How to Embrace the Challenge of Expanding Your Mindset

Jessilyn Persson: [00:02:12] I think around money and career is a good one. I know for myself, when I was younger, younger being probably early 30s, I remember your dad used to do our taxes. I remember a comment your dad made to me once, and your dad is a retired chartered accountant, he worked for a big company, so I assume he made some pretty good money. I remember one comment after he did our taxes one year, he looks at me and he’s like, you make more than I ever did. I was like, oh. In my mind, I didn’t have enough. I was never a big spender, I was quite frugal, just based on my upbringing. To put that into reality of ‘I made more than your dad’, who’s doing very well, your parents have done very well for themselves. To think that I didn’t have enough and that I was still in that poverty mindset and mentality, and I had to shift that. Even though you were making six digits, I was making well in the six digits, and young in our careers considerably for making that amount of money, so combined our household was making good money, but yet I was living, in my mind, like when I was a kid and we didn’t have money.

 

Brian Persson: [00:03:21] You were already there, in the expense deficit scenario. I was the other way. I was like, we got everything we need, why are we struggling to get more? Do we not have enough?

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:03:40] To me, we didn’t. I wasn’t looking factually at what we had, it wasn’t that we didn’t have enough in terms of our house and our vehicle and that kind of thing. I just felt like I had to work hard, I had to keep making more money because one day it’s going to be gone. One day I’m not gonna have it. It was that anxiety that kept me pushing, and not necessarily in a positive way.

 

Brian Persson: [00:04:00] Even when I pointed it out on paper to you, that we had enough and that there was much buffer. You were like, okay. Two months later, you’re back in the same track to ‘we have to have more’. For me, the real challenge was getting my head around the fact that it wasn’t more money that we needed, it was more of ‘us’. We needed to be bigger, better, stronger people, do more things and not let our life live statically sitting in these good jobs, just coast. It almost felt like we were coasting. So that was the big thing, it’s not more money, it’s more of who we are that needs to be created.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:04:51] And that encompasses wealth. We needed more wealth, which is money as well, because we knew we wanted to give back in a bigger, bolder way. To be able to give back, even just with our time and our ideas, we needed money to sustain that. So we had that space to be able to do that.

 

Brian Persson: [00:05:12] What’s one of the easiest measurements of if you’re doing well and you’re growing yourself? Money. Our coach and mentor Richard Dolan always says, the dollars keep the score, and it’s true. We knew the easiest way for us to grow ourselves was to see how we could challenge ourselves in business and in real estate. Along with that came how we challenge ourselves in our relationship and how we challenge ourselves with our kids and things like that. The whole environment around us grew along with it. It wasn’t like our bank accounts just got fat. That was the totality of what we grew as a couple and as individuals.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:06:00] That’s going to roll us right into takeaway number one which is, choose your hard. We know from firsthand experience that a lot of the paths we went down were not easy. Starting a company is hard, and I think every entrepreneur can tell you that. Building a real estate portfolio was hard. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing off the hop. To learn that and make those mistakes and overcome that was hard. Even choosing to shift our mindset and come together in a more meaningful way as a family and as a couple, there were a lot of obstacles we had to jump over and go around to figure out to get to a place of comfort and peace for us of what we wanted and where we wanted to go.

 

Brian Persson: [00:06:50] The easiest exercise I can give you, the listener, is think about a conversation you really don’t want to have. That conversation is going to propel you further than you think it is, because you’re just not having it right now, and you know you don’t want to have it because you know the responsibility that comes behind it. That’s what ‘choosing your hard’ is all about. It’s knowing that that conversation, which is a hard conversation to have, has to happen and it’s going to make your life better.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:07:25] Let me explain it physically. I still have a recent, we’re talking three years ago, memory of when I was making the very hard decision to cut the relationship with my younger sister. When it came to me, and I had to make that decision, I felt that gut wrench and that pressure in my chest and my head ached. I sat on it, I knew I didn’t want to make a bold decision over a day, I sat on it for two weeks. I gave myself a goal, I set an intention, and I was like, I need to really think this through, think of all the impacts of it. I weighed the goods, the bads, I spoke to you about it, and then after that I decided I’d come home, speak to my parents so they knew my stance, and my older sister. Then from there I moved forward. That was three years ago, and to this day I still do not have a relationship with my sister, but it was a bold choice I had to make, a hard choice I had to make. It didn’t end there. There were still some conversations further in after that decision where, I think, my parents thought I was still going to have a relationship with her, or that I did. Now we’re all at an understanding that, I have no communication whatsoever, and they understand and support me for my reasons behind it, but it wasn’t easy.

