168: Put That In Your “God Box”

Summary

This came up recently during a TLF call with a bunch of people including my friend Melissa Bloom.

I think I was sharing something that was stressful in my business.

Melissa said, “That goes in your God box or your inactive box.”

And I asked her, “What in the world do you mean?”

She went on to tell me, “When I’m coaching people or in my business, or I get stressed about something in my life, I think about if I can do anything about it. And if I can’t, it goes in my inactive box or my God box. So, John, for you, those things in your business that you can’t control, that you can’t really do anything about go in your God box, where you just give it to God and let him handle it and don’t let that stress you out.”

Many things happen in the real estate business that we could stress out about, but how many of those are things we can actually do something about? I would say very few.

So much different stuff has been going on in my real estate business the last few months. A few clients listed a home with me; a bunch more are under contract to buy homes with me. I think at one point, there were six or seven deals all going at the same time.

What you can control in your business

For all of those deals, there are some things I can control:

• Sending paperwork by the day it was due
• Obtaining information when the client asked
• Getting back to people promptly and within the agreed-upon time frame

If you’re doing those, that’s the best you can do. The other stuff you can’t do anything about.

I can only control the things that I can control.

Letting God handle it

Anything I can’t control has to go in my God box or inactive box where I just give it to God and let it go. Because the only thing I can really do is stress about it and get frustrated. I get anxious, and it really holds me back from doing the things that I need to be doing.

Within the last few weeks, there have been multiple inspections per week and multiple appraisals per week.

If I just stress about all those things, that takes up capacity in my brain and heart.

The other interesting point about all this is even if I could control it, do you know what happens when I think about it? Are my primary thoughts positive or negative?

What are you doing with the things you can’t control in your business? Are you stressing about them and letting them hold you back from the things you need to be doing, or you putting them in your God box or your inactive box where you know that there’s nothing that you can do about them and they just have to happen?

Thank you for listening. Hope this was helpful, and I’ll see you on our next episode.

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John Schuchman is a licensed REALTOR® in Lancaster, PA, with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Homesale Realty and a part of the Andrew Welk Group. The opinions shared on this show represent the opinions & values of John Schuchman and do not necessarily represent the opinions & values of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Homesale Realty. The opinions & ideas shared in this podcast do not guarantee or promise any results of success to the listener.