There is a strange contradiction among high-performing real estate investors.

They know their energy matters.

They know sleep matters. Exercise matters. Clear thinking matters. Focus matters. Time away from the business matters.

They may even have all of it scheduled on the calendar.

And then a deal gets complicated.

An investor calls.

A lender needs something.

A partner wants to talk.

A team member has a problem.

A meeting runs long.

Something feels urgent.

And suddenly the workout disappears. The quiet morning disappears. The strategic thinking disappears. The boundaries disappear.

The investor tells themselves they will get back to it when things calm down.

Things rarely calm down.

The problem may not be a lack of discipline. It may be the way the entire idea of self-care has been framed.

We are often told to “love yourself” and take care of yourself because you deserve it.

That sounds good.

But for a person carrying significant responsibility, it may not be a powerful enough reason to survive the pressure of a growing business.

There is another reason to take care of yourself.

People depend on you.

And once you see it that way, protecting your time and energy stops feeling selfish.

It becomes part of your job.

The Problem With Treating Yourself as the Most Important Person in Your Life

The transcript begins with a provocative challenge to the popular idea of self-love.

The speaker isn't arguing that people shouldn't take care of themselves. Quite the opposite.

The argument is that the conventional framing of self-love can be too shallow to withstand real responsibility.

Consider an investor running a growing multifamily operation.

They have acquisitions to oversee, investors to communicate with, lenders to manage, employees to lead, properties to monitor, and a family waiting at home.

They know they need to exercise.

They know they need time to think.

They know they shouldn't answer every message immediately.

But when the pressure arrives, those things become negotiable.

Why?

Because the immediate request appears to serve someone else.

The meeting serves the team.

The call serves an investor.

The decision serves a property.

The negotiation serves the partnership.

The problem is that the investor has unconsciously created a hierarchy in which everyone else's needs are legitimate, while their own needs are optional.

That's where the deeper idea becomes useful.

You don't necessarily need to convince yourself that you deserve an hour to think.

You need to understand why the hour matters to everyone who depends on you.

Your Energy Is an Operating Asset

Real estate investors are accustomed to thinking about assets.

Buildings are assets.

Capital is an asset.

Relationships are assets.

Reputation is an asset.

Time is an asset.

But energy and cognitive capacity are often treated differently.

They shouldn't be.

If you're the person making the major decisions in the business, your ability to think clearly has economic consequences.

A fatigued investor can still attend a meeting.

They can still answer emails.

They can still review a deal.

They can still negotiate.

But the quality of those decisions may deteriorate long before the calendar tells them they are burned out.

The transcript describes a leader who was extremely capable but overwhelmed. Her problem wasn't competence. It was that she struggled to maintain boundaries and operate with focus.

That distinction matters.

The most dangerous leaders aren't always the ones who can't do the work.

Sometimes they're the ones who are exceptionally good at doing too much.

They become the bottleneck precisely because everyone knows they can handle it.

But “I can handle it” is not the same as “this is the best use of me.”

For an investor, that distinction becomes critical as the business scales.

At some point, the question is no longer:

How much can I personally handle?

It becomes:

What happens to the business when I am operating below my best level?

The Investor Is Part of a Larger System

One of the strongest ideas in the transcript is that human beings don't operate in isolation.

The speaker challenges the Western tendency to view individualism as the ultimate expression of independence. Instead, the transcript emphasizes interdependence: our identities and responsibilities are deeply connected to other people.

That is particularly relevant to entrepreneurship.

Think about a real estate operator.

Who are they?

They may be a parent.

A spouse.

A partner.

A CEO.

A capital raiser.

An employer.

A mentor.

A community member.

An investor.

A steward of other people's money.

None of those identities exist independently.

The business owner who says, “I just need to work harder,” may actually be ignoring the larger system they are responsible for.

Your investors don't just need your effort.

They need your judgment.

Your team doesn't just need your availability.

They need your leadership.

Your partners don't just need your responsiveness.

They need your ability to make thoughtful decisions.

Your family doesn't just need your physical presence.

They need you to actually be present.

And all of that depends, at least partly, on the condition of the person at the center of the system.

The Question Isn't “Do I Deserve This?”

This is where the idea becomes practical.

