In hearing many stories, including those on ActiveRain, I am struck by how many people are upset or angry at other people for their own failures. While in many cases this appears to just be a blatant blame game, I think it may be something a little deeper.
I see way too many people, including many real estate professionals, who often hide or ignore the right answer because it seems hard or difficult. They dismiss the correct answer, hoping to find a shortcut. Or hope the problem will go away or maybe someone else will solve the problem for them. Denial and avoidance are common attempted solutions to many problems that honestly can only be solved by work.
I submit that if the answer was easy, the question would have already been answered or the problem already solved. Thus, the harder solutions often remain, waiting for someone to solve them, to provide a commitment to the necessary effort. What happens? Many will exert more effort looking for a short-cut than just working toward the best, clearest solution.
A simple example of this can be seen at trade-shows. I’ve seen smart, educated people stand in a long line to complete a survey just to get a cheap t-shirt that advertises someone else’s products or services. In that same amount of time they could have found a better answer: do something useful and earn enough money to buy a better, quality shirt. Yet, like sheep, they waste valuable time to get something “free.”
Don’t they realize that it is only free if your time has absolutely no value? We can’t make more time; once each minute is gone, it is gone forever. This short-cut to a “free” t-shirt is expensive.
Like so many things in life, learning and improving communication skills requires practice. Smart, regular practice. This is the answer that most people ignore because it involves regular work. In the long run, ignoring the right answer is not clever, it is painful. Yet the ignoring continues.
I’m a fan of working smart instead of just throwing hours of blind, thoughtless effort at a problem. However, it is important to remember that many smart answers still require work, often lots of work. The smart answer that leads to success is often the direct, dig-in-and-get-it-done approach.
As we often tell our team and clients, “The fastest way to do something is to do it right.” That is something not everyone is willing to accept.
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