I tried to read a couple Hunter S. Thompson novels for fun. I can’t follow them. Koch’s Unreasonable Succes and How to Achieve It. Dan Kennedy’s latest No BS book on selling your company (I’m a buyer, not a seller, but I’ve sold several companies over the years, and I have friends who are at the point where they may consider selling and I wanted to see what kind of advice was being shared in the book). By the way, if you have not read any of Kennedy’s books, go invest a couple hundred bucks and buy them all. I get a 16-20 pg newsletter every month from Kennedy. I share it with my girls. It’s some of the best business, marketing and self-improvement information you will ever read. I’ve known Dan personally for decades. He’s a constant for me. Libertarian/Constitutionalist thought. I agree with much of what he has to say, and disagree with a bit. To me, that is healthy. I like to see alternative thoughts and work through them to reconcile with my own.

Oh, and Ayn Randy. Read Atlas Shrugged. It’s a meaty book, but if you want to see our future that is here now, a good one to read. Written by her decades ago. You’ll also really understand the proper meaning of “selfishness” and it’s not what you think.

In addition to reading, I’ve written a few books. One of my favorite was a book on time management. I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years. I studied some of the best and most prolific professionals and synthesized it. You can get it on Amazon. The full title is 

The Business Anarchist’s Guide to Peak Productivity and Time Management: Getting More Done In Less Time Than You Ever Thought Possible

I published it over 10 years ago now.

Another I wrote was a book on marketing for property management companies. The full title. 

How Your Property Management Company Can Grow & Prosper in ANY Economy

Interestingly, some goof ball, probably a competitor is my guess, left the only review, a 1 star. I published this book in May 2021. I’m biased, but even a book I bought once that had 72 pages of nothing on each page, but was titled, something like, “Everything men know about women,” was more deserving than a 1 star. Whatever, I’m not dependent on book sales, so I could care less. (BTW, not caring about what haters think of you is a great success trait. I know a few others that feels the same way – Trump, Rogan are two. Tom Homan, three. I could go on. 

Another book I co-wrote with a fellow was titled, 

Brother Bill’s Letters: Timeless Dental Practice Management Tips From The Early 1900’s With Modern Chapter-by-Chapter Commentary (Brother Bill’s Letters Volume II)

I enjoyed that project. That book has a number of 5-star reviews and was actually a Best Seller. There were a number of lessons in that book – the big one – advice from the early 1900s in running a business is just as valid today as it was then. That was published in March 2021.

I wrote several other books – one that was never published, well before Amazon was even a thing, back in 1997. That was a book on how to start a business. A couple others related to my prior career in coaching and advising dentists in business, like the one above. 

I’m very close to wrapping up my next book on investing in commercial real estate. It’s a book written based my experience over the last 25 years as an investor, lender, and real estate broker, on a class I’ve presented to residential real estate brokers (and will present here again soon for the Mid-Valley Association of REALTORS®). When it’s ready on Amazon, you’ll hear about it.

My challenge to you this month: Improve what you’re feeding your mind and watch how much better life can get from a psychological standpoint. It’s incredible. Don’t settle for content that is just on your phone. Pick up a book. Read self-improvement books or those that will improve your skills as an investor, landlord, friend, spouse, parent. You won’t agree with all of it, but as I have often been told, “There’s a nugget in there somewhere – go find it.”