Why Having a Dream Won't Net You the Success You Desire
I learned the hard way that when it comes to purchasing a home, you need a whole lot more than a dream. The lessons I learned ten years ago when I was positioned to purchase a home but didn't, are lessons that I've been able to apply to pretty much all of the goals I set going forward from there.
Ten years ago I was renting a home in one of Washington DC's up and coming neighborhoods, near the now uber trendy U street corridor in the northwest quadrant and within walking distance of Howard University where I was a professor. I loved the neighborhood and the character and charm that comes with a large historic row house. I relished living in the Ledroit Park community where, in the 30's, 40's and 50's, the negro intelligentsia and professors who preceded me lived and thrived.
I had often dreamed of purchasing a home but I didn't really have anything besides a dream mindset. What's a dream mindset you might ask? Well, a dream mindset is when we think about our goal and imagine our goal and admire others who have achieved the goal, but for some reason we don't move beyond that state of mind. I had no idea how expensive my preoccupation with dreaming would be.
About six months into renting the home I started to receive notices that the home was going into foreclosure and letters came in droves from agents trying to reach me to become my agent. I was so ignorant and had so much fear about the housing market and home purchase process that I became anxious and believed that somehow I could be held liable for the home being in foreclosure. My solution, I decided to move out.
However, before I could implement my hasty plan, the owner, a real estate investor, actually tried to help me purchase the home. He put me in touch with a mortgage broker and decided that he would offer me the chance to purchase the home for a measly $128,000. Yes, you read that right, he offered me a purchase price that was pennies in comparison to the homes on the same block. However, I didn't know that because I didn't know anything about purchasing a home. I didn't know that all I had to do was look up the tax records for the homes on my block and find out what they were worth. I had no idea that all I had to do was look up the nearest homes for sale within a one mile radius and I would have known that homes in the same condition and same size as the one I was renting, were selling for more than $400,000, more than triple the price he offered me.
I was a highly educated woman, yet, from my reactionary behavior you sure couldn't tell.
It wasn't that I didn't make enough money to afford the home, it was the mindset I was bringing to the experience. A mindset that had locked me into a perpetual state of dreaming of achieving.
As a child I lived in five different apartments by the age of ten, but when I was eleven, my mother purchased a home. However, it was short lived, when two years later she lost it to foreclosure and we moved out practically under the cover of night.
When I was speaking to the mortgage broker I found myself gripped by fear and thinking: "I'm not going to let him talk me into doing something that I know I shouldn't because buying a home can lead to disaster."
I had no data or knowledge to back up my thoughts other than an event that happened when I was twelve years old. I stopped taking his calls and soon after, I packed my things and moved my son and I into an apartment. However, that experience did ignite a curiosity in me to figure out why I did not try to make my dream a reality.
As you can see, I did not purchase that home and benefit from the immediate equity I could have attained or the tremendous appreciation in value that it would have today, but I did educate myself, went on to purchase a home, sell that home for double what I paid for it and now own a condo in the uber trendy Columbia Heights neighborhood in Washington DC. The only way I was able to achieve these goals was by learning from my first failed home purchase.
Suffice it to say, the main thing I learned is that I could not rely on a dream. Of course, it's important to begin with a dream, but If you have a dream and you have yet to couple your dream mindset with knowledge and action you might benefit from what I did, which was to examine what was keeping me stuck on dreaming.
Over the next year I started journaling and figured out why I didn't do what seems simple in retrospect, educate myself and seek out more knowledge so I could be comfortable with taking the action that would help me achieve my dream.
I learned that a dream is nothing if I am not willing or capable of backing it up with knowledge and action.
- Dreams help us see the path of possibility
- Knowledge puts our feet firmly on that path
- ·Action helps us move through the process and seals the deal of manifestation
Lessons learned really are the best part of living this wonderful life!
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