You will have to read all the way to that final period to learn how this applies to real estate. Sorry.
Participants in a clinical trial had to experience an unpleasant event and then immediately write down their feelings and rate how unpleasant it was. After several weeks had passed, the participants were asked to recall the event and rate it again. And, then again, after several months had passed, they again were asked to recall the event and rate the experience.
What researchers learned was that as time passed, the participant's memory of the event's unpleasantness faded. They specifically learned that if the participant was - in the present - happier, then the participant had a more positive memory of the past. To sum that point up: Your memory of what was is shaped largely by what is, as you become happier in the present, it seems that you must have been happier in the past.
The other major finding from the study was that: How long or how unpleasant an event is is less important than how it ends. That must be were "All's well that end well" came from. Ending on a high note is very important
Maybe you already figured out how to apply this information. You had a transaction go terribly wrong...buyer angry at you....seller angry at you. It pays to continue to mend the fences of this relationship. Over time, they will apply your current good deeds to the transaction in the past. Before long, they will think that the terrible transaction was the greatest event ever, and you are and were the best agent.
P.S. There's a down side to the way our brain handles memories in that we distort and misremember what we formerly believed. Hindsight is not 20/20. There is a trick to overcome this problem too. Maybe another post entitled "20/20 Blindness"
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