TIPS FROM THE TOP: MAINTAINING A POSITIVE MINDSET

Bill Begert, COO, Douglas Elliman Western Region

“I love words so every morning I wake up early and play “Spelling Bee” on The New York Times’ website, and in the evening I solve their crossword before bed. Great brain food! Also, I hit the gym or the tennis court every morning at 7 a.m. before heading in to the office. “

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Stephen Kotler, CEO, Douglas Elliman Western Region

“I get a lot of enjoyment from dinners out and from live music – which I missed a lot during the pandemic. Lately to unwind after work I’ll spend an hour doomscrolling Instagram on my patio while I smoke a cigar.”

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Peter Hernandez, President Douglas Elliman Western Region

“I reduce stress with a solid morning routine including a vigorous work out at CrossFit Malibu or an occasional surf at Little Dume. I also started playing guitar two years ago which has proven to be wonderfully relaxing and fun.”

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Michael Williamson, EVP -So CA Regional Manager, Sotheby's Intl. Realty

“How do I deal with the stress of being in management/senior management?

It took a while to get there but I learned that I can't take on other people's "stuff". I can advise, counsel, console and listen but I am not going to take everyone's issues and make them mine. In many cases people are looking to dump and run and it took me a while but I learned that I can't carry everyone's burden- I have enough of my own! LOL”

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Kim Collen-Ross

My ways of dealing with stress normally involve physical exercise, most often in a group of supportive women. Walking outside and/or working out in an exercise class not only gets those important endorphins going, it creates a sense of community and belonging. We are not isolative creatures, and real estate for independent contractors can be a lonely business.

As a manager for many years, and a current coach in real estate, I see stress in agents revolving around loss in business. Agents tend to be very hard on themselves, either when there is a loss of a business opportunity or client, or there is a mistake they have made during the many challenging moving parts of our business. I like to go to quotes from coaches I respect, who have helped their agents and teams succeed extremely well. Even though I am not a huge sports fan, I truly love some of the quotes and philosophies from some of the great sports coaches.

Don Shula: “Success is not forever and failure isn’t fatal”. Don had a 24-hour rule. He allowed himself, his coaches and his players a maximum of 24 hours after a game to celebrate a victory or bemoan a defeat. During that time, everyone was encouraged to experience the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat as deeply as possible, while learning as much as we could from that same experience. Once the 24-hour deadline had passed, they were to put it behind them and focus their energies on the next challenge.

Ken Blanchard: “Adaptation is not allowing yourself to give in to circumstances; its allowing those circumstances to give you success”

“It takes a big person to admit a mistake and then go out of his or her way to right the wrong”.

Reading: Get out of your head. Reading is food for the soul. Tap into other readers you respect and find out what reads they have that are helping or have helped them.

One quote from a fantastic read I am recommending today: Think Like a Monk by Jay Shatty: “Pick one thing to change, make it your #1 priority, and see it through before you move on to the next.

Change happens with small steps and big priorities” I chose this quote because I find that stress is so often relieved when we make those small steps towards our goals and what we feel will make us healthier and happier.

Lastly---Gratitude, every morning…every day. This is one of the ultimate stress reducers in life.

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The Three C’s of Well-Being in the Real Estate World

Cristian David

In any service industry involving sales, and primarily in real estate, the fundamentals of lead generation and capturing are referring to these three C’s: Connect, Cultivate and Communicate. In the world of the semi-quasi post pandemic life, I can’t help but think how important these C’s are in our new way of dealing with our emotional journey as we re-adjust and re-invent ourselves in every aspect of our lives.

So how would one apply these fundamentals to well-being?

CONNECT

In her book Gifts of Imperfections, New York Times best-seller author, researcher and professor Brené Brown defines connection as “the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgement; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”

Connect with your peers. In times like these, there is nothing more needed than our willingness to reach out to our fellow members of our community. Success does not equate with not needing anyone. And technology, yes, does help to be spectators to everything that is going on in this social media-crazed world, and at times, allows us to communicate with each other. But technology can also be an imposter for connectedness. Reach out to your colleagues by calling them, not texting; checking in with them, by visiting with them in person; write handwritten personal notes and tell them you were thinking about them. It is these small genuine gestures that go a long way for someone who may be in need of that personal connectedness.

Connect with your body. There has never been a better time to connect with your body and get in better shape. It has been a great for me to learn more about various neighborhoods by walking or running on the streets in the community I live or work in. Chase those top-of-the-hill breathtaking panoramic views of the city by finding new hiking trails. Find an accountability partner to work out with and perhaps join a new gym with new energy.

