Take Action, Stay Optimistic, Cherish What You Have.

I will admit that this post is not one of the rosiest that I have shared, but as I have said before, a fortnightly blog is something that I have committed to and I use it to order my own thoughts as much as anything. You have been warned!

In mid 2019 nobody – with the exception of a few futurists and virologists – could have expected that our lives would be turned upside down by a pandemic. By the beginning of 2020 it was all gaining momentum and 3 years later we are still feeling the impact of it in many ways.

I was speaking with a friend whom with I have done business with for years. He is in the building trade and positioned to have contact with many different sub-industries and players big and small in different aspects of the industry. Like real estate sales, this area of the market has come under considerable strain lately, with volume, supply and pricing issues.

The outshot of the conversation was that people are doing it tough economically. In fact, his words were ‘there are people that are struggling who I would have never expected would ever struggle’. He went on to say that he had been through tough times before, was sitting ok now, but ‘that could change at any moment’. Precarious.

This was reiterated when I read an article in the Herald saying that small to medium sized business was coming under pressure and leading repayment defaults. There are also about 37,000-odd residential mortgage defaults listed. I have a good mate in this situation, and he called me up during the week. He felt like giving up and just letting the bank take the house. We managed to talk through some other options, but the struggle and sadness will be hanging around for a while, regardless of what ends up transpiring.

So while there is talk of green shoots and certainly there are areas in the market that are really picking up, this won’t be every area of the market. If this is you, fear not, the time will come.

I’m going to lean on a Tony Robbins concept that I come back to often when it all seems a bit difficult and I allow myself to get into a rut:

The moment that you catch yourself telling yourself that you can’t do something, take immediate and drastic action to counter that thought.

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The process of taking action – for me in business it is usually around picking up the phone, or in health is putting on my running shoes - flips the mindset.

Ahead of anything else, we need to get into an optimistic state - if you can show yourself that actually you can do it, then you are on the path to overcoming inertia and making progress.?

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My heart sunk as the news started to emerge of missing real estate agent Yanfei Bao. This incident strikes at the heart of our industry because going in and out of homes, often without any others with us is part of what we do on a day to day basis.

This case also plays directly to our fears – those fears that we push aside as being irrational or as mechanisms in our mind to stop us from ever getting out there and meeting people.

We live in a world where there is always a risk of something going wrong and ending in a tragedy, be it from natural causes or from some kind of accident. When faced with these situations, there is still grief, horror and questions of ‘why me, why us’, but we have an understanding in life these tragedies occur.

Of course, I don’t know what happened in this case, but I think that to meet with malevolence of any kind does not fit into the ‘natural’ or ‘accidental’ category. For most of us the idea of someone intentionally harming us or our loved ones is something not easily rationalised.

I have two thoughts on this I want to share.

I think that we need to start with safety first. Safety needs to be right at the beginning of our strategies in the work place.

Secondly, I think that we need to remember how fragile life can be at times. We never know what is going to happen.

So, tell your loved ones that you love them – often. We should cherish what and who we have, and make sure that they know it.

Our thoughts go out to Yanfei’s friends and family.?