Man, you ever play the wish-you-never-did game?

Or, the god-why-did-I-do-that game.

Or, the if-only game.

I’ve got to tell you something: I played the if only game many times in my lifetime. It’s a fun game, sometimes when I’m driving around Los Angeles, I look at neighborhoods and I think to myself, if only.

If only I bought that property when I should of bought that property.

I think of that, if only, with some of the people I’ve hung with. If only I didn’t hang with them, or if only I didn’t get involved in that business deal.

Or, if only I didn’t meet that person.

How many of you have been married and you think to yourself, damn, if only you had just listened to your intuition and didn’t marry that person, you’d have that extra $1M in the bank.

We all have that. We all play these games.

But here’s what you need to know. Life is just a series of fuck ups and mistakes that you need to get over in order to move forward.

I will gladly challenge all of you. Go ahead. Write down all the times you fucked up. Let’s talk about our if-only’s.

Let’s see whose life has had, well, more mistakes.

Sometimes when I drive through Venice and I think to myself, how come I didn’t buy any of these houses?

Well, I can list a couple of reasons why, which are personal to me, and all of them come from bad decisions that I made in my life.

It’s not that I haven’t been successful, it’s just… well, life is just a trial run and you just make mistakes at over and over until you finally figure it out and just say no.

Do I wish I had that house in Venice? Absolutely. But you know what, I was one of those guys that had zero guidance in his life.

So let’s get into the root of why I’m sharing this right now.

My father, may he rest his soul, was a fucking moron.

He was one of the dumbest businessmen I’ve ever met in my entire life. He never taught me anything, never wanted to talk about business, never talked about investing in real estate. He never talked about anything that meant anything, except for the New York Jets and the New York Mets.

Am I angry at my father? Do I have resentment over my childhood lessons that I was never taught.

No. What a waste of energy that is.

I can’t be angry at my dad and the lessons that he didn’t teach me in not buying real estate my entire life. That’s just me, man. I just didn’t learn the lesson.

My mother, God bless her soul, was loving and sweet and everything, but she was also an idiot when it came down to money and investing.

So I had to learn all that stuff. I had no mentors, I had no guides, so literally, I just had to keep making mistakes over and over again until I finally learned. Some mistakes I made the same mistake three, four, five times.

You might look at me and say, damn David, I’ve been looking up to you for so long, you’re like my guide, man.

Well, great, thank you. But it doesn’t mean I haven’t made dumb mistakes, because everybody has, no matter what guru you follow, no matter what person you’ve spoken to, everybody makes mistakes in life. Some people might be good investing in real estate and they’re absolutely horrific when they get married, and they lose all their money because they have a nasty divorce.

And they married somebody they never should have married.

There’s a million reasons. But, you see, all we should do is learn from them, and once we learn from our mistakes and embrace our mistakes, then guess what folks?

Then we’ll never do them again. We’ll probably make other mistakes.

But, most importantly, we’re going to learn.

And that’s why we’re all here on this planet right now: to learn from our mistakes.

Yeah, I wish I didn’t make my mistakes. I wish I played life perfectly. I’ve made a lot of money in my lifetime and I’ve blown a lot of money, but I’ve also saved money. So I’m ahead.

I know people who have made tons of money. Remember MC Hammer? What, did he blow through $42M to bankruptcy?

Carol Owens, I think, went into bankruptcy. He made a fortune in the NFL, but he mismanaged his money.

It’s the path we’re all on, folks.

Some of us are on different paths. Some of us learn lessons. Some of us keep every penny and we’re frugal. Some of us buy real estate. Some of us screw up.

Some of us don’t listen to our doctor and we end up getting a heart attack.

There area million things that life teaches us. There’s no perfection. So when you make mistakes, be kinder to yourself and realize you were supposed to make those mistakes.

Those were lessons you were supposed to learn from, and just deal with it. It’s okay man, shit happens, and when shit happens, learn from it. That’s all. See you.