by Scott Cowan

Realtor, Newlywed

Author website

I do not contribute much mostly due to my fears of my writing not holding up well next to so many of the great writers here. However, the only way my writing can improve is by writing and submitting so with that in mind.

I sell real estate. Those four words do a great job of describing me as a professional. Of course there are other things I do with my life but the engine that powers the other areas is selling real estate. I have been on a path to living more consciously for the past few years.  One of the take aways from living consciously is that I need to be focused on whatever task I am working on when I am working on it. I cannot be thinking or worrying about anything else but the task at hand. I have found putting this into practice to be more challenging than I would have ever thought. It is a constant effort to be present in the moment and not be thinking about something completely different. While this has been a struggle it has had success too. When I find myself in the moment I often do not realize it until later when I realize that I just knocked several things off my to-do list and I did not even realize it. It is in that moment that I know I am growing and beginning to master being conscious.

Taking this concept and applying it to sales and prospecting is currently on the top of my to-do list daily. Learning how to sell consciously will allow me to grow my business and my professional abilities to levels that in months past I had only dreamed/wished of. When I committed publicly to prospecting six or more hours a day for the next 120 days I was really pulling out the last of the excuses I had so carefully crafted to keep myself from succeeding  at levels that frightened me. Now I have nowhere to hide. I have opened myself up to accountability and critique if I do not do what it is that Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I think Jeff Brown and I are both thinking out loud, by this point, and I want to emphasize that I am not quarreling with him. It’s his hammering away on the topic of goal-achievement that induced me to think about the subject in a systematic way, and I am by his discourse and by his good example much enriched.

So here’s where I am tonight: You have to make the commitment, yes. Without a sincere resolution to do something different, you don’t have a goal, you just have a wish, a whim, a will-‘o-the-wisp wheedle issued for any reason or for no reason to a benignly indifferent universe.

But: Even so: Just having a specific plan is still not enough. You have to follow through. You have to do what it is that you have planned to do. But when we talk about the process of following through, too often we do it in a language that is inherently dis-motivating.

Like this: No pain, no gain. There is a truth to that cliche, obviously, and that’s why it’s such an easy sentiment to express. But by emphasizing the pain entailed by, in this case, exercise, the expression throws a formidable barrier in the way of actually digging in and doing the work required by the goal.

I keep thinking that for a serious resolution to change one’s behavior to be effective in the long run — to get fit or to lose weight or to learn to speak Spanish or to master a seven-figure state of mind in your career — you have to rethink the incentives. The reward — to yourself, in your own mind — for having made incremental progress toward your goal has to exceed both the cost of achieving that small success and the putative benefit of doing the opposite, instead.

Do you see? Eating is easy. It can be very satisfying, fun even. Not-eating is hard, and it’s hard to think of not-eating as being any fun. But if you cannot find a way to celebrate the victory of not eating the wrong foods, of not eating as much or Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Teri Lussier turned me on to this TED talk on goal-achievement. The video makes the seemingly confounding claim that announcing your goals to other people makes you less likely to achieve them. As with every other seemingly confounding “argument,” the matter turns on the conflation of unlike things. What the speaker, Derek Sivers, is talking about are not actual goals but casual whims. What a huge surprise: Eating cotton-candy spoils your appetite for real food! Who knew?

I once worked with a woman who would issue random statements of desires completely unconnected to her real life. Like this: “I think it would be fun to be a flight attendant.” This is actually an easy goal to attain, but it requires a process of thought and effort and a significant amount of focused action taken over time. The same criteria would apply to any sort of meaningful goal.

Simply announcing to another person that you might like to lose weight, or you might like to see the pyramids, or you might like to be a better Realtor — these are all equally meaningless expressions of whims. They are the verbal equivalent of cotton-candy, a big pile of sugary nothing whipped up by your mind to confound itself into believing that it has been nourished — when you know without any possible doubt that it has not.

The TED talk turns on psychology, which should be warning enough that it’s pure bullshit. The “science” of psychology exists to “persuade” you to be “satisfied” with a lifetime of dull dissatisfaction. “Come on, now, you know that expressing your goals only makes them harder to achieve. Now take another pill and go back to sleep.”

No, thank you. And don’t make me say it again.

The problem is not expressing goals, but expressing empty whims and then doing nothing. Yes, that is self-destructive, but this is not something anyone needs to be told.

Here is what needs to be explored in detail:

Expressing your goals requires a very strong commitment. A true goal is detailed and specific, explicit and objective. It includes a list of serious actions that must be taken through Read more