 

Brian Persson: [00:08:47] No, and let’s expand the whole picture, too. You’d already put a lot of energy and a lot of difficulty on your end into that relationship. You tried hard to keep that relationship going. So there was already a lot of you ‘choosing your hard’ baked in before you ever even made that decision to cut ties with your sister.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:09:12] It was 2015 when I decided to give it a real go, and it wasn’t until 2021 that I was like, I’ve given it six years of inviting her and bringing her into my home, embracing her, supporting her, and it just was not healthy.

 

Brian Persson: [00:09:32] I’d like to rephrase one thing you said, as well. That is, you said you don’t have a relationship with your sister. For the listeners out there, we very easily think in ‘don’ts’. The reality is, you chose to create the relationship with your sister in the way that you have. You still have a relationship with your sister because she is your sister, can’t take that away, but you chose not to talk to her. That is the relationship you created for yourself that was a difficult decision, but it was the relationship that you created. Sometimes, we’re going to talk pretty soon on this, you have to create relationships like that where there just is no interaction with those people that you previously interacted with.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:10:22] That is true. Under the line of ‘choosing your hard’, you got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. When you get past that uncomfortable, it’s usually pretty darn good. Like you say, if there’s a conversation that you know you need to have, and you feel it in your gut, you’re like, this hurts, I don’t want to do it, and you just keep shoving it into a dark corner, you sweep it under a rug. But I promise you, if you actually take it out, expose it, have that conversation, you on the other side of that is such a better person in terms of how you feel. Honestly, usually I’ve found, after I’ve had that hard conversation, it was nowhere near as bad as I thought.

 

Brian Persson: [00:11:03] A lot of it is in your head.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:11:07] Growth happens when you start to leave the familiar behind and you start to push past those fears inside of you and those things that are essentially holding you back.

 

Brian Persson: [00:11:20] Sales is a great example for the business owners out there. Most business owners, I would say, don’t really like sales. It makes them uncomfortable. Those are hard conversations to have, especially when you’re not experienced. You don’t like making those phone calls and you don’t like asking for things, generally. The reality is that, nine no’s make a yes in sales. So you got to have nine hard conversations where you get rejected before you find that ‘yes’.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:11:51] Before you get accepted.

 

Brian Persson: [00:11:52] And build your business.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:11:54] No sales means no business. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you got to embrace the hard. One of those hards is, the whole money side of it.

 

Brian Persson: [00:12:03] People don’t even want to make the one phone call because they know they might hear ‘no’ on the other end.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:12:08] In terms of ‘choosing your hard’ when it comes to building your wealth and finances, that could be something as simple as cutting something out of your life. If you’re happy going out all the time, if you start by cutting just 1 or 2 outings a week and start putting that into investing, that will compound the growth. In five, ten years, you’ll have a bigger nest egg than, of course, you would have if you just kept spending. Is it hard because you’re comfortable going out all the time? Sure. But think about 10, 20 years from now when you want to slow down or you want to do something different, or want to retire, but you can’t. That’s hard too.

 

Brian Persson: [00:12:53] Along the finance side, insurance. Everybody hates insurance, but the reality is that insurance has a purpose. The purpose is to prevent you from having difficulties in the future. You have to be smart and you got to ‘choose your hard’ of paying for that insurance, which you might not want to, and ultimately protect yourself into the future. I remember when we signed up for critical illness, disability and life insurance through our company. We were like, we got to take on these expenses for the company? We’re healthy people, we’re not ever going to have cancer or break a bone and be disabled. But the fact is, someone t-bones you on a road, that’s not your fault. You were driving safe, but now you’re in this position where your business is at risk, your finances are at risk, and that insurance which you really didn’t want to pay for, is saving your bacon.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:13:56] I got a good friend, entrepreneur, who tells this story all the time, she’s so grateful she had critical illness. When she got diagnosed with cancer and obviously couldn’t work for that time period, that critical illness insurance covered her to be able to take the time to recover and get through. Now she’s on the other side of it and she’s doing well, but she says her company would have fallen. She’s a solopreneur, and without that to be able to pay for her bills, what would she have done?

