NormsMilfordBlog

“If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things that you don’t get that you don’t want.” (Oscar Wilde) – from the Jack’s Winning Words blog.

I’ll bet that most people reading this saying would immediately think of bad things that they don’t want, such and a disease or some disaster; yet there are many things in life that aren’t bad , but which are just things that we don’t want. At one time I thought that I wanted a motorcycle; but then I realized that I really don’t; it was just fun to think about for a while.

I suspect that most of us would immediately think of material things when reading a saying like the one above; although some with lingering illnesses might just wish for good health. Some might even have wished for world peace, but might have to be happy if we don’t get another war in some far-flung place.

The most common advice for what to do about not getting everything that you want is to be thankful for those things that you do have. You could also think about all of the things that you wanted and got that it turns out you don’t use or found that you really didn’t like. Our garages and basements are full of that kind of stuff. Wilde didn’t include need in his thought.

It’s relatively easy to just say “don’t waste time thinking about stuff that you can’t have”; but we all waste a little time doing that. Perhaps Oscar Wilde’s advice to spend time thinking instead about stuff that you don’t want anyway will work to distract us from dwelling on things that we don’t have. That we wanted.

And, if you just don’t get all of this, perhaps it’s because you just don’t want to.

“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will and the other from a strong won’t.” – Henry Ward Beecher in the Monterey County California Herald.

Many times we tend to see ourselves as persevering in situations when in reality we are just being obstinate. I know that it was obstinacy rather than perseverance that kept me out of the foreclosed homes game. I was adamant (obstinate) about not getting dragged into some of the muck that was going on in the early days of the housing crisis.

By not being flexible and not allowing myself to find a way to work in a positive fashion with foreclosed homes, I missed that opportunity. Not all listing agents back then were sleazy, just enough that it made me cringe to think of joining their ranks. A few good agents held their noses and jumped in and eventually made the whole process better by bringing better practices to the process. Good for them.

I initially shied away from the short sale market, too; initially not willing (obstinate) to put up with the long delays and need to spend so much time in the frustrating process of negotiating with bank clerks who didn’t seem to care about anything. Fortunately I found a good short sale partner to handle the stuff that I really still don’t like and allow me to do the real estate parts and the interface with the sellers, which I enjoy. I’ve been very successful at short sales.

From time to time, I suppose it’s advisable to try to take as honest a look at your life as is possible (and maybe get a second opinion) and evaluate which of the things that you believe you’re being persistent about might just be cases of being obstinate. Ask yourself is if these are things about which you have a strong will to accomplish or a case where you just refusal to admit that your goal was wrong in the first place. Sometimes it’s better to let go and move on than to persevere towards the wrong goal. Let a strong will rule your life, not a strong won’t.

“You gotta lose ‘em some of the time. When you do, lose ‘em right.” (Casey Stengel) from Jack’s Winning Words.

Casey was talking about baseball games of course; however, his words ring true in business, too. We don’t always win, whether it’s a multiple-bid situation or competition for a listing. Don’t you just hate it when you hear someone whining or bad-mouthing over a lost sale or listing? Stuff happens and it does no good to try to bad-mouth the competition or whine that you got cheated out of a sale. Rather that you should use the incident to try to learn what you could do differently or better the next time.

The ability to look back over a losing situation and see what you did and didn’t do that might have affected the outcome is not necessarily an easy skill to develop. Human nature licks in right after a loss and the tendency to find someone or something else to blame is a strong human protection reflex (at least it protects the human ego, which often refused to believe that you could have done anything wrong yourself).

Eventually logic kicks in, along the realization that if you didn’t do anything wrong and yet you lost, there must be something else you could have done (or done better) to win. One very consistent characteristic that you’ll often hear about winners in sports (no matter what sport) is that they are “students of the game.” Sports greats like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods have often been called students of the game. They study the history of the game and learn what things impact success or failure. Quite often athletes like that go on to become coaches in their sports.

In business (including real estate) there are lots of books and courses available to help students of the game better understand every aspect. Even people who are naturally outgoing and friendly need to understand the nuances of the business game that they are in; otherwise they just become that great fellow that everyone loves, but who never seems to succeed.

So, listen to Casey’s advice and when you lose one, lose it right – learn from it. Discuss it with someone; preferably someone who can help coach you through the process of learning from it and making changes in your approach the next time. If you are just starting out, seek out a mentor in your office – someone who will work with you to learn the ropes and develop your skill at learning from mistakes or losses.  It does no good to beat yourself up over loses. Turn them around into teaching moments and benefit from them.