it's for people too! We are surrounded by positive and negative in every aspect of our daily lives, yet much like the power housed in a little double A battery, we often fail to realize the power that we possess with respect to these two energies. My Dad used to tell me that every day is a series of choices: good ones, bad ones, right ones, wrong ones, happy ones, sad ones, and yes, positive ones and negative ones. The anomily seems to lie in the fact that so many choose bad, wrong, sad and negative choices everyday...day after day.
It's a curious thing to me how so many people wake up each day with the ability to choose and fail by wasting that ability on negative choices. As REALTORS, we are in a business that is very much subject to the positive and negative choices that people make. We are privvy to the best and the worst that people have to offer and the sad truth is...it just doesn't have to be that way. Let's examine some real estate situations and see where better choices could be made. I arrive at the office and I need caffeine BAD...no one has made coffee yet, in fact the coffee maker still has the stale remains of yesterday's brew with a nasty film on top. I can rant about our incompetent help, sloppy REALTORS who never clean up after themselves or just jump on my assistant's case about something unrelated because I am upset about the lack of java OR I can make a fresh pot and get a cup 'o joe for myself and my assistant with a smile on my face. There was my first choice and I had a chance to make it a negative or a positive...I think you can see where this is going.
Our first choice in any matter is to simply smile! They say that it takes far more facial muscles to frown than it does to smile...so why not be a little lazy and cut corners on your physical energy output and start with just smiling. Another choice is to analyze any situation we face with the following criteria: Will it kill me? Will it bankrupt me? Will it harm me? Basically if the answer to these three questions is no then there is nothing that requires us to allow angst, anger, hate or negativity to control the pending situation. We must remember NOT to shoot the messenger. We have all been in the place of being the messenger and coming out of the message delivery with a hat full of arrows and possibly one hanging out of our behinds, so we need to be careful to discern whether the person we are dealing with is the source of the problem or is just the courier of the bad news.
I can hear it now..."But Jeani, the lender said they were approved...the idiot co-broke didn't do what they said they would do...my seller didn't do the repairs they agreed to...the buyer bought a home from another agent after I spent a week on a property parade with them!" Trust me, I have been there before and I have been through worse. Heck, I could write a book on the wackiness that I have trudged through in my illustrious real estate career! But I digress...the point is this, I used to fly off the handle and take every single thing that didn't go as I planned very personally and my mom, who is my mentor, taught me over time that you have to stay positive and let stuff roll off your back. So I learned that when that phone call came, I had to assess the situation and place my energies into solving the problem rather than looking for someone to blame and crucify for the hitch in the getalong. I have learned that it doesn't make things better or solve the problem faster because I scream, yell, demand first blood or curse them with the fleas of a thousand camels to invade their tent.
In fact, generally the person delivering the message, whether they are to blame or not isn't deriving great joy and monumental pleasure from calling us with the bad news. It's not as if they are sitting on the other end of the phone line wearing an asbestos fire suit and a huge grin waiting for our inevitable fire breathing outburst after they drop knowledge on our little world. I spent a year managing a 50 agent office which meant that quite often I was paged..."Jeani, line one...oh and they are screaming lawsuit!" I would take a deep breath, sit up straight in my chair, put on my best Ultra Bright smile and pick up the phone "Good afternoon, this is Jeani, how can I help you today?" Get this...I never had a lawsuit and didn't get yelled at either...every situation was calmly resolved on the phone and many times the party who started out slinging lawsuit arrows at me actually called back and thanked me for solving their problem quickly and professionally.
My challenge for you today...choose the positive!
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