Setting and keeping a positive mindset everyday and knowing when to take a moment to recharge can change your business and your life.

Perspective

Most people don’t see the stress, struggles, and sacrifices that happen behind-the-scenes in real estate. The long hours, day after day. The interrupted family events, holidays, and vacations. The ones that are missed entirely.

It can be tiresome to smile all day for clients while working your butt off to sell/buy their home. It can be tough to stay positive at the end of a 12 hour day and know you have to get up and do it all over again tomorrow.

Kristina Wilton,  one of the special guests featured in this month’s Over A Pint, brought up the struggle of keeping a positive mindset.

“How do you get yourself out of a negative mindset?”

It’s all about perspective. If the way you are tackling challenges and everyday stress leaves you in a negative space, you need to change your outlook. It can be easy to enter a negative space and stay in it. Rick Sergison shared an example, in the video above. One of his coaching clients continued to self-sabotage everything they were doing. They’d put themselves in a “victim” mindset. One day, he decided to give his client a Superman t-shirt and asked them to go into the washroom and change. When his client came back, Rick said “Let’s start all over again and talk about this situation as if you were a superhero.” The conversation became something completely different.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.” – Henry Ford

Steven Sarasin, also in the video above, mentioned that wearing a suit and going into the office leaves him far more productive than working at home in sweatpants. Wearing a nice suit is his own version of wearing a Superman suit.

Change the way you think about the upcoming day and its challenges. Focus on the things you’re grateful for, make a list if it helps, and start your day ready to conquer!

If you’re feeling a little run down, as all people do sometimes, give yourself an extra boost. Put the Superman t-shirt under your button-up and wear your Clark Kent glasses. Don’t have a prescription? No problem, get yourself a pair of blue light glasses. They’ll protect your eyes from harmful blue light coming from your device’s screen. Hey, who doesn’t feel smarter with a good pair of glasses on?

Train Your Mindset

Creating a positive mindset doesn’t happen overnight. You need to consistently train your mind and be aware of when you’re entering a negative space.

Rick’s first piece of advice, and Steven agreed, is to read as many books as you can. Read any book that will inspire you. If you’re not someone who likes to read, listen to them. Realtors spend countless hours driving. What better time to put on an audio book and take a moment to put yourself in an inspired space?

I’ve always kept a pretty even, solution-based mindset. If something happened in my business, I’d think to myself “this is my fault, what do I need to do to fix it?” Rick brought up something interesting. He said not to confuse “fault” with “being responsible”. Most of us don’t like to hear this, but we cannot control everything that happens in life. Sometimes it’s just not your fault, but you are responsible for how you react to the issue and what the outcome is.

Your clients get the best of you. You take on their issues, their challenges, and then at the end of the day you have to go home and deal with your own. It can be a lot and leave you with a bad mood and short temper for your family and friends.

Find little tricks that can help you hit the reset button when you find yourself in a negative space. For example, when Rick’s in a bad mood and heading into the office, he’ll park further away from the front door. This gives him time to take a moment by himself, take a short walk to the front door in the fresh air, and reset his mind.

If you love music, create a playlist of songs you love to listen to on your way to an appointment or on your way home at the end of the day. Take a minute to take a few full breaths and list things you’re grateful for. Steven said that working out on a regular basis affected his general mood in a positive way.

Remember, You’re Human

Emotions, negative or positive, are completely natural and only make you human. It’s important to allow yourself to feel whatever emotion presents itself when working towards setting and keeping a positive mindset. Kristina says “if you’re having a shitty day – you can have a shitty day. If you’re feeling angry, if you want to cry, whatever it is you need to do, do it, but then end it.”

Take the hour, the day to feel whatever it is you’re feeling, but then let it go. “Allow yourself to feel it because they’re real and it’s healthy but then release it.”