We appreciate our “friends of Xperience,” those who are on a growth path with us. As we begin the new year, we want to thank you for your feedback, comments and shares. We want to make sure that all of our content is beneficial to your team, your market center, your professional growth and your personal journey. We also believe in a culture of sharing. In the spirit of sharing, this particular message is crafted to be shared. Xperience CEO Chris Suarez spent Friday’s partner call giving an overview of key messages from 2018. We have included a few key points that link to more detailed blog posts and short audio clips. Again, thank you for helping us carry forth our mission of building “xperiential” lives through real estate. It is our biggest hope that our content inspires others!

Want to read what Chris is reading? Click here to access the books that he read on his own and shared with the team in addition to the books Xperience read as a team in 2018. 

“It is what it is.” One of the most common expressions. So common, we have probably all used it, some more than others, some unknowingly, some as their ‘go-to’ explanation for life itself. Yet, “it is what it is” implies that we have accepted our current situation. It implies that our reflection is not just a perfect image of our past, but also our automatic, destined, or fated future. It allows us to detach from any thought or desire for change, and allows us to accept whatever is in front of us, or whatever has happened to us.It isn’t what it is. Regardless of where we might be today – in a job we love or one we hate, launching a brand new business or in an industry being disrupted, full of energy at our peak health or feeling worn out, tired and unhealthy – IT IS WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO MAKE IT.Click here to read more or here to listen to a brief audio clip.

It’s not enough to simply determine which activities and efforts don’t make the best possible contribution. You still have to actively eliminate those that do not.Greg McKeown does a deep dive into elimination in his book Essentialism. Getting rid of those old clothes isn’t easy. After all, there is still that nagging reluctance, that nagging fear that “what if” years down the road you come to regret giving away that blazer with the big shoulder pads and loud pinstripes. This feeling is normal. Studies have found that we tend to value things we already own more highly than they are worth, and thus find them more difficult to get rid of.If you’re not quite ready to part with that metaphorical blazer, ask the killer question: “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?” Likewise, in your life, the killer question when deciding what activities to eliminate is: “If I didn’t have this opportunity, what would I be willing to do to acquire it?”When making decisions, deciding to cut options can be terrifying—but the truth is, it is the very essence of decision making. In fact: The Latin root of the word decision—cis or cid—literally means “to cut” or “to kill.”You can see this in words like scissors or homicide. Since ultimately, having fewer options actually makes a decision “easier”.Every cut produces joy—maybe not in the moment but afterwards — when we realize that every additional moment we have gained can be spent on something better.It is easier to think of execution in terms of addition rather than subtraction. We just keep adding: more marketing, more agents, more budgeted dollar, etc. Instead of focusing on the efforts and resources we need to add, the Essentialist focuses on the obstacles we need to remove.Click hereto listen.

Motivation is overrated…environment matters more.Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.People choose products not because of what they are but because of where they are. Despite our unique personalities, certain behaviors tend to arise again and again under certain environmental conditions.  In church, people tend to whisper. On a dark street, people act wary and guarded. The most common form of change is not internal, but external; we are changed by the world around us. Click here to read more and here to listen to a short audio clip.

Too often we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action.  We put pressure on ourselves to make earth shattering improvement that everyone will talk about. Habits are the compound interest of self improvement.  The same way money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiple as you repeat them. We dismiss or minimize small changes, as they don’t show up with a noticeable result in the moment.   Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.  Time magnifies the margin between success and failure.  It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally.  Bad habits make time your enemy. Click here to read more and here to listen to a short audio clip. 

Necessity is the emotional drive that makes great performance a must instead of a preference.As opposed to weaker desires that make you want to do something, necessity demands that you take action. When you feel necessity, you don’t sit around hoping things happen, you get things done…because you have to.Necessity is there when it feels right to do something. If you didn’t do it, you find yourself feeling bad about it. If you don’t show up, you begin to feel like you are not living up to your standards, not meeting your obligations, or fulfilling your potential. Necessity inspires a higher level of motivation than usual because your personal identity is involved…creating an urgency to act.High performers work so hard and stay so focused and committed because “It’s just who I am.”  They have a sense of obligation…people need them, and are counting on them. You have a deep emotional drive to succeeding and consistently force yourself to work hard, stay disciplined, and push yourself.The Four Forces of Necessity:

Identity: Make succeeding at what you do part of your identity. If we don’t hit those real goals, and follow the agreed to process, then we are not being who we are. Our actions are not in alignment with who we say we are.

Obsession: Be obsessed. Its ok. When you are passionate about what you do, people understand.  When you are obsessed, they think you are mad.

Duty: This goes beyond desire. It goes beyond want.It’s an obligation. It is your duty to others.

Urgency: We always work with a sense of urgency and from of place of true necessity. You add deadlines to everything that matters.Raise necessity for exceptional performance. How? Brendon suggest the following 3 steps:

1. Know who needs your A game. We will work harder for others. Some days you may struggle with what YOU need to do. Perhaps you have what you want at that moment. However there is ALWAYS someone that you can work for, show up for, and perform for. So, who needs your ‘A Game’ today?

