Mike Staver directly addresses camera: Scott Peck in his book The Road Less Traveled says life is difficult. He goes on to say that the beginning of the acceptance of life's difficulties, ironically, makes life difficult. Hi, I'm Mike Staver. Let's talk for a few minutes about how real estate professionals can thrive in any market.

      Because you and I both know that as professionals, the work is not just about the market because you're capable of thriving in any market. You know, we live in a world that bombards us with thoughts of anxiety and pressure, and the press wants to tell us that things are good or things are bad, things are difficult, things are right or things are wrong. And the challenge is that you have proven yourself over the years that you are quite capable of being able to build the kind of business that will help you thrive, help you build a better business and be better at what you do every single day.

      But that sounds really good. You're watching this five minute video and you're thinking, All right, well, how do I do that there? Speaker Boy Well, here's how you do it. First of all, we get rid of some of the notion of what we know to be true about what the world is telling you to do. If it's true that life is difficult, if it's true that there are challenges in any market, why do we get the cliches? Why does it say, why don't we hear people say Tough it out, power through it, suck it up, buttercup, work harder, not smarter. Like somehow you aren't smart all this time. Why does that happen? Because most people grasp for the easiest thing on the shelf first. And what I want to encourage you to do is focus on only a few very basic things that are going to ensure that you thrive in any market.

      When we work with clients around the world, we always encourage them to keep their focus very narrow. You see, the more expansive you get, the bigger your thoughts about how to cope get, the more confusing it gets. I don't know if you're like me, but if I answered every inquiry I got every day about the new whiz bang tool I was supposed to use to make me great. I'd spend all my day, every day responding to those inquiries. So I want you to narrow your focus down to just a couple of things that are going to help you be more successful.

      Grab something to write with. Here we go. Number one, slow down. We live in a world and I know you and I both live in a world that's fundamentally transactional driven. That is to say that we're constantly being forced to quickly go from one transaction to the next.

      And I'm talking about physically slowing down. Slow down the way you talk. Slow down the way you walk, slow down everything. And here's why. Thriving and high performance works when your brain has the opportunity to execute effectively on what it knows to do well.

      But if you're in a hurry and if you're speeding along every single day, your brain perceives that you're in a crisis and it's going to eliminate creativity and effective decision making. The second thing I want you to think about is focusing on the things you can control.

      There's a lot going on in the world. There's a lot of people that want you to focus on things outside of your control. But why would you? You see, your energy is directly related to how you invest it every single day. And if you invest your energy in the things you can control, how you interact with customers, what your mindset is, the things that you do every single day to drive your business forward. You're going to have plenty of energy at the end of every day to do the things necessary.

      But if you're constantly being distracted or focused on things, you can't control things that are going on in the news, things that are happening in the world. These kinds of things will keep you from doing the things you know you're capable of doing to thrive in any market.

      The third thing, and this is one of my favorites is to limit your exposure to toxicity. Why would you associate with people who are playing below the line, who are engaging in gossip, who want to see what's wrong with the world instead of what's right with the world?

      You see, like anything in life, if you expose yourself to toxicity, that poison starts to affect you in a negative way. Probably one of the biggest indicators of your ability to thrive in any market is the ability to set effective boundaries. Boundaries are very simple. They're simply what you say no to and what you say yes to. You see, where most of us get in trouble is that we say yes to things we should say no to and no to things we should say yes to.  Don't be that person. Where are your yeses and nos? When do you put your phone down? At night? How do you determine what the appropriate interactions are with your clients so that you are most effective? You see, if you say yes to everything, you'll be incapable of saying no to anything.

      And so being able to set effective yeses and nos matters all the time. And then finally and this is might make you burst into flames. Always just take a minute. Lower the bar. You see, what people tend to do is they tend to want to focus on these big goals and doing big things and big, hairy, audacious goals. I don't want to be around anything big, hairy and audacious, but I want to be around things that are simple, incremental things that I know that I can do right now, that if I stack those things together over time.

I'm going to thrive and be successful. See, not being able to do that creates challenges. And so I just want you to think about slowing down. Limiting exposure to toxicity, focusing on what you can control, setting good boundaries, and ultimately lowering the bar.

And you'll thrive in any market.