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| Vol.3.106 | |
Mending What's Brokeby Vince PoscenteAuthor of The Ant and the Elephant, Invinceable Principles and The Age of Speed
Five times? What takes me two and a half months takes that little guy two weeks. WHAT? My question revealed my denial. I am getting older. Here I thought the boy and I looked at the old people and put them in a different category of brittle bones. Does this mean... I'm one of them? Back when I was ski racing I realized very quickly that "nobody sponsors nobody, when you're nobody." That's why I started selling real estate - be my own sponsor! I had it all figured out. I would sell 50 or 60 houses in August. (ahem...) Anyways, along the way I found a sliding scale of cynicism. The sellers in their 30's were generally fun and rolled with events. People in their 40's and 50's revealed a more callous exterior. In the 60's a grumpiness barrier was hardening. Many people in their 70's and 80's had an exoskeleton of cynicism and distrust. This whole mending bones thing got me thinking about mending trust in others. Steven M. R. Covey wrote a book that I profiled a couple of years ago, The Speed of Trust. He said, "When trust goes up, speed goes up. When trust goes down, speed goes down." Faster than you can say "Who's that old guy in the mirror?" I've realized, he's right. Speed slows down when trust goes down. A sad majority of septuagenarians and octogenarians have been burned so frequently their trusting bones are hard to find. Hence, real estate transactions were often slow and arduous. I can't say with any certainty that there's a short cut past this trend. If you sell financial services or real estate to our aging generation I'd say you're in for a trial. With portfolios cut in half alongside dramatic drops in real estate values you had better have a measured, patient plan. A flak jacket and helmet wouldn't hurt either. About this whole denial thing of mine, depending on your age, you might be in the same boat. Are we becoming cynical and callous without noticing? Does it take us aging boomers five times as long to get past broken promises and shattered aspirations? Maybe it does if we are unconscious about our cynical patterns. Interrupting patterns that slow us down is the answer. If you notice you're being too grumpy or pessimistic then do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around. I'm serious. Do the hokey pokey. Change your physiology. Turn yourself around. That's what it's all about. Repeat until trust comes back. Until next week, it's full speed ahead,
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© 2010 Vince Poscente. All Rights Reserved. |
When I was getting my cast/boot off there was a little tyke about five getting his cast on. In the busy "cast on - cast off room" I asked one of the nurses, "Hey, I've been meaning to ask. Do our bones mend at about the same rate?" A chorus of nurses busted out in a cacophony of laughter. "His bones mend five times as fast as yours," followed by the heartwarming - you ignorant dork - look.