Your Real Estate Career: How to Create a Happy Ending
The ending is everything.
That’s why Greek heroes like Odysseus–who were able to look beyond the present and plan several steps ahead–seemed to defy fate. In fact, men like Odysseus mimicked the Greek gods in their ability to tell the future.
The comparison, today, is still valid.
If you can think further ahead and patiently bring your plans to fruition, you’ll seem godlike. And naturally be more successful.
Most people are imprisoned in the moment. Imprisoned by their emotions. They can’t plan with any kind of foresight. Neither can they ignore immediate dangers or instant pleasures…traps that ultimately strip them of their future success.
The Mistake Successful Real Estate Agents Avoid
Successful real estate agents, on the other hand, like those profiled in the Baylor study I wrote about last week, have the power of being able to overcome the natural human tendency to react to things as they happen. Instead they train themselves to step back and think about the larger things taking shape beyond the horizon.
Most agents believe that they are in fact aware of the future, that they are planning and thinking ahead.
They are usually wrong.
What they’re really doing is succumbing to their desires, to what they want the future to be. Their plans are vague, based on their fantasies rather than reality.
They’re not thinking to the end. Only focusing on the happy ending, which is nothing more than a figment of their imagination.
“The most ordinary cause of people’s mistakes,” Cardinal de Retz wrote, “is their being too much frightened at the present dangers, and not enough at that which is remote.”
Dangers that loom in the distance cause the most chaos. You only need to reflect on the housing bubble to see what I mean.
But if you can see those dangers before they take shape…how many mistakes do you think you could avoid? How many plans would you abort if you realized you were avoiding a small danger only to step into a larger one?
So much of success is not what you do but what you don’t do. The rash and foolish actions that you restrain from contribute a lot to the outcome of your future–whether it’s fortunate or unfortunate.
The Moral of This Post
Plan in detail before you act. Train yourself to step back and evaluate your future–in detail. Compare it to reality. Ask questions: What consequences could this have? Will I lose prospects if I do this? Will someone else be able to take advantage of me? Can I actually sell this house?
Don’t be swayed by the happy ending in your head. Unhappy endings are more common than happy ones. And the happy ones usually come at great cost–hours, days and months of planning, refraining, adjusting and executing.
Happy endings are product of hard work. And good plans. Where you confront the brutal facts. Doing this can be the difference between a good ending and a bad one.
See the ending. And tolerate no deviation.