Where Did Positve Thinking Go Wrong?

Positive Thinking and the Realities of Real Estate.

There are many persons in real estate and in the world today that believe that positive thinking will over come all.  Positive thinking is great, but if you are walking across a dessert a canteen full of water will be a smart idea.  Positive affirmations and thoughts can get you through a few situations in life, but blocking out the truth can also be self defeating.  Avoiding bad news is one thing, but to avoid the reality of the current events is a recipe for disaster.  Every real estate office has persons like this, and they are part of our every day life.  They are here also in Active Rain.

These are the persons that do not want to buy into the bad news. Discussion of anything they deem negative is bad news.  They do not want to discuss it, and if there is an ongoing conversation or a dialog that is something they do not want to hear, they will rain on the parade because they think it is just ‘negative speak.’  In the past they vehemently applied their positive thoughts and comments to those that talked about a bursting real estate bubble and said “What bubble?”  They wrote posts about those that shared local stories as if you could somehow hide the news from the public as they lost their jobs, and many of their neighbors were losing their homes due to foreclosure.  What they fail to see is that if you do not have a job, you are not in a position to buy a home or pay the mortgage.  In the meantime, they chastised those that share local market data or news stories into the ‘Dr. Kevorkians’ of real estate.

I have noticed recently that a lot of the persons that were very vocal and very positive are no longer active. In fact many Blogs, and websites have become dormant for many months.   I thought it was odd, but I decided to check out. What I found was that many of websites and big real estate  Blogs are gone or just place holders.  The same thing is occurring in local real estate offices.  Many of those that liked to put their hands over their ears and avoid anything of substance was discussed seemed to have left the business.

Positive affirmations are great for day to day planning and allowing you to stay focused.  Deluding one’s self into thinking things are really better than they are could be a personal recipe for disaster.  Budgeting, business planning, and refocusing are a better ways to survive tough times.  

Keying in to local statistics, market trends and knowing what is selling and what is not is much smarter.  It will not change the reality of the tough times, but focusing on productivity, changing your marketing strategies will allow us all to survive until better times.