I find that way too many homeowners, home buyers, and real estate agents have a common problem: The refusal to see beyond their one view of the deal.
I believe that when we focus too much on a single option, especially one that is not realistic, we deny ourselves so many other valuable opportunities to succeed.
Just think about the homeowners that have incorrectly convinced themselves their house is more valuable than the market will bear. Or the home buyers that think they are magically going to get a deal of a lifetime every time. And we all know agents that have killed big deals over tiny issues that were really not relevant.
Here's a personal non-real estate example: Recently I served on a state-wide Department of Education commission focused on ways to better prepare all students to be career ready, whatever career that may be. One of the speakers from a metro-area county school system discussed how little students understand about careers and the importance of preparation. In this county, the students were surveyed on career plans and the clear number one career plan for these students was to be a professional athlete.
Even more interesting, and perhaps unfortunate, was that no one on this commission was particularly surprised by this finding! I know I wasn't.
For several years I coached youth sports at a local level and found a number of these children were already planning their professional career as an elite, well-paid athlete. The reality that they struggled (or failed) to even make a local high school team did not seem to register. Riches were ahead of them and there was no need to work on any other career plan.
The real estate lesson in this is that students are not the only ones to think this way. Many real estate professionals, and clients, do the exact same thing, even if they've learned to be less obvious about it.
How do we manage to do this? As humans, we are instinctively wired to fool ourselves. The psychologists call the way we fool ourselves "cognitive distortion." Essentially, good and bad, we learn to SELECT how we think.
We may include the thoughts we most prefer and exclude reality that does not fit our emotional needs. While these thought actions are instinctive to a degree, these habits can be influenced by others to create an increasingly distorted view on reality. When others share this distorted view, we are further convinced our self-deceptions are true.
Fortunately, you can learn to intercept and understand these self-deceptions, thereby gaining much control over them. In the situations I mentioned above, and in real estate, the first step is not deciding you are crazy or rushing to a psychologist. No, it is to commit to considering information and accepting bad news and reality as equally as the things we find comforting. Don't jump to an emotion and react based only on feelings. Instead, pause and consider.
Learning to understand your reality can help lead you to your big dreams. And it can help you close more listings and contracts. The world's pro athletes worked their way to their position, and that included accepting and acknowledging what they did poorly. With that knowledge, they were able to adapt, address, and steer reality in a meaningful way.
Denying reality rarely ends well. Dreams are great, even critical, but they require work and understanding to come true, not self-deception.
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