In my inbox today was an email from Oprah's team that said "The Power of Negative Thinking". Huh? Isn't she Ms. Positive-Self Empowerment-Motivation? I had to click. What I found was a message that Floyd Wickman has reminded me of many many times. Oprah's newsletter referenced a 2001 book called "The Positive Power of Negative Thinking" which is a study of highly successful people and how they enter a situation having detailed all the possible negative outcomes they can think of and having thought through all of the ways they could handle a problem should it occur. The book calls it defensive pessimism. Floyd would say, "Keep your energies high and your expectations low."
Before you pick up the phone and prospect FSBOs and/or Expireds, before you go on the listing appointment, meet with the buyer, go to the inspection, the closing, etc - do you set aside time for defensive pessimism? In the classroom I teach Realtors how to get busy, and then I teach a whole host of Floyd's systems to stay in control when they actually do get busy. But the tendency for a busy Realtor these days is to rush from appointment to appointment, task to task in an attempt to produce ever more.
Many times each week, I'll speak to a graduate of mine who has a question about a situation they are about to face in the field and what we talk about are the possible negative outcomes and what systems or tools they should be prepared to use. I'm alway happy to take a call and practice defensive pessimism with you, but what would happen if you just got into the habbit of doing it yourself? What if you flipped back through that Floyd Wickman manual to see what tools you may not be using? Just sayin.... ;-)
