How Do We Handle Change and Adversity — Especially When They’re Synonymous?

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Depending upon the last significant change in your life, the answer might be predictable. I remember the first time I earned six figures. I wasn’t even aware of it ’till the tax returns were finished. I was a little flummoxed when my wife asked me how I felt. About what? She thought I was kidding, but I’d only paid attention to the taxes owed. It marked a change in how I viewed not only myself, but the new frontier of what I almost immediately began perceiving as the possible.

We all have memories found on the opposite side of that same coin — financially hard times, illness, divorce, and the rest. It’s the changes precipitating sorrow, stressful times, and personal pain and suffering in whatever form that allow us the opportunity to, as Grandma used to say, stretch ourselves. With each passing year I understand more of what she meant
Who among us hasn’t felt the sting of failure smirking at us derisively? Hard times, whether personal, financial, or any of the endless combinations we’ve all experienced, come and go.

We’re the common denominators though, aren’t we? Regardless of what comes into and/or exits our lives, we remain the constant. Given that often unpleasant reality, how we respond tells much about us, doesn’t it?

Of course, there’s change and there’s Change. I wonder how many men and women in the real estate or mortgage business will respond with heroic efforts of which they never believed they were capable? I’m reminded of the much told story of the father whose son was diagnosed with hemophilia. It was before most of modern medicine’s breakthroughs, which meant the treatment was in short supply and therefore expensive — almost $20,000 a year. In the late 1950’s, early 1960’s that was three times the median income.

He was in straight commission sales, and up ’till then had done quite well, but hadn’t ever made more than $12,000 in one year. From that year forward he never made less than $40,000. He had a reason, depending upon how you look at it, to either ensure success, or avoid failure at all costs. In his mind, there was no choice, and therefore no reason he’d accept for failure.

Be fair to yourself, if only in the privacy of your own thoughts. Haven’t you risen to the occasion more than once? Maybe not in such dramatic circumstances, but haven’t you? Bet ya have. Life happens to us all.

The silver lining as I see our country’s current travails, is that most folks are affected directly or indirectly. Knowing you’re not rowing that leaky boat alone makes things a little easier to swallow — or at least human nature seems to tell us so. Bad times shared, plus a little well timed empathy can make a difference — often the difference.

There are conversations we dare only have with ourselves. I’ve developed a theory our brains emit a chemical acting as a natural truth serum when we really need to get down and dirty with life’s brushback pitches. For me, it was in 1979 when what comes out of the south end of a northbound cow hit the high velocity spinning blades. The epiphany that truth serum produced hit me hard. What made it worse was that it wasn’t really new information — just something about which I’d been in deep denial.

It was more a matter of realizing the real worth of something I’d been woefully undervaluing — irrationally so — for my entire career. The decision to immediately begin applying the principle I’d been ignoring was the genesis of multiple positive consequences. I’m being intentionally vague because the principle isn’t the point here — not by a long shot.

The point, is coming to what you personally know to be true — which ain’t what you’ve constructed over the years while avoiding said truth.

As a son, grandson, great-grandson, and nephew of five ministers, I’ve come to look at the aforementioned ‘truth serum’ as a sort of catalyst leading directly to a Come to Jesus Meeting inside my head. 🙂 I think that’s what happened to the father in the story. He didn’t have a magical experience. No Angel of Sales came to him with the secret to his newly found success. His vastly improved results were reaped immediately. The change was between his ears — or, if you prefer, in his heart.

He did what most of us do when we decide to make a stand.

We don’t try — we do.