Hi, everybody! I’m so excited to share with you one of the principles—one of my 20 strategies for how to avoid burn out in real estate. It goes along with my book Burn the Hamster Wheel. This might sound like an unusual one, but it works really, really well for me and many agents I have coached.
Surround yourself with reminders of your goals as well as reward yourself for things that you have accomplished that will also serve as reminders.
I’m going to tell you a little story about one of my things. One of them is my watch. I was at the National Association of Realtors Conference in November of 2011. That was not a good time for us as real estate professionals. It was not a good year as an educator. I had gone from making the most money that I had ever made in my career in 2010 to making, I think, the least amount of money I had ever made the year after.
There was a lot of beat up—a lot of negative self-talk
There was a lot of beat up—a lot of negative self-talk, “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you do what you did last year. You have the ability to do this. You know you can do it. Why aren’t you doing it?”
I was at the NAR Conference taking a course. The conference was in Anaheim that year. It was at Disneyland. We were at a Disney property, actually, taking the course. For lunch I walked out into downtown Disney. Back then I did not have the money to afford a season pass like I, very gratefully, have now and appreciate it so much. I remember what it was like to not be able to afford to go when I desperately wanted to go.
I walked in to World of Disney, which is a gigantic heaven of Disney things and awesomeness. I found this watch in a glass case. Instantly I saw it and immediately fell in love. I have a major thing for Mickey Mouse. I talk about it in other posts—but won’t go into that now, but I saw this watch. It absolutely spoke to me.
I looked at the price tag and thought, “there is no way!” Sorry, I am going to get emotional here. “There’s no way I’m ever going to be able to afford that.” But I took a picture of it. I wanted it so badly. I wanted to get myself to a point where I could pay for that myself. But I didn’t want to get it as a gift. I wanted to be able to reward myself for getting back to where I had been—to be able to afford this watch.
Reward yourself with something tangible
I took a picture of it with my phone. I made it my screen savor for almost a year. I looked at it and looked at it and looked at it. I did that for four years. Later I was able to afford this watch. But now I wear it every single day. Every time I look at it, it makes me so very happy.
You are working so hard. You are doing so many things right. And you cannot move from one hard thing to a new hard thing without taking a minute, stopping to recognize your accomplishments—celebrating your successes before you move on to the next thing. Reward yourself with something tangible. Create an experience for yourself every single time you look at it to remind yourself, “Hey, I did that!”
It’ll make it so much easier when you come up upon hard times, which will remind yourself you’ve done it before. You can do it, again!