Stress is a harsh reality of the real estate industry, but it’s not unsurpassable. Letting your anger get the best of you could be detrimental to acquiring leads, signing deals, and retaining clients.
Not to mention, it isn’t good for your health.
Use these three basic techniques, both at work and at home, to ease your mind.
1. Fight sudden anger by shutting up.
One of the worst ways to display your stress is by taking it out on a client or coworker. But when someone challenges you, the natural inclination is to let out built up frustration.
If you’re seriously stressing mid-conversation and experiencing difficulty responding calmly, you need to take a few deep breaths. Yelling rarely solves issues and you’ll look like a hot head.
First, take a moment before you speak to avoid the always regretted knee-jerk reaction. Inhale deeply a few times (quietly, without being dramatic) to calm your heart rate.
In a disagreement, the upper hand belongs to the one who chooses his or her words carefully. For example: You’re accused by a client of dropping the ball. Rather than defend yourself right away, rephrase your perceived insult as a direction question. You could say: “Just to clarify — do you feel that I wasn’t fully committed to signing this deal?”
Paraphrasing keeps you from defending — which can sometimes show guilt. Asking the other person to reiterate puts them in the awkward position of repeating an unsavory comment, revealing their unprofessionalism, not yours.
If you feel yourself bubbling with rage, just don’t say anything. To delay, say something along the lines of, “Unfortunately now is not a great time to delve into that issue. Let’s set up a time where we can discuss further.” Postponing the conversation is better than blowing up and risking bad rapport.
2. Take a mental break once in a while.
Everyone has off days once in a while. But when each day starts to feel like a constant struggle, it might be time to check in with yourself. If you can’t take time off of work, try meditating when you get home.
Yoga practitioners in India refer to the process of deep breathing as pranayama, intended to balance the body’s pH levels and alter high blood pressure. If practiced regularly, breathing exercises can train your body to respond to stressful situations in a more positive, healthy manner.
Progressive muscle relaxation, a technique developed in the 1920s, is another worthwhile method of training your internal reaction to external stimulants. Tense up and relax your muscles, one by one, to bring awareness to the various parts of the body.
As you work your way down, you’ll become a pro at differentiating between relaxed and tensed muscles, inherently training your brain to prefer the former.
Listening to music is pretty common, especially when you’re in the car. Turn off the loud, distracting pop music and try something slow. Spotify has a wide variety of cool-down, mentally relaxing, but modern, playlists.
If you’re looking for something a bit more traditional, classical music combines soft music to help your body relax and upbeat tempos to reenergize and bring clarity to your mind.
Rest is an absolute necessity to maintaining a healthy mind, but sometimes it’s not in the cards. When you fail to get the recommended seven to eight hours and feel yourself getting disconcerted, try to fit in a short nap at some point during the day.
Power naps encourage mental clarity. The 20-minute power nap (also known as a stage two nap) is best used to create alertness. If you have more time to spare, 30 to 60 minutes can have a positive effect on decision-making skills. More than 60 minutes stimulates creativity.
Analyze your sleep habits with a fitness tracker. If you aren’t sleeping soundly at night, try incorporating natural herbs and teas into your diet. Melatonin, valerian root or chamomile tea are best consumed before bed.
3. Reassess and reorganize.
Many experts say it’s best to complete the hardest tasks of your day first. Making a list and having a plan is the best way to accomplish this early on, before you start procrastinating. Momentum is a Chrome extension that defaults each new tab to a personalized greeting, the current weather in your city and the time.
But what really makes it a productivity tool is the ability to create lists quickly and efficiently and check them off on any device as long as you’re signed in with your Google account.
Day-to-day lists help you maintain your productivity in the short-term, but it’s also important to remember your bottom line. Have monthly or seasonal goals for yourself that you can use as motivators in the back of your mind.
If you feel like you’re constantly working but not getting enough done, use a time-tracking productivity app like RescueTime to analyze what you spend the majority of your time completing. Then, it’s obvious which tasks need streamlining, or possibly outsourcing time-consuming projects to an assistant or agency.
