In my Monday Morning Pep Talks, I bring up topics that I feel will resonate in the moment or address challenges that some of you might experiencing right now. 2019 was a difficult year for some of you both professionally and personally. Sometimes you get into a rut and you just can’t find the motivation to get out of it. Maybe it's been such a long time since you’ve been in a flow that you’ve forgotten what it feels like. If you are not currently in a rut, chances are that you can relate because you have been in one that still stings and you want to avoid another at all costs. You can still feel that time in your life and much of your motivation comes from creating a distance between that time and now.
As I’ve said, people are motivated by desperation or inspiration.
80% are motivated by solving problems rather than reaching goals. It’s just how the human brain is wired. You need to dig deep and find what motivates you.
So, what is a rut? A rut is an established, unproductive set of habits or course of actions that feels boring or un-motivational.
You know you are in a rut when some or all of the following occur:
- You know what you need to do but just can’t bring yourself to execute.
- You are checking things off your list but don’t feel like you are getting ahead.
- You feel like you’ve lost your mojo and you start telling yourself that it might not come back.
- You have had a major professional or personal setback and have completely lost your momentum.
- It has become almost comforting to wallow in your stress and misery because you are so used it.
- People close to you start to ask you “if you are okay.”
- Seasonality could have an impact on your willingness to execute.
So how do you change course? How do you find that passion, motivation, that drive?
Even though I'm not a therapist, as a coach I do tend to go deep and help agents find the root of the issue. It almost always involves a #mindset full of limiting beliefs or a severe lack of clarity on what is important. A person, first and foremost, normally lacks a long-range vision for what they want their life to look like in 1, 3, 5 and 10 years. They find themselves trying to just get through the day or through a transaction paying no attention to the things they need to do that will benefit them in the long term. A lack in having a plan causes tons of stress on an individual. They may tell themselves that’s just how it is. It’s just “how I operate,” as if change is not possible because your DNA will not allow it. If that is the case, spend as much time as you can to change your #mindset.
Change can happen but it requires your active involvement.
Simply by creating a different vision - a different story - and applying some leverage and pressure to the situation, the impact on your results and overall happiness can be immediate and breathtaking.
Creating leverage is essentially making a commitment to a process and giving yourself no way to retreat. You need to “burn the ships.” In 1519, Captain Hernán Cortés landed in Veracruz to begin his great conquest. Upon arriving, he ordered his crew to burn the ships so that they would have to conquer the country or be killed.
You might create a trigger or reminder of what you are worth. Many of our agents use their value per hour as a huge motivator. I had one agent “do the math” (gross income divided by the number of hours worked) on what her value per hour was and I told her that she needed to visualize herself burning that amount of money at the end of every hour she blew things off or just couldn’t muster the effort to prospect or reach out to past clients. This one exercise completely changed her mindset.
You need to value your time in a way that motivates you.
Put that leverage on yourself. No way you would burn $200 at the end of each unproductive hour, and yet many of you just blow through your hours as if they have no value. Once time is gone, it’s gone. It’s the one thing that you cannot get more of no matter how hard you try. So, my point is that you need to jolt yourself into action at some point. Create desperation. I call my lowest point in 2008 my “real estate heart attack.” Why? Because if you survive a health scare and the doctor says that if you do not change your ways you will not survive, your attitude about living a different lifestyle changes immediately if staying alive is important to you. Right? You need to do this with your business or that concern in your life that you first think about every morning when you wake up. Go take care of it. Solve that problem and ride the wave of momentum that conquering it will create.
Now, maybe some of you are doing okay. Things are “fine.” You, too, could be in a rut and not even know it. Maybe it’s not a deep rut now, but when you don’t actively continue to level up your game, that rut could get deeper and harder to get out of if you don’t monitor it.
Take time to think. Take time to meditate. Understand what motivates you and “burn the ship.” Continue to set short term 30-day and 90-day goals or problems to be solved to keep yourself out of a rut.
Take the rut that you are in and create a routine that reminds you to look inward. We get regular physicals, we take our cars to get them serviced as directed, we follow up on our friends… but why don’t we check in with ourselves? Schedule a “routine” of checking in on yourself. Set a date with yourself. The next flight you take, fly first class and take that time to think for 2, 3, or 4 hours. It’ll be worth every penny extra that you will spend. (That’s what we call a trigger.) Go deep on self-development. On From the Desk of Jim Miller later this week, I will share more of my personal story on getting out of a deep rut at the end of 2018.
Why do we discuss these kinds of topics? Because consistent success really boils down to three major areas: Mindset, Productivity, and Relationship Management.
It took me the last decade to figure this out, and in this decade, I will preach it. Avoid moving on any other initiatives until you understand who you are and what motivates you. Value your time. Create habits, rituals, routines, rules and boundaries to maximize your most productive self. Don’t focus on any other marketing initiatives until you figure out how to properly care for the clients that have already put trust in you.
If you want to get out of a rut or avoid a rut, you need to be intentional about it. They don’t cure themselves. You create the solution by changing your #mindset and creating a healthy routine.