Imagine an investor has blocked 7:00–8:00 a.m. for exercise.

At 6:55, a deal issue comes up.

The old framing says:

“Exercise is something I'm doing for myself.”

The business immediately wins the argument.

The new framing is different:

“I exercise because I need the energy and clarity to lead this business well.”

Now the activity is no longer competing with responsibility.

It is supporting responsibility.

The same applies to thinking time.

You don't protect two hours on a Friday afternoon because you're avoiding work.

You protect it because strategic thinking is part of your work.

You don't refuse to answer messages at 10:30 p.m. because you're selfish.

You create communication boundaries because constant interruption eventually degrades judgment.

You don't take a vacation because the business doesn't matter.

You take the vacation because a business that requires your nervous system to remain permanently activated is not actually as scalable as it appears.

The shift is subtle but powerful:

Stop asking whether taking care of yourself is justified. Ask what your responsibilities require from you.

The Best Investors Understand Their Role

The transcript makes an important distinction between taking care of yourself and indulging yourself.

The strongest leaders described in the conversation don't necessarily think, “I'm exercising because I love myself.”

Their thinking is closer to:

“If I don't have energy, I can't show up properly for my team.”

“If I don't clear my mind, I won't make good decisions.”

“If I don't protect my time, I won't be able to serve the people depending on me.”

That is a fundamentally different operating system.

For investors, this can change how you design your week.

Instead of asking:

What do I want to fit into my schedule?

Ask:

What does my role require me to be capable of?

If your role requires judgment, you need space to think.

If your role requires negotiation, you need emotional regulation.

If your role requires leadership, you need enough energy to remain patient when other people are struggling.

If your role requires raising capital, you need the confidence and presence to build relationships.

If your role requires managing a portfolio, you need enough perspective to distinguish a genuine emergency from someone else's urgency.

Your calendar should reflect the capabilities your role requires.

Boundaries Are Not About Saying No to People

This is especially important for high achievers.

A boundary is often framed as something you do for yourself.

But strong boundaries can actually be an act of responsibility.

Suppose an operator allows every employee to interrupt them whenever something feels urgent.

At first, that may feel generous.

Over time, it creates dependency.

People stop solving problems independently.

The leader becomes the default escalation point.

The calendar fragments.

Strategic work gets pushed into evenings.

The leader becomes exhausted.

Eventually, everyone gets a worse version of that leader.

A boundary changes the system.

Perhaps the team learns which decisions require escalation and which don't.

Perhaps meetings become more intentional.

Perhaps communication windows are established.

Perhaps the CEO protects several hours each week for uninterrupted strategic work.

That isn't self-love.

It's organizational design.

And the same principle applies to investors working with partners, brokers, lenders, property managers, and capital partners.

Your availability is not an unlimited resource.

The more responsibility you accumulate, the more deliberately you have to allocate it.

Sometimes Overextension Is Not Commitment

The transcript also makes a useful observation: people sometimes overextend themselves not because responsibility demands it, but because an insecurity underneath makes it difficult to protect themselves.

That's worth examining.

An investor might tell themselves:

“I have to be available.”

But perhaps the deeper belief is:

“If I'm not available, they'll think I'm not valuable.”

Or:

“I need to be the one who solves this.”

Underneath that might be:

“If I don't solve it, I might lose control.”

Or:

“I can't step away.”

Underneath that might be:

“If I'm not constantly working, I'm falling behind.”

These are very different problems.

The solution isn't always another productivity system.

Sometimes it's confronting the identity that makes rest, delegation, boundaries, or uncertainty feel threatening.

This is one reason scaling a real estate business is fundamentally a personal-development exercise.

Eventually, the business exposes the beliefs that made the earlier version of success possible.

The willingness to do everything yourself can help you build a company.

Later, it can prevent you from building one that doesn't depend on you.

A Better Framework for Protecting Yourself

Instead of asking whether something is “self-care,” try using a responsibility-based framework.

Before removing something important from your calendar, ask five questions.

1. What capability does this protect?

Does exercise protect energy?

Does sleep protect judgment?

Does solitude protect clarity?

Does planning protect focus?

Does time with family protect perspective?

Name the capability.

