Read This If You Are Just Starting Out In Investing

The number one reason most people fail is not really a lack of skill set, but rather a lack of the proper mindset. And this is especially crucial when you are just starting out as an investor.

In this blog post, I write about some of the mindsets that we need to have, especially as a beginner investor.

Acceptance

You need to accept the fact that the stock market doesn't always go up. It will come down as well. And this is especially important, when beginner investors who happened to start investing in the bull market, and they think that the stock market is rainbow and butterflies. When the stock market correction eventually comes, their confidence get hit, and they give up in investing.

The next thing to accept is that you can never catch the bottom and the top. I grew sick and tired of people telling me, "If I wait a bit longer, I can buy it at a cheaper price". If the stock is undervalued, you might be better off just collecting the shares first. Let me illustrate how silly it is to try to catch the bottom.

On Monday, I have a $100 note and I went crazy and I wanted to sell it at $80.

Would you tell me, "Let's wait until Tuesday, maybe he will go crazier and sell it at a cheaper price."

No! You will just pay the $80 and buy the $100 note!

Of course, the stock market isn't that obvious - which is why learning about valuation is important - to figure out what is a reasonable price to pay for a stock.

Don't Be A NATO

For those who are not aware, NATO stands for No Action Talk Only.

This is especially so, due to the bombardment of investing webinars - and people are spending so much time consuming these content, and no time taking action.

The reason? They spend so much time thinking about "what if I take action and it doesn't work". But little did they consider the possibility, "What if it does work? How would my life change then?"

Let me then break the truth to you. In the course of learning a new skill set, you are going to suck. There is no avoiding it. But here is what I know for a fact, over time, as you keep doing it, you are going to suck less - and eventually you are actually going to be good at it.

I know that people still have that fear in failing. But think about it, when you see a baby tried to take it first few steps walking, and ended up falling on his butt - would you tell the baby, "Omg, he is failing to walk properly - let's just give up on him."

You wouldn't right? Instinctively, the baby is going to keep trying to walk, fall, get back up again, and keep trying to walk until he succeeds.

But somehow, as we grew older as adults, we became fearful of failing. Why? Because schools made it seems that failing as a terrible thing. When, in truth, In order to grow, you need failure, it is life's ultimate lesson

And remember that we were all that baby once. We got up, trying to walk, fall, and tried walking again. This means that we all have the ability within us to embrace failure and keep moving forward. You simply forgotten it, and its time for you remember this and keep marching forward towards your goals.

Financial Freedom - An Unsexy Grind

Most people got into investing, with the hopes and dreams to achieve financial freedom - so that working at a job is a choice and not a necessity. However, little did they realise, the journey to get there is not as easy as they thought.

I remember one of the very first workshops that I attended was a free workshop on dividend investing. And the trainer was someone who is living off his passive income dividends of well over $10,000 every single month. It sounds sexy until he shared his journey to get there. He was someone who was very disciplined and scrimped and saved for a good 10 years - eating very simple meals every single day for 10 years. It became his lifestyle, but it paid off and he retired in his mid 30s.

There is a saying that describes this really well.

Financial freedom feels good, I am not going to deny it. But not many people are willing to make the sacrifices to get there. To put things in perspective, how many people will actually do the following:

• Spend their weekends, learning a new skill set to bring in an extra income.
• Spend their time after working long hours, to learning about investing while others are partying.
• Keeping their lifestyle simple, eating only simple meals like a monk/nun to save more money to invest.
• the list goes on...

It is much easier to just lie down on your bed, relax and watch Netflix than to spend the time to learn a new skill set.

If you want to be financially free faster than others, then you have to acknowledge that your lifestyle will be different from others.

To me, I was willing to make those sacrifices because I know that there are people getting stuck in jobs that they outright hated and having their health and relationships suffered as a result. I didn't want to be one of them, and therefore chose to do the hard things so that my life will be easy.

Stay Away From Energy Vampires

In our lives, we probably met some of these people. People who are just constantly complaining about their lives on social media for every small things in their lives, about politics, their jobs, their friends, their relatives, strangers they meet on the street, etc.

We need to limit our exposure from such people who add no value to our lives. And the truth is that I block these people on social media. Remember that we have limited time and energy - so spend them wisely.

We are the average of the people we hang around with - both physically and virtually. In fact, during one of the workshops I attended - this was the first exercise that I have done - to list down the top 10 people that we hang around most with and estimate their income that they are getting every month. If you average them out, it will likely be your income.

So be wary of people whom you surround around with. The concept is very simple.

If you want to be a better runner, then hang out with high performance runners and learn their routines.

If you want to be a better business person, then hang out with successful business people and learn from their lessons.

If you want to be financially free, then hang out with people who are already financially free and learn from their mindsets and perspectives.

Find Joy In The Process

If you want to achieve sustained success, you have to find joy in what you do. After all, if you are constantly in a negative state of mind and hate what you do - you are going to go crazy before you become financially free.

And personally, investing is almost game to me, where I am always trying to reach the next milestone in my portfolio. It started with $10,000...then $30,000...then $50,000...$100,000...$150,000...so on and so forth. This is what keeps me excited to consistently put money into my brokerage account, because of two reasons.

• My money is going to compound faster than leaving it in the bank
• Every time I add more money, the amount of cash flow that I can get from my portfolio gets more and more. 

It is also important to recognise that investing is not a destination where you stopped after hitting your first million dollar portfolio. It is almost additive when you find joy in the process. In short, investing becomes part of your lifestyle.

The Bottom Line

Learning how to invest in the stock market was a turning point in my life, and I am grateful to have to started on this journey.

It is not easy to find something that you enjoy doing and at the same time make money doing it - and I believe that investing is the first step to be able to achieve it. Because when you can build a portfolio that gives you sufficient cash flow, salary is no longer part of the equation when you are looking for a job that gives you fulfillment.

To leave you with one last note, the biggest mistake in chasing financial freedom is to be able to just lie down and do nothing. You are going to be bored to death. We all need to find our own purpose and to spend our time wisely while we are still alive, rather than to spend a good half of our lives to be stuck in a job that drains us.

The journey to financial freedom is not going to be easy, but it is going to be worth it.

Wishing you all the best, 

Gin