What We Can Control

My goal is to help anyone in our industry with… success in handling change! Yes, change is inevitable, yet our brains are programmed to resist it. Think we have massive change in our midst? NAR’s lawsuit? Inventory challenges? Interest rate fluctuations? Can we control any of these or the actions of our clients or other agents? Nope! Over many years of coaching and being coached, I've learned to focus on the only two things we can control: our actions and our mindset. Everything else is beyond our control. My hope is to equip all of you who read this column each month with foundational tools that can lead to embracing change, learning to enjoy getting comfortable being uncomfortable, and seeing the gifts in failing. On the other side of our fear lies everything we want. We can change our mindset and take different actions to get different results, or take different actions that lead to different results, which then leads to a different mindset. Let’s get started.

How do we change our mindset? First, we need to understand what mindset is. Mindset, by definition, is simply "the established set of attitudes held by someone." Is your mindset about the real estate market in 2021-2022 the same as it was in 2023 and into 2024? Likely not! Are you currently happy with your attitude about how 2023 turned out and where 2024 is headed? If your answer is no, guess why? Lots of changes and uncertainty are upon us, and our brains like to keep us safe, secure, and in control, which is nearly impossible when change is out of our control. What can we control? Remember from earlier, we control our mindset and actions. That’s it! If your attitude stinks, take one different action today than you did yesterday. That’s right, just one! One small different action can and will eventually change your mindset. Notice I said small action. Let me give you some ideas. Maybe wake up 15 minutes earlier. Go to bed 15 minutes earlier; call one person a day you haven’t connected with in forever and just say hi; sit quietly for 5 minutes and ask yourself, what is one thing I can do such that by doing it everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? I bet your brain will give you an idea.

There are very few secrets to success. Successful people know that when change happens to them, they have to make a change as well. What are you not willing to change that you know you should? Here is another tool to try: Grab a piece of paper, and set a timer for 5 minutes. On the left side of the page, in single lines from top to bottom write everything you can think of that you don’t want or are not happy with. Let it all out! Then, to the right of each item write what the opposite of what you don’t want would be. Turn every negative into a positive. Notice I didn’t ask you to set a timer on the positive side. How easy is it to write down the stuff we don’t want? How easy is it to write what we do want? Which one was easier? What you focus on expands! 

Our attitudes (mindset) have been programmed to focus on the negative in our lives, not the positive. This is a good thing. You are off the hook for thinking about negative things first. You're not broken; there is nothing wrong with you. This is your brain's standard programming that we are born with. Your brain is programmed to keep you safe, aka look at anything new as a threat. However, we have the power to reprogram our own brains. It is called neuroplasticity. We have the ability to make cellular changes to our own brains by simply taking different actions than normal, getting a new response, tweaking the action, getting a new response, tweaking the action, and keep tweaking until we get the response we want. We have been doing this since we were born.

You cannot control the thoughts that pop into your head. You can control, with practice, if you choose to believe those thoughts. So write down your negative thoughts and then next to them write the opposite. What does the opposite look like? What action(s) would you have to take to get that new and improved thought (mindset/attitude)? You, my friend, are in control of those actions, and nobody and nothing that happens in this world can take that from you. You and only you are in control of your actions, and that can make all the difference. 

Originally Published by Triad Real Producers.