2. Affirm the why. Consistently affirm and confirm your why.

3. Level up your squad. Talent surrounds itself with talent. Always.

Law of the farm…a farmer has to show up every day. They can’t take a two week break and then decide to tend to the crops. They wake up at the same time every day and then go work in the field. Every day. There is no way to cram a week of work into one day to make up missed time. Neither is that possible for us.Covey’s Law of the Farm principle is strikingly similar to a concept presented by the late Earl Nightingale in one of his audiotapes. In Nightingale’s mind, success is built upon the most basic building block of time — the day. Success comes not from sudden, sporadic bursts of activity but through the cumulative effect of disciplined, daily effort.

The market doesn’t care where you came from. The market doesn’t care what you have done or haven’t done. If you are good enough, you will win.If you sit around and ponder “If I didn’t live here, or if I did this sooner, or if I wasn’t born a minority, or if my price point was higher, or if I had more leads, or if I had more past clients, or if I had a bigger sphere…if you sit and do that you are losing.  You aren’t wrong … it’s just business doesn’t care.”Stop blaming others.  The only thing you can do that can trump the moment your mom and dad made you, that can trump your DNA and your current situation, if you want it…is work. No one has created success without work. It doesn’t exist.Challenge: The greatest challenges you face can’t be the ones that are given to you.A life worth living is full of challenges.

“Don’t look for the adornment of what you are doing before accepting the activity of what that job consists of.”

Do you want the activities or the adornment?

The successful are influenced by the desire for pleasing results.  Failures are influenced by the desire for pleasing methods and are inclined to be satisfied with such results as can be obtained by doing things they like to do. The successful have a purpose strong enough to make them form the habit of doing things they don’t like to do in order to accomplish the purpose they want to accomplish.

Which challenges have you taken on?

We form habits and habits form futures.  If you do not deliberately form good habits, then unconsciously you will form bad ones. Click hereto listen to more.

It’s not just a model.

Why is a model not enough? We need a path as well. This isn’t inspirational leadership. It’s the rungs on the ladder that we need. It’s not just a vision…it’s the daily, routine, technical part of the business. Abstract inspiration is not enough.

Why were the highly accomplished so dogged in their pursuits? There was no realistic expectation of ever catching up to their ambitions.

They were the opposite of complacent.  They were satisfied being unsatisfied. The chase was gratifying.

Outliers of Grit: Combine 3 Things – Ability in combination with Exceptional Zeal and the Capacity for hard labor.

I’ll argue that as much as talent counts, effort counts twice.  Superlative performance is really a confluence (Confluence is the merging of two rivers) of dozens of small skills  or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence. When we can’t easily see how experience and training got someone to a level of excellence that is so clearly beyond the norm, we default to labeling that person ‘a natural’!

talent x effort = skillskill x effort = achievement

Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort.  Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Talent – how fast we improve in skill – absolutely matters.  But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill.  At the very same time, effort makes skill productive. Skill is not the same as achievement.  Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential.  Without effort your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.

Focus The Lion Tamer Who Survived

Clyde Beatty was born in Bainbridge, Ohio in 1903. When he was a teenager, he left home to join the circus and landed a job as a cage cleaner. In the years that followed, Beatty quickly progressed from a lowly cage boy to a popular entertainer.Beatty became famous for his “fighting act” in which he would tame fierce wild animals. At one point, Beatty’s act included a segment where he brought lions, tigers, cougars, and hyenas into the circus ring all at once and tamed the entire group.But here’s the most impressive feat of all…In an era when the majority of lion tamers died in the ring, Beatty lived into his 60s. In the end, it was cancer that took his life, not a lion.How did he manage to survive? Thanks to a simple idea. Clyde Beatty was one of the first lion tamers to bring a chair into the circus ring.

The Whip and The Chair

The classic image of a lion tamer is one of the entertainer holding a whip and a chair. The whip gets all of the attention, but it’s mostly for show. In reality, it’s the chair that does the important work.When a lion tamer holds a chair in front of the lion’s face, the lion tries to focus on all four legs of the chair at the same time. With its focus divided, the lion becomes confused and is unsure about what to do next. When faced with so many options, the lion chooses to freeze and wait instead of attacking the man holding the chair.

Avoid the Fate of the Lion

How often do you find yourself in the same position as the lion? How often do you have something you want to achieve …only to end up confused by all of the options in front of you and never make progress?This is especially true in business, health, fitness, and medicine, where every person and company seems to believe it is their duty to make things more complex. The end result is that we feel like we can’t focus or that we’re focused on the wrong things, and so we take less action, make less progress, and stay the same when we could be improving.

How to Focus and Concentrate Better

Anytime you find the world waving a chair in your face, remember this: all you need to do is commit to one thing.In the beginning, you don’t even have to succeed. You just need to get started. Starting before you feel ready is one of the habits of successful people.

Intentional Living

Everything worthwhile is uphill.

Relationship.  Business. Dream.

No one accidentally goes uphill.

The Problem?  We have uphill hopes and downhill habits.

No effort, intentionality, habits.

What got you there won’t keep you there.

Intentionality gets you up here.  Live intentionally…things will move the way it should move.We must be intentional in the area of your growth.  Growth is not an automatic process.

GROWTH ENVIRONMENT

1.) A place where other people are ahead of me.     Always have people around you who are better

2.) A place where I’m continually challenged.     Every challenge also represents an opportunity.

3.) A place where my focus is forward.

4.) A place where the atmosphere is affirming.

5.) A place where I wake up excited.

6.) A place where failure is not your enemy.Be intentional in your attitude. Activity is not necessarily accomplishment.