One major lesson I was introduced to in December of 2010 was the concept of how my “thoughts were really the fuel to my success.” When I first listened to Earl Nightingale’s “The Strangest Secret,” my eyes were opened to the “true success formula” when he stated this one simple phrase: “You are what you think about”!
I was so curious about this concept that I dedicated the next 6 months of my self-development to learn and understand how my thoughts and my mind impacted how I performed personally and professionally. It became quite personal.
So much so, that in my first training class in September of 2011, I almost didn’t introduce this concept to the class because I felt it might not be appropriate for a “real estate training course.” It took a student to ask me the question “How do you stay focused on your goals?” to force me to answer the question.
After the reaction I received once I explained my daily goal review, it ended up becoming one of the most critical parts of my Take Flight class. As many of you know, I start with it on Week 1.
It’s true, if you don’t get the mental / spiritual side of the game right, you will never follow through with any of the physical processes, routines, procedures, checklists, etc., that are necessary to build a top producing real estate business.
Unfortunately, I have personally found that the mental / spiritual side of the game is the toughest part for me to maintain. And I think almost everyone else can say the same. It’s so easy to run this cycle between being anxious to being comfortable to back to being anxious and back to comfortable. The cycle can be exhausting.
When one is comfortable, it’s quite easy to ease up on the mental / spiritual side of the business. COMFORT delays continued growth. I believe this concept is why only 10% of brokers make almost 70% of the commissions in most markets.
Whether you know it or not, YOUR THOUGHTS do truly control your results.
Your mind is like a thermostat. If your success thermostat is set to, let’s say, $10,000,000 in production. $10,000,000 in production is what you need to be comfortable, pay the bills, live your current lifestyle. With your success thermostat set at $10,000,000, you will get ideas and thoughts that will support a $10,000,000 business. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you get off to a great start and do $7,000,000 by May, your thermostat will kick in and cool you off. You will naturally slow down, you might coast and invariably hit that $10,000,000 mark before the end of the year.
If you start out slow, your thermostat will kick in but heat you up, and you will do all of the extra things needed to hit that $10,000,000 mark by the end of the year.
This is just how nature works. “You are what you think about”. Unfortunately, in our society, most people’s thermostats are set to “pay the bills.”
Now as we start to approach our business planning time of the year in September, you will be asked to put some real “thought” into what you want to create in 2019.
The easy part is the initial “wish” that you post as your goal(s) on your business plan. The hard work and heavy lifting start once you put that initial INTENTION on the piece of paper.
How does one change the SUCCESS setting on their internal thermostat?
You have to play tricks on your SUBCONSCIOUS MIND with your CONSCIOUS MIND. You have to create a mindset that you are now playing at a different level. In the example above, to change your setting to $15,000,000, you have to physically write that goal down each and every day and review it two to three times a day. You need to visualize your bank account at the end of the year with the extra $5,000,000 in production.
Visualization is the act of consciously creating pictures or a feeling needed to reprogram your mind. It is setting your INTENTION every day until your new setting or mindset is $15,000,000. This will take anywhere from 30 days to 66 days, based on different research. Inserting photos on a vision board or in a vision binder can also be helpful to reprogram your mind to operating at a different level.
The essential success formula that you want to follow is: Your PROGRAM (aka thermostat setting) → creates your THOUGHTS → which create the FEELINGS → that bolster the needed ACTION → which in turn creates your desired RESULTS. P + T + F + A = R
Team, this is the holy grail of success at anything in your life. Period. End of story.
Your current situation is a direct result of your past thinking. To advance or change your business and life, you need to change the way you think. One idea is to create consistency in your day – to RE-PROGRAM your mindset.
Try this exercise:
Set the alarm on your phone at three separate intervals throughout the day. Maybe one 30 minutes after you awake, another at Noon, and the other right before you usually turn in for the night. Each time, take 5 minutes, calm yourself and visualize–create a feeling–of you hitting your new goal. Do this consistently for eight weeks until you create this new lifestyle habit.
This is so SIMPLE it becomes DIFFICULT.