 

Brian Persson: [00:14:28] You’re screwed, basically.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:14:31] So ‘choose your hard’. Pay the 50 or 100 bucks a month, whatever it is, for your insurance now, and have it when you might need it 20 years from now, versus not and then be scrambling or watching your company go down because, you need to focus on your health.

 

Brian Persson: [00:14:48] When it comes to real estate, ‘choosing your hard’ can look like dealing with tenants and making difficult calls. Perhaps cash calls where you have a partner and some more money needs to be injected into the situation. I was recently coaching a client, he is buying his first rental property, which is quite a sizable property. For his first one, he’s buying a duplex with two basement suites, four suites total. He was like, look at the cash flow, Brian, this first year is going to be great. I’m like, just so you know, your first year is always going to be rough on a property. I wanted to prepare him so that he could pre-‘choose his hard’, and know what he was getting into so that he didn’t get delusioned by what was actually going to happen. We had a bunch of conversations that night about it, and finally he came around to hunkering down. He knew he was going to have to hunker down in that first year, and I think he thought it was going to be this ‘cash printing’ sort of year, which it probably is going to be in the end. But if you came into it thinking it was all rainbows and butterflies, then he might have had a lot more difficult time over this next year than he would have.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:16:07] What is takeaway number two? Decluttering your environment. That includes family, friends, time, your mindset, all of it. As we just shared, I decluttered my sister, and we have, over the years, done the same thing with our friends. We’ve gone through, we’ve assessed all our friendships and said, which ones are adding energy and support where we’re going to us and which ones are detracting? It’s not always necessarily about keeping up with us and what we’re doing, but it’s a matter of, when we’re with them, are we happy, are we excited? Or do we feel drained and afterwards you’re like, I’m good for another six months.

 

Brian Persson: [00:16:54] Or just completely out of alignment. Even if you don’t feel drained after getting together with your friends, do they raise their kids in a similar way? Do they treat their finances in a similar way? Do they have any kind of growth mindset to them whatsoever? Things like that. They’re fantastic people, but they just don’t align because there’s effectively no support the other way. You’re putting in all the energy into that relationship, and you’re getting nothing out of it. You can’t have that, it needs to be an ebb and a flow where support goes both ways and the energy goes both ways, and you can help each other expand and grow together.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:17:40] You need to surround yourself with people of your ideal mindset.

 

Brian Persson: [00:17:44] Your future mindset.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:17:48] It’s okay if you find that, if you have a large community of friends right now and it shrinks, that generally is normal. As you continue to grow your mindset you’ll find your community. We did, we found our community shrunk in some ways, but grew in others.

 

Brian Persson: [00:18:04] The people who are important to us, and the people who we could support properly and could support us properly, stuck around. Some other people just drifted away, because it was a one way street and it was generally us putting the energy into it.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:18:21] We’d highly recommend you review your list of family and friends and see which way the energies flow. If you find you’re the one who’s constantly reaching out, constantly inviting them to things but it’s not reciprocated, maybe slow that relationship down. If not, maybe at some point even end it, because they should be there to support you equally for the ebb and flow of that relationship.

 

Brian Persson: [00:18:44] You don’t have to be a jerk about it. Most of the relationships that we’re talking about, they just ended naturally. As soon as we stopped putting in the energy, the relationship just ended naturally. Without any gas, where’s the relationship going? It’s not going to travel anywhere.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:19:04] Seek mentors, peers, resources, friends, whatever you want to call them, that inspire you, that think bigger, that are either where you want to be or you know they’re going where you want to go. Start to hang out with them, and you’ll notice the shift, even in your mindset and how you’re feeling, and you’ll be excited to be with these people because you’re like, they’re they motivate me, they inspire me, this is where I want to go, they support me. Those are the people you want to surround yourself with and hang out with.

