By Dr. Maya Bailey
RISMEDIA, Dec. 19, 2008-Now more than any other time in our recent history, it is important that we find ways to stay positive no matter what. Why? Because your success depends on your mindset, not on the economy or on the marketplace.
How do I know this to be a fact? I’ve interviewed hundreds of top producing real estate agents 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 real estate agents that have been in the business for sometimes 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, and I feel that this is kind of a best kept secret. I think 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?” And this article will provide you with some tools to make it easier to be in a positive mindset no matter what.
The first tool is to really stop watching, or listening, or reading the news. Why, because 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 saying called, “If it bleeds, it reads.” So the more scared they can make people, the more people will buy more newspapers to find out what’s going to happen, or turn on the TV more, or in some way stay fixated because they’re in fear, they stay fixated on what the media is telling them.
The second tool is stop being around negative people. Your colleagues are going to want to constantly come up and talk to you and tell you how bad it is. Maybe your clients or prospective clients are going say to you on the phone how bad it is, and even friends will do the same thing. You will go through a day and everybody will want to tell you how negative it is.
Here are my suggestions. First, avoid those kinds of people that are negative and second, if you’re stuck with them in an elevator or your car, I suggest you do what a former client of mine does. When the other person is talking negatively, my client just tunes them out and just says, “Well that may be true for you, but that’s not true for me.” It’s like an inner mantra “It may be true for you, but it’s not true for me.” You’re creating your own inner environment.
The third tool is a technique that I’ve used with my clients this past 12 years as a real estate business coach. It’s a very powerful tool called The Stop Technique, and there are three steps to it, and the first step is just called Stop. The way it works is that if you start to notice your mind going in a negative direction such as, “Oh I can’t succeed in today’s economy.
Oh I just don’t have what it takes to be successful or to make money. I have to work really hard and struggle and sacrifice.” Any of those negative thoughts that will bring your energy down, your job is simply to catch those as early as you can in the beginning and say, “Stop.” Take a deep breath, and then put in a positive new thought.
You can put in your choice of however many positive new thoughts you have ready in your arsenal. If some of your negative statements are about yourself like, “I’m not good enough, or I’m not smart enough, or I’m not experienced enough,” or whatever those kind of disproving thoughts, I would say a really good generic thought to put in, an empowered belief to put in is, “I love and approve of myself unconditionally.” That takes care of those self judgmental statements.
Another kind of self limiting belief is something that you continually tell yourself, “Oh well, to succeed I’m going to have to really struggle, and sacrifice, and stress out, and work hard, and then I won’t have a life.” If that’s been your primary belief then you put a stop on that when you hear it coming, and in inside you’re saying to yourself, “I’m not going there. I’m not going there.” You take a deep breath and positive new thought could be, “I’m committed to working smarter, not harder.”
One of the things that’s great about this technique is that it really forces you to become aware of what you’re thinking from moment to moment, and it’s what you’re thinking from moment to moment that will create a negative or positive mindset. If you’re continually thinking negative thoughts either about yourself, or the market, or about money, or any of that, then guess what, you’re going real fast into a negative mindset. Then what happens is what you believe tends to come true, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy. For example if you tell yourself, “I don’t have what it takes to succeed in today’s market,” and you tell yourself that over, and over, and over again, your thoughts will create your reality and then you’ll find that you don’t have what it takes.
Henry Ford said, “Whether you believe you can or you can’t, either way you’re right.” The way to create a positive mindset is to continue to bring your thoughts back to, “I can do it.” You need to have unwavering faith in your ability to be successful. The way you do that is to retrain your mind. The stop technique is the most powerful technique for retraining your mind, but you may have to use it a few hundred times a day at the beginning. Your mind has been going down that negative track in a very undisciplined way for a long time and like wild horses that have been all over the place, you now have to reign them in and that is going to require a lot of vigilance at the beginning.
Dr. Maya Bailey, author of, Law of Attraction for Real Estate Professionals, integrates 20 years of experience as a psychologist and 12 years as a business coach with her expertise in the Law of Attraction. Her powerful work creates a success formula for real estate professionals ready to double and triple their incomes. Get Dr. Maya’s free report, 7 Simple Strategies For More Clients in 90 Days, by visiting www.90DaystoMoreClients.com.
