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Today’s date October 20-2019. The time, 1:13am. The place, The club in the ATX.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

—Thomas A. Edison—

Max here,

Every time I read that text, it internally makes me laugh. I laugh because wow, when you can truly, and I mean truly make that internal switch, the internal switch from so called “failure” to understanding that failure doesn’t exist….. That’s when stress in life comes down.

Now don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that stress no longer exists…. stress is still there, at least for me it is. But instead what it means is that my stress level is not as bad as when I look at roadblocks, wrong way signs, trips, fall downs, and mistakes, as a failure. I am slowly, and I mean (slow as molasses dripping in winter) I am slowly reprogramming moments of my life from failures, both present and past, and instead looking at them as learning lessons. And for me this journey to a million is just one lesson after another. The toughest part is to not let my ego get in front of the lesson. Because the moment my ego gets in front of the lesson, then that is when I (or my ego rather) decides to take it personally and then calls it failure. And that’s when I begin to emotionally tumble down the mountain of success.

So what lessons have I (Max) been thru these last few weeks…. Hmmm… Well I finally finished my 2016, 2017, and 2018 taxes. And while at the CPA’s office I about fell out of my chair when I added up what I owe in taxes for those 3 years….. I was hoping for only owing about $20,000.00, but instead it’s over $30,000.00. I swear I about flipped mentally. Just thinking about it, I can almost feel the anxiety growing again. And this cost does not include interest and penalties. I’m truly not sure how I am going to make it thru this.  For me this has been an extremely stressful part of my life, especially for this year. Thoughts that went thru my head… how am I going to pay for this? Am I going to lose my properties? What is going to happen to me? I swear even the CPA’s assistant that was helping me with my taxes could see my frustration. However, he always kept a calm face and a smile. Unknowingly this was extremely helpful. When I finally get thru this period of my life, I will definitely need to tell him thank you.

So how have I dealt with it. Well, first I internally bitched, whined, and moaned. Then I beat myself up and kicked myself in the ass multiple times. Then I just felt lost. Truly lost and helpless. I mean think about it….on the inside (you know, that part of you that never forgets where you come from) I’m really just a poor kid from a bad side of town, and now I’m supposed to know how to traverse these waters of my life without any help, or a life raft?And then during several of my conversations with my CPA assistant, he had told me that one of the other CPA’s can contact the IRS for me and possibly work out a payment plan that will fit my extremely small margin of a budget. Like I said, he told me this several times, but I was just so deep in mental worrying that I couldn’t really see how this could help me. I just couldn’t connect the dots of what the offer really meant. But after time, I was able to see that there is no way out of this situation. (Why was I even looking for a way out of it? IDK. It’s just crazy how the mind can run itself in circles) And so after about a week and multiple times of the assistant telling me that it would probably be best if one of the main CPA’s coordinated with the IRS for me, that’s when I finally began open the door to different thinking. Also I read that the IRS can give up to 6 years to be on a payment plan. Now….  will they really give me that long to pay them? IDK. Can the main CPA guy really get the IRS to give me payment plans that will still allow me to survive? again, IDK.

So what I did is read a lot of motivational quotes, what I did is talk with God, what I did is a lot of self reflection on how I am thinking about how others have achieved their goals, what I did, is come to terms (or as best as currently possible – which probably still isn’t good enough), but so what I did is surrender. Surrender to trying to fix this situation. And instead I allowed myself to believe that there WILL be an outcome that will allow me to survive and still thrive and move forward to my dreams. I guess that’s the hardest part of everything… the “faith” that the sun will again shine. This was not easy, really not easy, and even as I write this, there is still this deep internal programming in me that still holds onto “scarcity” and “fear”. like a caveman worried about the rain and lighting. It’s just so tough to let go of that pre-programmed fear that somehow gets programmed into all of us at different levels of our mindset, and although I feel this negativity,  what I must do is walk forward in the face of fear, and pain and constantly look for ways to believe that this is just a lesson, just something that I must do in order to get to the other side.

What else has been happening in my life? Well, it (Life that is – this journey) still feels like a confusing whirl wind. My apartment #3 isn’t finished yet. And recently the lady that rented my apartment #4 (The efficiency) decided to leave. Turns out she was really only trying to rent a place for a few months. This is deeply difficult for me because she left in October and now I am going to have a difficult time getting it rented during the holidays. And on top of that, she allowed Eddie and his wife to stay there without my permission, and so Eddie then asked if he could stay there and that caused a whole new set of issues for me. I just never rent to people that do any form of work for me. I tried this before in the past and it just caused bad outcomes. And so Eddie and his wife decided to break and enter and stay in the efficiency After I told them no. I had to have a talk with each of them. I’ll tell ya, it just takes soooooooo much energy to be nice and thoughtful during situations of anger and disappointment. After almost an hour talk with Eddie’s wife I “think”, I’ll never be sure, but I think she finally see’s that I WILL call the cops and send them to jail. I know that they don’t steal from me, but also they are breaking into my efficiency only because they currently have not found a way to find another place to live. Sadly this is not my problem. It’s theirs. Their the ones that don’t want to play by other peoples rules, and so because of their inability to play by other peoples rules, they have no where to live.

And during my conversation with Eddie’s wife, I learned that if she goes to jail again, that she will serve 5 years. (or 2.5 for good behavior) I told her that maybe she needs to go to jail. Because simply, in jail, she will always have a roof over her head, she will have food everyday, she will have TV, she will have air conditioning and heating, she will get to shower daily, and she will even have the type of around her that she is used to. She won’t have to be walking in the cold looking for a place to stay, she won’t have to break into someone’s place just to sleep, she won’t have to go without showering. The conversation overall was a difficult one, but ultimately I told her that I won’t feel bad if I have to take time out of my own busy and personal time just to come down to the apartments (in the middle of the night), and call a police officer and have him walk the units with me to ensure that they are not there. This is something that I really don’t want to have time for, but I know that it is something that I must do. And beyond all that, I am still willing to give work to Eddie. He is a descent worker, that eventually gets the job done to the very minimum of my requirements. And I think he sees that I will give him work, but that I will also send them to jail and not feel bad about it. And for Eddie, he will be very, very lost if his wife goes to jail for 2.5 years. Hopefully they get the point. Oddly enough, internally, I truly don’t feel bad for sending them (or her specifically) to jail, I truly feel that I have given them many, many chances. I know that I will feel sad in knowing that they go to jail then it is because they just don’t care enough about their own life decisions, and that I MUST be the person to make that type of decision for them.

But at the same time I too can see that I am a lot like them. And that is something that I must change. There are things about my life that I have not learned to take control of. I too MUST learn to see the the true severity of not following thru with actions in my life. For example, my taxes! I do not and MUST not be like Eddie and his wife. I must be organized and I must be disciplined. As I think about it, for the last 8 or 10 years I have been trying to get into real estate, and it’s the last 6 years where I am really finally JUST and I mean JUST beginning to understand this thing called real estate. And it’s the last couple of years where I am really finally beginning to see the how deep the importance is for discipline and organization. And I would say in the last year, I can begin…. I mean just BEGIN to feel myself either (wanting to) or actually becoming more disciplined. Again though, it’s just super tough. Really, really tough to get these neurons in my head to connect the dots with all the things in my life that MUST be disciplined and that also MUST be organized. Luckily it’s not impossible. But the truth is this, Lisa Nichols is exactly correct, that for someone like me….

If I really want my dreams to come true, I must be willing to die to every form of who I am in order to give birth to the person that I am meant to be.

Wish me luck.

Max.