The same is true for you. Improving Your Results The more you read financial statements, annual reports, and prospectuses, the more your financial intelligence, or fi- nancial vision, increases. Over time you will begin to see things that the average investor never sees. We all know that repetition is how we really learn and re- tain what we learn. Recently, I was listening to an audiotape of an interview of Peter Lynch. I had listened to that audiotape a dozen times before. Each time I listen to it, I hear something new. For over 30 years, rich dad had me review financial state- ments. Today, I think automatically in financial statements. When we learn to ride a bicycle, we train our subconscious mind to ride our bike. Once that is done, we don't have to think or remember how to ride a bike as we ride. When we learn to drive a car, we also train our subconscious mind. And that is why, once we have trained our subconscious mind to drive, we can drive and talk to someone else, eat a hamburger, think about problems at work, or listen to the radio and sing along. Driving is (hopefully) automatically handled. The same can happen with reading financial statements. What takes the longest time in finding a good investment is analyzing the numbers. Learning to read financial state- ments is a tedious process, especially when you first begin to Financial Literacy Made Simple 189 learn. The good news is that it gets easier and faster as you practice. Not only does it get easier, but you can also review many more investment opportunities almost automatically without thinking ... just like riding a bike, or driving a car. Mental Attitude Quiz We as humans learn to do many things subconsciously. If you are serious about becoming a more successful in- vestor, an investor who makes more money with less and less risk, I recommend training your brain to analyze finan- cial statements. Analyzing financial statements is basic to the world's best fundamental investors, investors such as Warren Buffet. The way this is done is by a term called "deal flow." Every professional investor has a continuous number of potential business or real estate investments that need investment capital. Rich dad had Mike and me read, study, and analyze these investments regardless of if we were interested in them or not. Even though it was slow and painful at first, over the years, the process became faster, easier, more fun, and more exciting. So we learned by repetition, and that repetition has paid off by allowing me to retire early, feel more financially secure, and make even more money. So the mental attitude question is: Are you willing to practice filling out your own financial statement and keep it up to date as well as read those of other businesses and real estate investment financial state- ments? Yes_ No_ You will note that it is very similar to the question at the end of Chapter 15.