Just change something…

“If you don’t like something, change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” (Mary Engelbreit) from the Jack’s Winning Words Blog.

I get lots of inspiration and inspirations from Jack Blog. Jack went on to comment about his decision to live a more positive, upbeat life. I’m trying to take that same journey, but every now and then it’s like that old saying about 2 steps forward and 1 step back or maybe in my case more like the itsy-bitsy spider who had a heck of a time getting up the water spout. Every now and then cynicism gets hold of me and washes my little spider out. Oh well, to beat the cliche machine to death, I just have to keep getting back on that bicycle until I learn how to ride.

For me the big just change something challenge has been to get and maintain a positive attitude about things. My wife used to call me Eeyore, after the character in the Winnie the Poo cartoon – the always down and morose donkey (OK maybe I was more of an ass, at times). And of course, I was Mr. Grumpy to Little Mary Sunshine in the office. I didn’t really and overtly mean to be, that was just my nature. So now I’m trying to be more like Mr. Happy, the perpetually up character of T-shirt and cartoon fame. In order to do that, I’ve had to change the way that I think about a lot of things. I’ve also had to embrace the “So What” philosophy that one of my early real estate mentors tried to instill – the ability to let go of the bad things that can happen in this business, by just saying “So What” and letting go of them.

Real estate is a job that can consume whatever time you have to give it and still ask for more. At the end of every day, there are things that I feel like I didn’t get to; many of them probably trivial in the grand scheme of things, but things that I could have done, had I had more time. For the longest time I let that bother me (you might even say, consume me); however, I now realize that most of those things can be done whenever I get around to them and that they are not things that need to be done but rather things that I think I should be doing.

We have some training almost every Tuesday in our weekly meetings and at every session there are lots and lots of ideas discussed about things that we could do at open houses or in cold calling session or in mailings or other marketing ideas. I used to worry that I wasn’t doing ALL of those things, but now I realize that I’m doing a whole bunch of the good things that are discussed and that no one can do it all. We all have to pick and choose which things we can do and which things we are good at doing and then focus on them.

So, I’ve almost stopped worrying about all of the things that I’m not doing. I say almost, because there are some great ideas in these sessions that I need to consider doing and maybe stop doing some of the things that take up all of my time now. I may have to change. I’m already forcing myself to make my prospecting calls on Wednesday nights. Maybe it’s time for other changes or at least how I think about things. Change is good. Change is our friend. Change is good. Change is our friend. Where is my little green dot when I need it? (See Blog of August 12, 2007 for an explanation of that reference)

If you are like me you perhaps have no idea who Mary Englebreit is, so I Googled her. Follow this link to find out who she is and perhaps why quoting her makes any sense at all. Anybody who has published over 150 books deserves to get quoted every now and then.