2. Who benefits when I maintain that capability?

Your answer might include your team, investors, family, partners, or community.

Make the connection explicit.

3. What happens when I neglect it?

Don't answer abstractly.

Maybe you become reactive.

Maybe you make worse decisions.

Maybe you become impatient.

Maybe you miss strategic opportunities.

Maybe you become dependent on adrenaline.

4. Is this truly a responsibility—or an insecurity?

This question can expose a lot.

Not every urgent request deserves your attention.

Not every opportunity needs to be pursued.

Not every problem needs you personally.

5. What does my role require from me tomorrow?

This brings the conversation back to reality.

Your job isn't to feel perfectly balanced.

Your job is to show up capable of fulfilling the responsibilities you've chosen.

The Goal Isn't to Put Yourself First

This may be the most important distinction.

The answer to burnout isn't necessarily:

“Put yourself first.”

For some people, that message will never feel compelling enough.

A stronger idea is:

Take care of yourself because you are part of something larger than yourself.

Your business.

Your investors.

Your team.

Your family.

Your community.

Your mission.

Your future.

The transcript describes a leader who eventually saw her exercise, meditation, and personal space through this different lens. Missing those activities wasn't simply a personal failure. If those practices helped her think clearly and lead effectively, abandoning them also affected the people she was responsible for.

That reframes the entire conversation.

You aren't maintaining yourself so you can escape your responsibilities.

You're maintaining yourself so you can meet them.

What This Means for the Investor Building for the Long Term

Real estate is often described as a long game.

But long games require sustainable players.

You can survive a difficult acquisition cycle by running on adrenaline.

You can survive a brutal capital raise by sacrificing sleep.

You can push through a difficult year by answering every call and attending every meeting.

The question is whether you can build a business—and a life—that works that way for ten or twenty years.

At some point, the objective has to change.

It can't simply be maximizing how much you can extract from yourself.

It has to become maximizing the quality of what you can contribute over time.

That's a different definition of performance.

And it changes the way you think about everything from your calendar to your health to your leadership style.

The investor who protects their energy isn't necessarily less committed.

They may understand commitment more deeply.

They know that their business doesn't just need their hours.

It needs their judgment.

Their family doesn't just need their income.

It needs their presence.

Their team doesn't just need instructions.

It needs their leadership.

Their investors don't just need activity.

They need trust and sound decisions.

That is why taking care of yourself isn't a retreat from responsibility.

It can be one of the ways you fulfill it.

The deeper lesson isn't really about self-love.

It's about understanding who you are responsible for becoming.

Because eventually, the business you build will reflect the person operating it.

And the person operating it is not separate from the business, the people around them, or the life they are trying to create.

You are part of the system.

Take care of the system.

That includes you.


TRANSCRIPT

Stop saying, "I'm doing this for self-love." Have you thought about what people mean when they say, "Love yourself." It sounds very romantic. Here's the reality. It doesn't work. Stop saying self-love. The least you could do in life is to be happy. 

We do things much easier for others versus ourselves. So, if you really want something to work as a leader, thank you for joining us here for this video. We've noticed that there are certain percentage or a high percentage of our audience haven't subscribed to our channel. If you can please click on the button to subscribe to the channel, it will help us create more content. It will help us reach more amazing people like you to support them, serve them. So, please click on the subscribe button and I'll see you on the next video. Thank you. Bye.

I want to spend some time talking about this controversial topic. It will sound controversial to many of you because you've heard it over and over and it's starting to sound like it's true, but it's not. And I'll start it off with this story.

I was sitting down with a leader yesterday and working through something and she has an important role in an organization. She needs to get things done. She needs to move things forward. She needs to work with her team. She needs to work with multiple departments, and she also has a life at home, a family, things to take care of, and she is completely overrun, overwhelmed.

And I kept hearing the same phrases even in the questionnaire she filled out and the things that she talked about during the session, and they all had the same pattern. And the pattern was simple. She did not know how to hold her boundaries. She did not know how to work in a focused manner. Very reactive. Not because she was bad at what she was doing. She was incredibly good at what she was doing, but there was something she was missing.

And there was a theme in that whole process. And it wasn't that she didn't know where to grow towards. The problem was she had installed this virus in her system. The virus didn't actually come from her. It came from the culture we're in.

