From the Book: Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff
Part 11: Imagine that Everyone Is Enlightened Except You
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Teach Me Something, I’m Ready To Learn….
Imagine that Everyone Is Enlightened Except You: A very challenging section for me to write about. Although I love to learn more than I love to teach, it’s a challenge for me to become just anyone’s student...especially when it comes to learning direct or indirect lessons from random real estate professionals. This is primarily because there’s not a lot of room for trial and error in the moment while in a transaction.
Yet at every turn there are ignorant or misinformed real estate professionals to deal with. And if I had to pick which is the worst type of person to deal with, I would say the misinformed group are the ones to look out for.
The misinformed group actually has an understandable reason for acting the way that they do, because they believe that their information and actions are appropriate. They may have learned the misinformation from someone they highly respect, or it’s quite possible they read the misinformation somewhere.
I feel that it’s important to point out these scenarios while reading this section of the book, mainly because I encounter so many people that will Imagine (and believe) that Everyone Is Enlightened Except Themselves, these are people who never challenge any of the information they receive even if they have strong doubts about it.
When I got into the business I felt like that “unenlightened” type of agent because I was. The real estate business was very new to me, growing up I was rarely exposed to anyone who talked about buying, selling, flipping, or renting houses.
Once I got my license and began talking to everyone about the business, I started to get all kinds of information thrown at me; some of the information was great, but most of it wasn’t. At the time I didn’t make it a point to challenge anyone because I had no clue what I was doing. That changed once I started applying what I learned from others only to find out that I should have double checked the information.
It was at this point that I began to do more and more of my own research starting with the written laws; I figured that all I could do is agree or disagree with the law regardless of my opinion. Double checking information before applying it was one of the most important indirect lessons that I learned from other real estate professionals.
Not to stretch this post out too much further, but I’ve been on the other side of the table as well, the side whereas I unknowingly passed along misinformation. This is a good reason for anyone reading our blog to research what you’re reading and ask questions until you have a better understanding because no one is perfect.
So as the book suggests, make it a game to find out what you can learn indirectly from others instead of becoming stressed when you find yourself in a situation where you feel that your time is being wasted.
There’s so much more that I want to write on this subject because learning accurate information from the beginning is so important because it doing so can save us so much time and can make us so much money!
Let’s make today a great day and and Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff.
~Matthew