Hi everybody. Cheryl Knowlton with Dynamite Productions coming at you with your dynamite tip of the day. One of the things that I teach in my book, Burn the Hamster Wheel, Stress Management Strategies for Today’s Real Estate Professional, is about breathing and just taking a minute to breathe. I had a really funny story to share with you.
Apple watch and Pavlov’s dog
As a result of teaching the safety course for the national association of realtors on tour for the state of North Dakota seven times in a period of four days, we talked a lot about the Apple Watch, and we talked about how few presses and hold this little button it will call 911 and the safety strategies related to that. I decided it was time for me to buy another one. I’ve had one in the past and I stopped wearing it because it was just going off all the time when I was a broker, and it literally was turning me into Pavlov’s dog where I was like … Every second it was going off. It was making me nuts.
But now that I’m not a broker anymore, I thought, “Okay, we can do this.” My husband and I check into a very beautiful hotel in Las Vegas. It was very, very crowded. It was a big conference, lots and lots of people checking in at the same time, so we decided to tag team and split up. He stayed with the luggage with the concierge because we had lots and lots of stuff because that’s the way I travel, and I was going to check us in. I did not realize that my purse was with all of the luggage that the concierge had brought out. I did not have a credit card to check-in. The room had been paid for, but we needed a credit card for incidentals. I’m calling my husband and he’s not answering. I’m calling my husband and he’s not answering. The series 4 Apple watch has a really cool feature in that it measures your heart rate, and so all of a sudden I get this little message, breathe.
I don’t have time to breathe.
I’m like, “I don’t have time to breathe!” I silence it. I go back to just blowing him up, trying desperately to call him. I’ve got to have my credit card so I can check us in, trying to be very efficient. This is not working.
Then my watch tells me again, to breathe. I’m like, “Okay, my heart rate must be doing something really, really fabulous and fascinating right now,” and ultimately we got the situation resolved, and he answered his phone, and that’s a whole ‘other story. We got checked in and everything was great.
The point is, do you have systems around you to support you and remind you it’s time to breathe. Whether it’s your watch or whether it is any other thing in your environment reminding you, sometimes we just need to stop and pause and take a breath. Because let’s face it, this industry is incredibly stressful. Life is incredibly stressful. Everything is flying at you like fiery darts. Sometimes you just need to stop and take a breath.
That is my dynamite tip of the day, and you’ll have to let me know how this works for you and ideas that you have of ways that you have incorporated into your life to just stop and just breathe.