Connect (and re-connect) with your own mind and soul. Meditation can give us a sense of calm, peace and balance that can benefit both our emotional well-being and our overall health. And these benefits don't end when our meditation session ends. Meditation can help carry us more calmly through the day, enhances our self-awareness, controls our anxiety, reduces stress, and more importantly, can generate kindness.

CULTIVATE

There are many areas of our lives where we could all use some growth and improvement. In lead generation, to cultivate a lead means to develop and to foster a relationship with that contact. In well-being, we cultivate emotional connections and attitudes. In fact, research shows that when it comes to emotions, practicing a spiritual way of being, a series of powerful patterns emerged: both joy and gratitude are described as spiritual practices that are bound to a belief in human inter-connectedness and a power greater than us.

Cultivate Gratitude. Gratitude is a practice of a state or a quality of being appreciative for something or someone. Cultivating gratitude can also be described as a positive feeling or emotion that arises when we receive a blessing or a gift of some sort. Often it arises spontaneously, but it is equally something that can be tuned into. Studies have shown how the practice of gratitude is so powerful. First, it can help us to disentangle from negative thought patterns and difficult emotions. As we shift our focus, positive emotions find room to flourish. And we all know that what we focus on expands. It is our choice to make. Take a few moments every day to name and appreciate the people and the things you are grateful for, whether it is right before meeting a client, as the sun rises, or as you end your day before going to bed, so your brain can store those positive thoughts in its memory.

Cultivate Hope. Back to Brené Brown who did extensive research on hope and power found out that hope is actually not an emotion. “Hope is a way of thinking or a cognitive process. Emotions play a supportive role, but hope is really a thought process made up of our ability to set realistic goals, to figure out how to achieve these goals, and to believe in ourselves.” To cultivate hope, means to be willing to be flexible and demonstrate perseverance. Every goal is different in its intensity, and we need to be tolerant of disappointment and failure and embrace them with a sense of deep belief in ourselves.

Cultivate Worthiness. Knowing your value is at the heart of our wholeheartedness. It also determines that we are good enough, with all our flaws. Cultivating worthiness means that we accept ourselves unconditionally. Brown’s lifelong research on worthiness suggests that there are three major ingredients of practicing worthiness: courage, compassion, and connection – let’s call these “the other three C’s.”

Cultivate Courage, Compassion and Connection. We already covered the third of these ingredients, although I do not think that we can ever talk too much about connection. But what does it mean to cultivate courage and compassion? In its simple terms, courage means to be brave. In today’s world, where authenticity may be endangered, being brave may mean to be vulnerable – to allow ourselves to speak openly and honestly and to do things that are connected deeply to our hearts. To be brave to stand out, and not conform with what the society dictates us, to be enough and worthy of our own selves, our own feelings, and our own experiences. American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön was quoted in Brown’s Gifts of Imperfectionwhere Chödrön writes, “when we practice compassion, we can expect to experience the fear of our pain. Compassion practice is daring […] Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”

COMMUNICATE

Communication improves our relationships, builds trust, and opens up new opportunities. From a crisis management perspective, being able to have an open line of communication with our loved ones or our community is highly vital. We are conditioned to create our own story and in a state of distress and panic, that story can have a significant impact on our lives. Knowing that you can ask for help, and feeling safe in doing so, is paramount to our well-being and connectedness. Perhaps the most vulnerable of all these C’s is the ability to allow ourselves to communicate our emotions and fears to others, but in doing so, it can save us.

In lead generation we have been taught to connect, cultivate, and communicate,and, at all times, close. In closing, I would replace the fourth C with Celebrate. Even in times of distress and uncertainty, history has taught us that dancing, singing, and laughing play a significant part in our daily lives. My husband and I practiced this during the most difficult months of this pandemic last year. He is also a DJ and, as you can imagine, was out of work for the majority of last year. He decided to host a weekly Friday evening dance party on Zoom for an hour a half. Friends, colleagues and family from all over the country and in some instances abroad, would sign on and dance for that entire time, having a great time with their kids, their loved ones, and their own circle of friends by sharing the joy and the silliness of dancing in front of other strangers in front of a computer. I was stunned as to how many people who I would not expect to show up actually did and were literally full-body vulnerable and feeling the need of belonging and connectedness. We literally danced our way through the pandemic, our friends would say, and in doing so, people were reaching out to him and thanked him for offering them a safe place to be themselves and have a sense of hope and joy in those dark times.

I invite you to dance your way through life in general and do invite others to your party by practicing all these C’s. It is my hope that we can all feel safe and vulnerable to reach out to one another not only in moments of success, but also in times of need.