What Great Advice Has Someone Given You That You Haven’t Done Anything With?

It happens to all of us.  Someone has a suggestion, or maybe a passing comment in a conversation that is really great advice but for whatever reason we don’t do anything with it.  It’s too much work, it might not work, it’s too weird, we just can’t be bothered ….  For me it’s meditating.  I have been wanting to start meditating for years, and many people have told me how beneficial it is.  I always have some reason why I can’t do it though ~ I don’t know how, I don’t have time, it’s never quiet enough.  The reality is that these are all excuses and I just need to decide that I am going to meditate and do it.

During my yoga class today (I know, I wrote a post yesterday about making work a top priority, but mommy needed some sanity today and I got up at 5am to get in an hour and a half of work before the boys woke up so that I would have time for the class later in the day.) the instructor was talking about being open to new things.  She commented that in looking at her life she realized the parts that were the hardest and took the longest to work through were when someone had given her great advice and she resisted taking it.  As long as she resisted things remained stuck, but once she gave into the advice things started moving again.  Her motto for the New Year is to try on the advice first and then take an assessment.  Its more of a fire / ready / aim approach than a ready / aim / fire.  If you put aim before fire than most people are forever stuck in aiming.  They are concerned with getting it right the first time and therefore usually do nothing.  Go ahead and give it a shot and then decide if it works.

I can tell you some of my biggest success in Real Estate have come from just jumping in. Early in my real estate career I had the first resale in a condominium building that has just finished construction.  My coach at the time recommended that I write a letter to the other owners asking who they know that might want to live in the complex and inviting them to the open house.  It worked and we sold the condo within 2 weeks.  After that my coach suggested that I started farming the complex.  In all reality I thought that this was a silly idea and only did it so that she would stop hounding me about it and we could move on to something else.  I have consistently done 4-8 transactions a year for the last 10 years that I can track back to my contacts from that complex.  Proof that just jumping in with good advice can be a very worthwhile adventure.