I attended an outstanding seminar last week featuring Steve Scanlon with Building Champions. Steve is a professional business coach who specializes in working with professionals in the fields of mortgage and real estate. I have attended live events with Steve each of the past two years and the ideas I have taken away (and implemented) have made a tangible difference in my work and my family life.
I have participated in many personal and professional coaching programs through the years because I believe that investing in yourself is about the most important thing you can do. Our lives and our workplaces are complex and demanding, and it's easy to lose focus and become distracted. We need to become world-class problem solvers, at work and at home. We need to create value for our employers (in my case, the readership of this blog) and lead our children with clarity. We need to be more productive, more focused, more intentional and more connected. Years ago, Jim Rohn said "We all have two choices. We can face the pain of discipline, which weighs ounces, or we can face the pain of regret, which weighs tons."
Discipline or regret. That's often the difference between success and failure, happiness and sorrow, victory and defeat. We must be disciplined in our actions, our thoughts, our relationships, our ethics... or one day we will bear that heavy weight of regret.
The theme of Steve's message this year was emotional health. Specifically, how we can keep emotional health in challenging and uncertain times.
He said, “We all have lots of balls in the air, because it’s the nature of our business. We all get overwhelmed and sometimes become reactive when we want to stay in control. But here’s the important thing: some of those balls you are juggling are made of rubber, and some of those balls... like your health and your family... are made of crystal.”
Steve’s point is this… we all have lots to do, but not all that we do is of equal value in the grand scheme of our lives. Mess up your health, and that’s a crystal ball that will shatter into a thousand pieces. Screw things up with your family, and that’s an explosion of slivers and shrapnel that you might not be able to fix.
Recognize that your life is busy… but recognize that your time is limited and valuable. A mysterious someone you've never met who calls off a yard sign at 4 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon and demands to see a home in 30 minutes may not be more important than attending the school play your daughter has been working on for three months. (Yes, I have goofed this one up before)
In the end, we have to stand for something more than a commitment to be insanely busy, out of control and hyper-accommodating. Draw some lines and protect some aspects of your life, or the demands of this crazy market will burn you out and leave you empty.
I have shown many homes on Sunday afternoons to people I do not know. And I have missed events in my family life that I wish I had attended. Sometimes doing your job well is going to require a price (discipline), but don't mistake working like a dog for being a good husband or father. You need to have clarity, and you need to recognize which balls are made of rubber and which ones are made of crystal.
