RISMEDIA, October 28, 2010—It is more important than ever that we find ways to stay positive, especially as we continue to make our way through today’s real estate market. Your success depends on your mindset, not on the economy or the marketplace. How do I know this to be a fact? I’ve interviewed hundreds of top producing sales people all over the U.S. and Canada, and when I asked them the secret to their success, unquestionably and without a doubt and independent of each other, they all said the same thing, “my mindset.”
These are top producing sales people that have been in the business for 10, 20, or even 30 years. They’ve been through up times, down times, and all kinds of different markets, and they said without a doubt it was their mindset .When times get tough, people start to look outside of themselves for answers and what they really need to do is look inside themselves and ask themselves the question, “How can I stay positive, how can I stay hopeful, how can I stay optimistic?”
Here are a few tools that will make it easier to create a positive mindset, no matter what the real estate industry throws at you.
The first tool is to really stop watching, or listening, or reading the news as the news is based on negativity. The news amplifies fear and negativity in order to capture more listeners, more readers, and more viewers. The media is a business like anything else and there’s a popular saying in the media industry that describes their approach: “If it bleeds, it reads.” So the more fear the media can instill in people, the more people will turn to newspapers or the television to find out what’s going to happen, or in some way stay fixated because they’re in fear. In order to create a positive mindset, it is crucial to not become fixated on what the media is reporting.
The second tool is to stop being around negative people. Your colleagues are going to want to constantly come and talk to you and tell you how bad things are. Maybe your clients or prospective clients are going to tell you how bad things are during phone conversations, and even your friends will do the same thing. You will go through a day and everybody will want to tell you how negative everything is. If you are looking to create a positive mindset, the first step is to avoid the negative people who surround you. If you are stuck talking to someone who is speaking negatively, simply tune them out and say: “Well that may be true for you, but that’s not true for me.” This is like an inner mantra which will help you create your own inner environment.
The third tool is a technique that I’ve used with my clients throughout the past 12 years as a successful business coach. It’s a very powerful tool called The Stop Technique, and there are three steps to it. The first step is just called Stop. If you start to notice your mind going in a negative direction such as, “I can’t succeed in today’s economy,” “I just