What are you doing the next 2 weeks?

“Many times an old man has no other evidence besides his age to prove he has lived a long time.” - Seneca

The year is over. What do you have to show for your year?

I don’t mean in your results. Some of you had your best year, and some of you are on the cusp of leaving the business. The rest are somewhere in between. But I don’t mean that!

I mean, who are you as a human being (and real estate professional)? Are you a different person this December than last December? What about next December?

If you answer, “Geez, I don’t know.” That’s okay. And...would it be a bad idea to be a little more intentional over the next 12 months? Expand your self-awareness? Maybe consider some other measures of having a great year...like where do you stand in your:

• Discipline
• Compassion
• Empathy
• Patience
• Health & Vitality
• Courage (like in taking new action)

Or maybe you did some things to expand your overall skill level. Or maybe the quality of your relationships improved (or didn’t - but could!). Can you listen better? Be more thoughtful? Consider others’ feelings more?

There is no should here. The point is simply to give some food for thought as you wind down and take some time off.

Speaking of time off - there’s one more thing I want to say in this area. Get some rest!

Ryan Holiday in Discipline is Destiny has a chapter “Sleep is an Act of Character.” In that passage, he says:

“In the Persian Gulf of the 1990’s, future four star admiral James Stavridis had just been given command of a ship for the first time. This occurred at exactly the same time, he noticed, at age thirty-eight, that his natural metabolism and his infinitely youthful ability to just gut it out, had begun to decline. You don’t have to be the most self-aware person on the planet to see that you make worse decisions when you’re tired, that you’re less able to work well with others, that you have less command of yourself and your emotions. But it was still a considerable innovation for Stavridis to decide to treat sleep as an equally important part of a functioning warship as its weapons systems.”

Your ability to have a GREAT year next year is also a function of your energy level. To have high energy you must also have downtime. I’m not your mother nor your boss - nevertheless, I highly recommend you get some quality rest and time off. Come back in January fully charged and ready to go.