In real estate, disappointments and setbacks are just part of the job. You’re expected to assume the role of your own cheerleader, teacher, boss – and it’s not easy. When things feel like they are over your head in business, giving up is tempting. In fact, 80% of beginner real estate agents do give up within the first few years.

If you want to survive in this industry and build a successful career now and in the future, you need to get yourself back on your feet and keep going. It’s okay to fall into a rut at times – but getting stuck in a rut can be detrimental.  Your ability to confidently keep your head above water and push through failure at any cost is the only difference between you and the future high-producing version of yourself you want to be.

The next time you feel yourself slipping into a personal or career rut, take these tips seriously and dig yourself out.

1. Be Present

Realize that every minute is a gift. Even your negative circumstances are a gift. In every moment, you have the ability to change directions and choose a new perspective. Sure, you may not have closed as many deals as you’d hoped or may be having a hard time connecting with prospective clients up until now, but anything can change at any moment. All you need is the motivation to  find the right solution for you. As Roosevelt once said, “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.”

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No matter what you are struggling with in your career, open your eyes to possibilities rather than sulk in failure, and you will find a solution.

2. Remember Your Why

Contrary to popular belief, money isn’t the greatest motivator. For most people, as soon as they reach a point of living comfortably, the value and desire to have an excess amount of cash starts to fade. You need to dig for your true Why. Why did you start a career in real estate? Was it more time with family and friends? More freedom? When you keep your why at the forefront of your mind, it acts as a guiding light through turbulent times. The awareness that you could give your family the dream vacation you’ve always dreamed of is a lot more motivating than imagining a stack of cash in the bank. When in doubt, dig deeper and remind yourself why you deserve to succeed in your hyperlocal market.

3. Find an Accountability Partner

Find a partner with similar goals who you can speak with and work alongside. Ideally, this would be a real estate agent friend who is working in a similar community as you, but not competing with you. On days when either of you is feeling low, you can go to the other for an extra push. You’ll always have someone to ask for advice, vent to, and share with – and you know that they’ll listen. It’s what they promised to do and would expect from you!

4. Keep a Journal

It’s a bit sappy, but journaling truly works to relieve stress and get out of ruts. It’s a simple combination of releasing negative thoughts and the ability to look back on them without reinforcing them. As you get into the habit of writing positive and negative experiences in your journal, you take overwhelming thoughts out of your head and onto the paper.

With time, you’ll have a log of all of the successes that have followed your failures. Look back and remind yourself that everything comes in waves and there are always high points after the lows. When you read entries from the points in your career that weren’t so great, you’ll have a more objective perspective that allows you to avoid making the same mistakes. Then, you can map out where you want to go next and what you should do (and not do) to get there.

5. Don’t Wallow in Victim State

Have you ever heard of the ‘fallacy of fairness’? It’s a psychological concept that when we lose out on an opportunity, like losing your client’s dream home, we tend to blame everything outside of us. You can blame the lack of communication or the fact that the selling agent is a nuisance, but as soon as you believe that you were cheated by a loss, you enter a victim state.This is where catastrophizing and pessimism start to build.

Victimhood will sneakily start to control your behavior in ways you don’t even realize. For example, harping on that missed listing can develop into a belief that you are simply not good at what you do, and limit your confidence in your next deal or convince you that the world is against you. Victim state = powerlessness, and that’s not where you want to be. Take the loss as a lesson and don’t let it define you. Simple as that.

6. Take the Day Off

No matter how successful you are or how many meetings by the pool you’ve taken – we all need a real day off. Working from a beautiful location or from home doesn’t count. If you feel that you’re in a rut, it’s enticing to push yourself even harder, motivated by the fear of falling even further behind. But let’s look at this from another perspective. A negative, desperate mindset means subpar client interactions and work. As someone who works intimately with the people, the energy you give off is powerful and can make the difference between gaining and losing a prospect. It’s worthwhile to take a day off to breathe and refuel, instead of running on fumes, moving a millimetre an hour. Not sure how to give yourself a break? Check out these vacation tips for agents.

