From the Book: Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff
Part 8. Do Something Nice for Someone Else - and Don't Tell Anyone About It
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But What If They Don’t Appreciate It?
Have you ever done something really nice for someone and they didn’t appreciate it? If you’re a “giver”, then I’m sure you’ve been in this scenario many times (especially if you’re a giver in the real estate business).
As Real Estate professionals, we’ll have to make dozens (if not hundreds) of decisions each day, and most of these decisions will impact someone personally. At times some of the decisions that we make will require us to make sacrifices both small and large .
Throughout the years I’ve made several sacrifices on behalf of my clients, and I’m most proud of the ones that no one knows about. I planned to keep most of those sacrifices a secret, but I ended up spilling the beans when I felt the need to be recognized or appreciated.
Writing this post was a struggle for me because the more I thought about the sacrifices I’ve made, the more I realized how often I talk about the good deeds I’ve done, which made me ask myself why is that?
This is when I realized that I tend share my good deeds as a defense when I feel that someone doesn’t appreciate my efforts. Instead of “keeping it moving swiftly along” when I feel unappreciated, I’ll sometimes tell others “I did this for this person” or “I did that for this person”.
After pondering over this section, I’ve realized how silly it is to take this approach. If clients don’t appreciate the great service that we’re providing or the nice things that we’re doing for them, then we have to make a decision to stop making sacrifices or deal with it until the deal closes.
Either way, I’m learning that I must decide in advance how I will feel about any good deeds and sacrifices that I choose to make for my clients or anyone for that matter. If my good deeds aren’t received well, then so be it.
This makes me think about the people that don’t like seeing others give change to the homeless, but here’s the thing….some people don’t give to the homeless with the thought in mind of what they’ll do with the money….some people give to the homeless because it makes them feel good.
Whatever our reasons for giving and doing nice things for others is, we shouldn’t let it bother us if our actions go unappreciated or unrecognized. We should simply give because we want to give, and once we give I think we should forget about it and move on to life’s next task.
Let’s make today a great day and and Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff.
~Matthew