 

Brian Persson: [00:19:34] They’ll help keep your thoughts decluttered, too. If you’re constantly surrounded by positive thoughts and you’re constantly surrounded by motivated people, then your thoughts will naturally tend that direction, too. If you’re surrounded by a bunch of ‘Debbie Downers’ and negative people, then your thoughts are going to naturally go that way as well.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:19:54] Think about decluttering your environment when we say time. If you’re not hanging out with these people who are energy sucks, if you will, you’ll find you’ll have more time for you. That might be to be hanging out with mentors and people who think alike, but that also might be some great downtime for you to learn more about finances and building your wealth, and studying for yourself for personal development, to bring your mindset to reach the goals and targets you want. Decluttering people can also declutter time, which can give you back more space to do and be who you want to be.

 

Brian Persson: [00:20:30] Another super easy decluttering of your time is social media and Netflix and all the other subscription services, not watching a lot of those. We watch our movies and stuff like that, you have your Friday movie nights with the boys. But it’s not every day movie night and everyday news and everyday Netflix and social media. It’s at set times and it’s very intentional.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:20:58] Rolling in to take away three, set clear intentions. You just mentioned it’s very intentional how we spend our time, like a Friday night movie night where I get to snuggle with my boys, but otherwise, I generally don’t watch TV, and that’s intentional. I do reading, meditating, play board games with our kids, we set other intentions to spend time with our boys. Setting clear intentions, it has you in a space to know, this is what I want, this is what I need to get there, this is what I’m going to work on. It’s like a guide for you to accomplish what it is you’re looking to achieve.

 

Brian Persson: [00:21:37] It takes away the randomness of your mindset expansion, where you might just happen to meet people, or you might just happen to have a thought. By setting clear intentions, you’re now actively looking for what fits your mindset that you’re trying to create, and you’ll start to see those out in the world. You’ll start to see those people, you’ll start to see those activities, and by setting that clear intention, things are going to come to you and you will find things much easier.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:22:07] Setting a clear intention, it has you anchored in a purpose. Whatever might come your way from out of the blue, sideways, if you’re anchored in your intention, those things, you’ll just deflect them. It won’t be a matter of, I got to do this and I got to do that, and the guilt. It’d be like, this is where I’m going and it’s not aligned with where I’m going, so thanks, but no thanks. That could be the same with certain people. They might invite you out drinking and that might not be aligned with where you’re going. Maybe you’re saving money, so you save money by not going out. Maybe you want to feel better the next day, which was always a big one, and that doesn’t align if you’re working on your health or investing in you-time for self-development. That being gone takes away hours, not just that night, but the next day for recovery. Something as simple as saying no to a night out, gives you back so much.

 

Brian Persson: [00:23:03] It’ll help you define what’s going on in your own mind, as well. You can start to analyze your thoughts with your intentions. Does this thought serve me or not? Then you will, over time, naturally start to cut out the thoughts that are not serving you, and you’ll only have the thoughts that are serving you and pushing you towards your expanding mindset that you’re aiming for.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:23:29] Set clear intentions. To roll into our takeaways and recap, the first one is, choose your hard. There’s a hard on either side, so choose which one you’re going to take. Number two, declutter your environment. That includes family, friends, time, your mindset. Number three, set clear intentions so you know where you want to go, you know where you stand and what you got to do to get there. Our next topic is going to be on, how to deal with pushback as you grow. This is important because as you expand your mindset, you’re going to have people pushing back and wanting you to stay the same. You’re going to have people you know, love and trust who mean well but don’t understand the growth, who are going to try to keep you playing small. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of Life by Design podcast.

 

Brian Persson: [00:24:20] Before you go, don’t forget to go to discoverlifebydesign.ca/wealth and grab your free download, ‘The 3 Mistakes That Keep Couples From Building Their Wealth’. We release new episodes every two weeks, so be sure to hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast app and journey with us to create your life by design.

 

Jessilyn Persson: [00:24:39] Thanks again for listening, it’s been a pleasure being with you today. We’re Jessilyn and Brian, and we’ll see you next time.