At ICC, we regularly produce real estate short courses to help accelerate your career. And, we believe in the concept of “short courses” for a few reasons. For one, you are a busy real estate agent and you don’t have a whole lot of spare time. And for two, we don’t believe in filler content.
The real estate short course we are introducing today is “Success Mindset.” The need for motivation has never been higher, and we are here to deliver you the content you need to press on and elevate your mindset and your business.
Today we are going to talk about “getting uncomfortable.” This isn’t easy, or fun. But, it’s necessary for growth. Instead of focusing on busy work, it’s time to shift to focusing on income-producing activities, no matter how much you hate them.
If you think negatively, you will act negatively, and you’ll get negative results.
I think most people would say, “I want to change my business and improve. I want to create more success for myself. I’d like to go from where I am right now to a better situation.”
I don’t think there is one person who doesn’t want those two things in life. If you don’t have that as your business plan, then you have a bad business model. If you just say you want more money, but you have to work more to get it, sooner or later that business model will break down because you will run out of time and burn out.
You had better have some sort of plan in place to help balance your two goals of more money and more time.
Brian Icenhower
This is quite honestly why most of our clients come to us here at ICC. We coach a lot of the top producing teams, agents, and broker/owners across the country. We also coach new agents, of course, but we have become known for coaching the highest performing teams, agents, and brokerages in North America.
Typically, these top performers are calling us for help because their life balance is in shambles. They need help developing a structure where they can continue to grow their business without sacrificing their personal life and sanity. We coach them on how to instill these mindsets and motivational strategies into training their people, too. And, we use real estate short courses like Success Mindset to get them where they need to go faster.
Mind control?! Yes, you read that correctly.
Motivating agents and training motivation involves mind control. If you want to go from where you are right now, point A, in your business to a better place, point B, where you are making more money and also have more time in your week … how do we get there?
You must control your mind. You must get your people to control their minds.
I wish it was a simple, straightforward answer with a clear path, and that I could tell you each step to get where you want to go. It’s not, however, and you’ll find in life that most good things are not easy.
If it comes easy or natural to you, it’s probably not worth as much as you think.
Brian Icenhower
The right path should be hard. For you to take yourself from point A to point B with regard to the success of your business, life balance, and income, change is required. Your “point B business” is going to look a lot different from your “point A business.”
You must:
The list above is not a fun list. Some might even say those words and actions are torturous. It’s like walking across hot coals. You want to get to the other side of the hot coals, but walking across is painful.
How do you force yourself to walk across hot coals to get to the treasure chest filled with gold on the other side? How do you force yourself to look past the pain to get to pleasure? That’s what you need to learn how to do.
Your mind will instinctively operate with a very quick emotion – fear. And because you know how The Gandhi Circle works, you know that what comes next are fearful words.
You are going to say to yourself, “Oh my goodness, I don’t want to walk on those hot coals! No way!” You turn and tell the person nearest to you that you’re not going to walk across those coals. Suddenly, you are becoming the person who shies away from difficult things.
You aren’t up for any challenge. This now becomes who you are as a person, and your thoughts around challenges become increasingly negative. “If it doesn’t feel right to me, it’s not meant to be.” Now you are even more resistant to doing hard things, and the negative spiral continues. You’re now a quitter.
You see the pain and your emotion speaks the fear, and your fear becomes cemented by your behavior. And next thing you know, you’re not a risk taker. You’re a very cautious person. You are change-averse, which is not a good place to be if you are looking to go from point A to point B in your business.
This is one of the biggest takeaways from Success Mindset, one of our latest real estate short courses.
Naturally, all humans will shy away from pain much more quickly than they will move toward pleasure. Humans move toward pleasure cautiously. It’s our instinct to jump away from pain.
You will need to learn to force yourself to move through the uncomfortable activities that you see as “pain” in order to get to the treasure, the point B goal.
So, what does that look like?
I created the above graphic called “The Comfort Zone.” (To download a high-res version, scroll to the bottom of this blog.)
Right now, you are in the black circle – The Comfort Zone. You are likely working on this course from the comfort of your own desk, possibly even working from home. You are relaxed. Nothing around you is changing.
You need to move all the way across the black arrow, from left to right, to get to your goal of moving your business from point A to point B (more money and more time).
Yes, you will need to go through some hot coals to get to the right side of this graphic. You must cross The Fear Zone and The Learning Zone before you can get to The Growth Zone.
I am going to break down the four zones from the diagram, below:
The Comfort Zone
The Fear Zone
The Learning Zone
The Growth Zone
At each zone, you have the choice to either run back into The Comfort Zone, or continue to press forward through the discomfort. With each choice to press forward, you learn and grow and develop the skill for embracing discomfort.
Brian Icenhower
As you make your way across the circle, you are doing all the uncomfortable activities that you were fearful of. Soon, the uncomfortable activities become comfortable. You are changing your mindset!
Before you know it, you are growing your business and moving toward point B.
It all starts with your mindset. Controlling how you think, and keeping your emotions between the lines, helps you to push yourself through The Gandhi Circle in a positive manner.
People ask me all the time, “What do successful people do?” Successful people know how to keep getting uncomfortable, and they stay uncomfortable, until those uncomfortable activities become comfortable.
And then guess what? Those successful people quickly try to find ways to get uncomfortable again, because they know that when they are uncomfortable they can experience the most growth.
The most important part is to keep doing it. You need to keep stepping on hot coals. Keep stepping. Keep stepping until it isn’t so hot and uncomfortable anymore. Then, you rest for a moment – just a moment – and then find the next pile of hot coals to walk through.
Brian Icenhower
If you want to grow with a rapid trajectory, you keep getting uncomfortable. Keep putting yourself in the position to walk over hot coals in your pursuit of getting from your point A to your point B.
This week, we are giving subscribers a FREE copy of The Comfort Zone PDF. Remember that the only way to growth is to get uncomfortable. Subscribe, below, for your free copy.