And the culture says this, a version of this, love yourself. And it sounds very romantic, sounds very poetic. And I'll even share where it comes from. And the intention behind it is amazing. Love yourself. But have you thought about what people mean when they say love yourself? I want you to think about that for a little bit. What does that mean for a human being to say love yourself?

Most people associate that with some kind of self-care and they will say that, well, you know what, I have my exercise, my routines and all kinds of stuff in place because I love myself or I need to love myself. But here's what ends up happening. Same thing happened with that leader and same thing that happens to any high achiever. They will set a time to exercise, to take care of themselves, to journal, meditate, all kinds of things, or set boundaries with the intention or belief that they're doing it because they're being self-loving towards themselves.

But here's what ends up happening. As soon as a meeting comes in, as soon as somebody requests something of them, as soon as urgency comes in, as soon as responsibilities come in, all that self-love just drops. And then they're told something else. Well, you haven't truly loved yourself by some guru and some influencer or some coach.

Unfortunately, here's the reality. It completely goes against how our brain is wired, how our mind works. It doesn't work. And I'll start with the origin of where all this comes from. And the intention is actually really positive behind this.

All of this comes from deeper spiritual practices and beliefs. And the beliefs go like this. Self-love is one of the highest versions of spiritual enlightenment. But here's the problem. When spiritual teachers, mystics of any kind, whether it be Sufi mystics or from the Christian world, Gnostics, or from Taoist or from Zen Buddhism, wherever you come from, whichever tradition people come from, when they say a version of self-love in their stories, their poetry and all that stuff, they're not talking about you self. They're not talking about the ego self. They're talking about something much deeper.

And when you go into their philosophy, into the way they're describing things, they're talking about self is not defined as you and bound by your skin. It's actually self is defined as everything. In fact, that's the highest form of self with a capital S is actually God. It's unity. It's oneness. That everything is one.

And this is why we have phrases in Christianity, for example, love your enemy because your enemy is just you in a different form. Love your neighbor or know that you're connected with everything. Know that you're part of something bigger and that's the highest version of that is God. So self is not you as in the ego you.

When people say self-love, they actually, it's a perverted version of ego gratification and I know it's going to sound really bad but it's fine. You want to believe this, great, but here's the problem. Technically it doesn't actually work.

And the reason why I shared the story of this leader is because she will set all this stuff and tell herself that, oh, she's doing it for self-love. But when real responsibilities hit in her life, whether taking care of her kids, husband, her different responsibilities that come up there or in her role at the organization she's working at, that self-love just goes out the window.

And the reason why I'm sharing this is the most common thing you hear. And the reason why it goes out the window because it's completely hollow. It was borrowed from the culture that keeps telling us to love yourself, but it's ego gratification. That's all it is.

It might come from a deeper spiritual tradition, but people don't know it came from that. People don't even feel connected to a lot of things when they say that because when you truly feel connected to your soul, you will not put it second.

The things that are connected to self-care. So, the intention is positive, but it just doesn't technically work.

And here's the part that completely messes this up. Here's how the human brain works. Everything, your brain as a social species, is wired towards taking care of your environment. It's actually set up to protect you and those around you as a first priority, which means that your brain is constantly scanning your environment for danger towards you and your family, your community, those kind of things.

And even when it's looking at you, it's not looking at you in the sense as you because you are a part of a bigger group. You're a social species, which means that you cannot exist without the other people around you.

And we know this as a common sense because nothing would have been built with multiple people being involved. But that's the other weird thing in the Western world is we're taught individualism as a be-all, end-all. But individual is a powerful concept to be self-sufficient. But it's not the end of it because we have to be interdependent.

We depend on everything. I wouldn't be able to share any of this if a bunch of people weren't working in the background in Zoom or on Facebook or a bunch of people were taking care of things at home, my wife, my kids, or my team members doing all kinds of other things. I wouldn't be able to do any of this stuff.

So, we're all interconnected, interdependent on each other. So, what does that mean?

Your brain is wired to look at you in relation to others. In fact, I challenge you to think of yourself without thinking of others. Think about your roles that you're in. You're a son, you're a daughter, you're a husband, you're a wife, you're a citizen, you're a leader, you have a role in your organization, you're a CEO, you're a business owner, whatever. All of those involve other people, serving other people.

