Real Estate: Fifth Most Stressful Job
So, you want to be a real estate agent eh? Sure, sounds good from the outside. Just run around with friendly people in your car looking at houses, have interesting conversations, get great decorating ideas for your home, make your own hours, take weekday afternoons off if you want.
Sounds like an easy lifestyle, right?
Wrong.
According to CaeerCast.com, being a real estate agent is currently ranked as the fifth most stressful job in the nation. The only jobs that carry more stress are being a surgeon, a commercial airline pilot, a photojournalist and an advertising executive.
Having personally spent twenty-five years as an advertising executive, one of the reasons I went into real estate was because I wanted a little less stress in my life. Well, apparently that's what I got. A little less stress. I went all the way from fourth to fifth on the stress chart.
Since I've spent my entire career in high-stress related fields, I've found out some things about stress that I thought I'd pass along just in case you may be feeling a little pressure these days.
First of all, everybody has stress no matter what kind of career path they are following. The reason? I think it's because deep down inside, we all want to do a good job. We want to make a nice living, be respected by our fellow workers and family, and feel like we are making a positive contribution to both the enterprise for which we work and also for the community in general. These kinds of goals lead us to care about what we do. If you care, you want things to turn out good in the end, both for yourself and for your clients and customers.
The last part is the important part ... we want things to turn out good in the end.
It is worrying about how things end up that puts us under the most stress. When we think too much about the end, we put ourselves under stress.
I learned a long time ago to not worry much about how things will end. Instead, I concentrate only on the next step in the process leading to the end. Concentrate on the task in front of you and do it well. Then, move on to the next task in the process, then the next, and so forth. Before you know it, you've reached the end, all the steps were done well, and the end will be satisfactory for everybody.
This approach has helped me to control stress in my professional and personal life. Notice, I said "control", not eliminate. I don't think you can eliminate stress, and maybe you don't really want to. Without some stress, many of us would probably never even roll out of bed in the morning and nothing would be accomplished. Oftentimes, I think a certain amount of stress is the driving force behind accomplishing our goals.
Great golfers are really good at handling stress in this manner. Many times they stand over a 2-foot long putt with a championship trophy, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and perhaps millions in endorsement contracts at stake. For an ordinary golfer, with all that to consider, a 2-foot putt could feel like a 20-foot putt. But some golfers walk up and tap the ball in as if they we just playing golf with friends back at the local golf course.
Professional golfers call this, "staying in the moment". Tiger Woods may be the best at it. Essentially, when Woods stands on the tee box looking down the fairway at some impossibly long and difficult golf hole, he does not worry about sinking his putt to make a par. Instead, he concentrates only on the shot that is in front of him at that particular moment. His whole thought process is about that one shot that has to be made correctly, not the cumulative number of shots that will be required to put the ball in the hole. He executes that one shot only, then moves on to the next shot. By doing this, Woods stays "in the moment" and keeps his mental game in tune with his physical game. Before he knows it, the 18 holes are over and Woods can carry home another trophy.
That's the way to avoid stress on the golf course, and it's the way to reduce stress in business and in our daily lives. I've been using this approach for years and I know it helps me a lot. Why not give it a try and see if it can take some of the stress off you.
For more information about real estate in the Tampa Bay area, visit my website at http://www.thestpeterealestatesite.com/.
Sounds like an easy lifestyle, right?
Wrong.
According to CaeerCast.com, being a real estate agent is currently ranked as the fifth most stressful job in the nation. The only jobs that carry more stress are being a surgeon, a commercial airline pilot, a photojournalist and an advertising executive.
Having personally spent twenty-five years as an advertising executive, one of the reasons I went into real estate was because I wanted a little less stress in my life. Well, apparently that's what I got. A little less stress. I went all the way from fourth to fifth on the stress chart.
Since I've spent my entire career in high-stress related fields, I've found out some things about stress that I thought I'd pass along just in case you may be feeling a little pressure these days.
First of all, everybody has stress no matter what kind of career path they are following. The reason? I think it's because deep down inside, we all want to do a good job. We want to make a nice living, be respected by our fellow workers and family, and feel like we are making a positive contribution to both the enterprise for which we work and also for the community in general. These kinds of goals lead us to care about what we do. If you care, you want things to turn out good in the end, both for yourself and for your clients and customers.
The last part is the important part ... we want things to turn out good in the end.
It is worrying about how things end up that puts us under the most stress. When we think too much about the end, we put ourselves under stress.
I learned a long time ago to not worry much about how things will end. Instead, I concentrate only on the next step in the process leading to the end. Concentrate on the task in front of you and do it well. Then, move on to the next task in the process, then the next, and so forth. Before you know it, you've reached the end, all the steps were done well, and the end will be satisfactory for everybody.
This approach has helped me to control stress in my professional and personal life. Notice, I said "control", not eliminate. I don't think you can eliminate stress, and maybe you don't really want to. Without some stress, many of us would probably never even roll out of bed in the morning and nothing would be accomplished. Oftentimes, I think a certain amount of stress is the driving force behind accomplishing our goals.
Great golfers are really good at handling stress in this manner. Many times they stand over a 2-foot long putt with a championship trophy, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and perhaps millions in endorsement contracts at stake. For an ordinary golfer, with all that to consider, a 2-foot putt could feel like a 20-foot putt. But some golfers walk up and tap the ball in as if they we just playing golf with friends back at the local golf course.
Professional golfers call this, "staying in the moment". Tiger Woods may be the best at it. Essentially, when Woods stands on the tee box looking down the fairway at some impossibly long and difficult golf hole, he does not worry about sinking his putt to make a par. Instead, he concentrates only on the shot that is in front of him at that particular moment. His whole thought process is about that one shot that has to be made correctly, not the cumulative number of shots that will be required to put the ball in the hole. He executes that one shot only, then moves on to the next shot. By doing this, Woods stays "in the moment" and keeps his mental game in tune with his physical game. Before he knows it, the 18 holes are over and Woods can carry home another trophy.
That's the way to avoid stress on the golf course, and it's the way to reduce stress in business and in our daily lives. I've been using this approach for years and I know it helps me a lot. Why not give it a try and see if it can take some of the stress off you.
For more information about real estate in the Tampa Bay area, visit my website at http://www.thestpeterealestatesite.com/.
-30-
posted by Terry Ward at 3:42 AM
1 Comments:
Terry, I thought you would say something about the importance of a martini now and then to lower stress.
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