Beachy Beach November Love Note
(Originally published November 19, 2014)
Dear BB's,
Last night we had one of the most successful and motivational Idea Camps we have had to date. I felt revived energized, hopeful, uplifted, inspired and I could see the same things on the faces of all the participants. To be honest I was a little concerned because it was to be outside at the Zen Garden. I even thought for a moment that perhaps we should not do it since it would be so cold. How in the world do we fit all of us in that small space? THANKFULLY we moved forward moved chairs inside, cuddled up to each other and listened to 3 dynamic speakers that made us THINK!!! Made us reflect, made us reach a little higher....
One of the thoughts that stuck with me and it was concerning gardening of all things is that you really have to fail a few times to get it right!!! I remembered a book that has been one of my favorites through the years... Failing Forward. I have torn that book up through constant reading and re-reading and each time I have gleaned such wisdom about failure and realized that we need to learn how to Fail. We can all learn how to succeed that is the easy part because that feels good and people LOVE it. No one gets too excited about a failure but it is in those failures that you regroup and learn how to do it right.
The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure. We were never taught in school how to fail and perhaps if we had we would all work tirelessly and move Forward each time or Fail Forward as John Maxwell so fondly calls it.
I think the best example is in the area of baseball. An old story but quite telling is about Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres. Check out these stats and see if in our world of Real Estate we would keep going if this was our story.
Tony stepped up the the plate and experienced his 5,113th out of his professional career. Thats a whole lot of misses!!! That is a whole lot of deals gone bad in our world. That same player reached a milestone in his career that same night in the history of baseball. He had made his 3,000 hit.
In our Real Estate careers it is true that we get many many NO's but the truth is also that it is part of the process. We also loose many deals but that too is part of the process. There is no way of avoiding that. What you can avoid is getting stuck there. You go back to the dugout think about what you did right and what you could have improved on and you take another turn at bat.
The one ingredient that successful people have is the ability to look at themselves and know that the change is always with in YOU. It is not circumstances, it is not other people, it is not money, it is not the perfect situation but it is a fire inside of you. It is a drive that says I can do it, I will do it and I must do it.
In a few hours I get to hang with some of you who fire me up!!! Today we will talk about our failures because in doing so we will learn and grow and help each other.
I love you all and you fire me up all the time!!!!
grateful,
Karen