Losing Makes You Better at This

Losing Makes You Better at This

At the risk of sounding redundant, today’s real estate market in and around the GTA is tough, like really tough.

Ok, so you know that, or at least that’s the water cooler talk. What isn’t as obvious to most, is the down right awful, horrible, no good feeling you get when you attempt to buy your ideal home and you flat out lose in a bidding war. It’s about as bad as working up the courage to ask that person you’ve been crushing on for years to go out with you, and they say “no” flatly and walk away. In fact it’s exactly like that. You’ve worked up the courage to see how much you can qualify for regarding your mortgage, it’s a big step, and it’s given you the feeling you can tackle anything. Then your agent somehow has stumbled upon the house or condo you’ve always been looking for. Your needle in this very expensive haystack as it was. You’re supernaturally sure that for some reason your bid is going to be the one, you may have even written the homeowner a nice little note expressing why only you should be the real estate prom king or queen! Then poof! You’ve been outbid by $50,000, or you included a condition that made you feel good that they simply ignored, and the heartache, the pain of rejection, hits you like a freight train of broken dreams.

Good. Yeah, I just said good, and no I’m not a mean person.

That hard rejection is much like losing in a sport you thought you were good at, or that job which you believed could only be made better by your brilliant ideas.

It makes you tougher; it strengthens your resolve to do better.

It encourages you to try again; after all you’re not a quitter. It gives you a new focus, a thicker skin, and a new appreciation of what it’ll take to get it done. You’ll stop fearing and doubting your agents abilities (as long as you believe them to be working hard for your best interests), and start seeing properties in a different light. You’ll be more critical, you’ll have the knowledge, and you’ll even be able to avoid be crest fallen if you don’t win another bid. Don’t cower from the defeat, revel in it, and know that you’re coming out of the experience battle hardened and ready to take down the Toronto monster, and you will!

I leave you with this:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

– Michael Jordan