Your identity, your self-identity is intertwined with all kinds of other people. And this is why even deeper spiritual traditions have melded in. When we say self-love, it includes everybody. But people don't really get that.

But in basic technical terms, your brain doesn't recognize self-love. It recognizes responsibility. It recognizes taking care of other people. It recognizes values connected to that.

So how does that show up?

And the best leaders that I've worked with, when they go to exercise, when they go to take care of themselves, their belief is not they're being self-loving to themselves. They might even say that in social settings that sound like they're part of the bigger culture, but here's what they really believe.

What they really believe is that I take care of myself. I need to exercise because if I don't have the energy, I wouldn't be able to show up for my team, for my organization, for my role, or for my family.

If I don't clear my mind, if I don't have a plan, I cannot support my role, the people around me, my community, my family, all that stuff. If I don't clear my head, whether it's through meditation or some other practice, I will not be able to be sane with all the responsibilities and pressure that's coming towards me.

So, they actually do it because they leverage the brain's natural mechanism to know yourself in relation to others.

We do things much easier for others versus ourselves. You know this in your common sense, but common sense gets challenged when you start to listen to garbage that is taught in the outside world.

I apologize that I've seen this so much over and over that it's frustrating to see it, that people just pick up on things and they start believing it, but it doesn't actually work.

So, if you really want something to work as a leader, you're running a business, you're in an important role, you're a director, you're an executive, leverage your responsibilities, leverage your identity.

You're there for a specific role to serve in your family. You're there to serve your kids and your wife. As a husband or as a wife, you're there to serve your husband and kids.

Yeah, of course, you need to take care of yourself. Without that, it's not possible to do any of that stuff. And of course, you can be happy, you have a right to be happy, to feel good and all that stuff. All that should be a product of the environment you design.

But those things are not contradictory with each other. When you take care of others, you take care of yourself because you're part of one environment.

Now, a lot of times when people overextend themselves, it's not because, oh, they're following their responsibilities. No, because they have some kind of insecurity inside that doesn't allow them to take care of themselves because they don't even see the value of that towards the environment. They haven't thought deeply enough.

When I work with leaders who protect their time, they protect their energy, protect all that stuff, it's because they care about their environment so much. They care about their family and organization and team so much because they know that if they don't protect their time, they won't be able to serve them.

So, leverage that wiring in your brain. And it's the path of least resistance.

Stop saying I'm doing this for self-love. Ask yourself why this is important for you to do it. More than likely, you're building a vision that includes you, your family, your community, and other people.

More than likely, you're building an organization because there's a purpose behind it. Or there's a reason why, even if you didn't have a purposeful mission to build a business, there's a reason why you're building it. For your family, for your community, for somebody.

But I love mission-driven entrepreneurs. If you have a mission, connect with that. And that mission almost always includes a contribution towards some kind of cause that matters to you personally.

Leverage that why. Stop saying self-love. It doesn't work. It sounds poetic. It sounds nice, but it does not work long term. It might even make you feel better short term. Might make you look a little bit cool at parties, but it does not work.

And it's completely—I know it was a little bit intense of me sharing this because I've seen this hundreds of times. And now, sharing that leader position, by the end of it, she realized that the reason why she was dropping the so-called self-love activities for the meetings that she needed to be on was because those meetings were actually more important to her because they were serving her team or somebody that she cares about versus going to exercise.

But now that she understands, she's looking at it through a completely different lens. If she skips the exercise, she cannot make the better decisions that she needs to make as a leader. If she skips the meditation, she cannot do that. If she skips giving herself that space and time to be sane and happy, she cannot serve other people.

I love this phrase from a spiritual teacher that said that the least you could do in life is to be happy. And to be happy, you need to contribute. You need to grow. You need to serve. And of course, you need to take care of yourself.

But you do that because you're a human being. You're a social species. And everything down to your DNA is wired to take care of those around you. And of course, you too, but that's in relation to others.

I hope this serves you and please share your thoughts. You can disagree with me, but share your perspective and thoughts with me. I'd love to hear from you.

Until my next conversation, hope you have a great day. Bye.