7. Change Up Your Location

Since the pandemic, it’s become more and more typical for all of us to spend more time working from home. You may have even enjoyed it at first! Now that it’s been a couple years, we can use a bit of variety to keep things fresh. Stop by your office and get a bit done there before heading to the park to finish up. Keeping your work locations diverse can work wonders to keep your attention from slipping into apathy.

8. Let Go of Counterfactual Thinking

How many times have you had a negative experience and spent the days following dissecting the experience in your mind? We often think that digging up and picking through our past mistakes is going to give us the answers we need, but that’s rarely the case. Most of the time, we’re just overthinking a situation where we didn’t know any better and keeping ourselves stuck in an unfruitful state of regret and shame. Stop. You should absolutely ask yourself what you could have done differently. However, there is a way to reflect on your errors without reinforcing the belief that you’re not good enough or activating other insecurities. When you know better, you do better, and now you know what you would do differently. Take that insight and move forward with confidence that you won’t make the same mistakes.

9. Re-evaluate Your Day to Day Schedule

It’s commonly advised to get all of your hard tasks done in the morning and tackle smaller ones throughout the day. This belief is based on the premise that people are most productive in the morning and have dwindling energy as the day goes on.

You know yourself better than anyone else. If you’re groggy in the morning and high energy by early afternoon, structure your tasks accordingly. Get to know how your own personal energy level fluctuates throughout the day and organize tasks so that the most challenging or taxing work is done when you have the most energy. You can also look into shifting the amount of time you allot to each task based on turnaround. If you have more success with cold calling than cold emails, don’t be afraid to cut down on email time and amp-up call time.

10. Celebrate Your Achievements

As humans, we are constantly chasing the next big goal. First we aim to simply get our real estate license and before you know it, we have your eyes set on a multi-million dollar listing. We‘re hungry for success and that can distract us from the joy of achieving mini-successes along the way. Enjoy and saturate yourself in each achievement, no matter how big or small. Life is short and you deserve to feel good now…and tomorrow, and when you score that million dollar listing. Celebrating your success along the way will make it easier to push through the difficult times when they arrive and make the journey more enjoyable overall.

11. Invest in Learning More About Your Clients

Sometimes we get so absorbed in our own woes that we struggle to direct our attention to the solution that can make all the difference. Your clients are the heart of your real estate business. Shift your attention away from your stressful thoughts to something more productive, like how you can better get to know your clients and their desires. When business starts to ramp back up, you’ll be more prepared than when it dropped off.

12. Seek Out More Meaningful Interactions

Your college friend group is lovely and reliable, but are they pushing you in the direction of your goals? It’s said that you can be summed up by the five people closest to you, so make sure that they are also headed in the right direction. You don’t need to ditch old friends just because they’re not interested in the same level of success as you. However, you should integrate people who challenge and motivate you into your social life. At networking events, make an effort to meet realtors and brokers who are levels ahead of you; people who inspire and challenge you. These connections will help you clarify exactly where you want to be next and remind you if you’re on track along the way.

13. Re-evaluate Your Personal Goals

Have you considered that maybe you’re in a career rut simply because you haven’t made an effort to get out of it? As silly as it sounds, it happens. Contentment turns to complacency, and before you know it you’re no longer fulfilled by your work and you don’t know why. Humans are made to grow and change, but you’ll need to do the work yourself. Do you have a list of skills you want to gain in the next month or two? Now’s the time to invest in yourself put one together. Create small tasks that you can measure and celebrate on your way to a larger goal. Fall in love with the experience and feeling of growth. This could be as small as opening a new account on a social media platform or diving into a new niche – it’s up to you. The aim is just to keep moving.

14. Use Your Downtime to Finish Forgotten Work

When clients are ringing your phone off the hook, organizing your CRMs and updating your web integrations seem a lot less urgent. But when you’re dealing with downtime, this is exactly when you should tie up those loose ends. When business picks back up, you’ll be prepared, updated, and organized rather than scrambled by the change of pace.

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Wrapping Up…

It’s time to change the phrase ‘getting stuck in a rut’ to ‘passing through a rut’ or ‘getting over a speed bump’. There’s no need to allow a pause in your real estate career to grow and multiply until you’re having to dig yourself out. A different perspective will help you become grateful, prepare for the future, and make the right decisions during downtime that will set you up for success.