RMG Agent Podcast
Welcome to the RMG Agent Podcast - the podcast curated exclusively for real estate agents by real estate agents. I'm your host, Reed Moore: it is my mission to create wealth and wholeness with everyone I serve. That includes you!
Join me as we embark on a journey to expand your real estate career and unlock your potential. Through candid conversations, expert interviews, and proven strategies, we'll explore the art of client relationships, negotiation tactics, lead generation, business development, and so much more.
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RMG Agent Podcast
Episode 67 - Warning! Breakthroughs May Cause Discomfort
Do you consider yourself self-aware? While 95% of people would answer "yes" to that question, research reveals only 10-15% truly demonstrate measurable self-awareness. This gap explains why many real estate professionals struggle to achieve meaningful breakthroughs despite their best intentions. 🎯
In this episode, we introduce a powerful growth framework that begins with awareness as its foundation. As high-producing agents, we're naturally wired for action—constantly making calls, showing properties, and closing deals. While this drive serves us well, it can create a significant blind spot when we operate on autopilot without taking time to assess where we truly are and whether we're heading in the right direction. 🚫
Reed and Jake explore five essential questions that can dramatically elevate your self-awareness:
💥How consistently do you live by your core values?
💥How do you respond to stress, conflict, and criticism?
💥How do others actually experience you (compared to how you think they do)?
💥What recurring patterns exist in your relationships and work?
💥Which emotions do you avoid or struggle to process?
Each question unveils areas where greater awareness can lead to meaningful growth. The "reality habit"—facing things as they truly are rather than how we wish them to be—creates a brave foundation for transformation. When we run toward awareness instead of avoiding uncomfortable truths, we position ourselves for breakthroughs. This awareness forms the base of our growth triangle, which we'll continue exploring in upcoming episodes focused on identity and strategic action. 🌟
Remember, you are both your greatest asset and your greatest challenge in business. By developing genuine self-awareness, you remove obstacles and amplify your strengths as a real estate professional. Subscribe now to join us on this season's journey of personal transformation! 🚀
Ready to leverage your professionalism with a fantastic tool? Check out our sponsor AreaPro at areapro.com/RMG for an exclusive discount for a platform that will transform your business.
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Anytime we go to grow right, really truly grow growth is outside of our current comfort zone. When we're talking about growth and breakthrough and we're talking about maturing as people, there's this whole idea of running to awareness and running to reality. That sets a brave foundation for growth. Real Estate Professionals, welcome back. We are in season three of the RMG Agent podcast and we are so thankful that you're back here with us again. We are rolling up on somewhere around 70 episodes and so many of you guys have liked and subscribed and been along the journey for us, so thank you so much for that. If you haven't, go ahead and hit the buttons, share it with a friend. And, as always, we love our sponsor, Area Pro, because they provide a product that we think every professional agent should have. Go to area pro dot com forward slash RMG for an awesome discount, Check out the product, Sign up. It's amazing. All right, Jake, what are we into?
Speaker 2:Okay. So season three we're jumping into. Warning Breakthrough may cause discomfort. Oh yes, fun title. Yeah, it's a little scary, yeah, Okay. So we, as we talked about in our last episode, we, we are jumping into a theme of personal growth this year or this season, uh, and so we've got, of course, a model and of course it's a triangle. Yes, so lay it out for me, reed.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, uh, first of all this this idea of breakthrough may cause discomfort Anytime.
Speaker 1:We go to grow right, really truly grow growth is outside of our current comfort zone, and so when I go to grow and I'm really enjoying the experience right away, a lot of times I'm already kind of predisposed to go down this road and I may be making advancements and all that, but I might not actually be really growing because a lot of times, the areas I need to grow are really uncomfortable and I might even have a posture of like don I need to grow are really uncomfortable and I might even have a posture of like don't touch that right, like I don't want to talk about this, but we want to really embrace growth and in order to do that, we're going to have to embrace at least some level of discomfort, and so we want to make things like this simple and we want to have models, because leaders think in models, and part of that is if we, if we have a mental model or a way of thinking about things, we can quickly identify stuff right away.
Speaker 1:So give you an example when you go to the doctor, they do a handful of things every time and it really helps them identify a baseline, identify where you're really at, and sometimes, just by them weighing you, looking at your eyes, looking in your ears, looking down your throat, they actually have a pretty good idea of what's going on Now not always right now with really significantly challenging medical issues, but there are a lot of things that just in a very short period of time they can get a baseline. And so for a lot of our growth, a lot of our opportunities for growth as real estate professionals, it's not these weird outlying issues. They're issues that maybe everybody, or the vast majority of people in real estate professionals, either are struggling with or have come up against and have broken through or are currently stuck, just like you are. So we want to just make it simple and say, hey, 80% of the time, 90% of the time, this is kind of the direction to go nice.
Speaker 2:So it's a little bit like, uh, outgrowing your first house with your family, right? Yeah, everything seems fine until you know you start looking around and every closet's packed full, there's stuff in every corner of every room. You're growing and now we're going to take this baseline test and be able to show you where that's exactly okay.
Speaker 1:So when we look at this and we just kind of stack it up in a triangle we're going to talk about and we're going to spend some time talking about today. We're going to talk about awareness just the power of awareness and self-awareness, and then we're going to talk about identity right, so we're going to layer on this this maybe a pretty big topic when it comes to identity and and understanding how to think about that and what, what impact it has on breakthrough and growth and then we're going to talk about strategic action actually taking action in a very poignant or a very purposeful way towards breaking through, and we'll talk about the different pieces of that, different things maybe to think about and unpack this a little bit to make it something that's actionable and just if you're only listening, this is a base middle top yes model, not a four or a three point model.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. Like we're going to talk first and foremost about this base for today's episode. Yes, which? What is our base? Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:So okay, so let's dig into the base. So, um, we want to understand awareness and self-awareness, and this is something I've kind of been um, you know, um, really really interested in rate recently is just thinking about awareness and thinking about self-awareness. One of the things that we're doing inside the coaching company is we're doing a thinking time. Right, we're just inviting people over to the house and saying, hey, we're going to block out two hours literally for thinking as high producing real estate professionals, there is a strong tendency that really serves us well a lot of times and that is just to go, just to take action, just to do stuff. Right, when we watch ourselves or others get frozen up and not take action, it's kind of the death of your business. So we want to be action oriented, we want to get stuff done, but that also creates a compression of the time in our life sometimes that we actually just spend thinking, and sometimes I was thinking about who am I really right? What is it that I really want? Where is it? Is it I'm going? And if the listeners are like me, when they fall into that pattern, they just go on autopilot and they just start pushing forward and pushing forward, and pushing forward and then they wake up around one day and maybe they realize they're actually not where they want to be, right, and it's it's a matter of I didn't take the time to stop and look around and figure out my surroundings and just be aware. The same thing actually applies to our self-awareness.
Speaker 1:I ran into a stat when I was kind of researching this for teaching a class, and that is that 95% of people identify themselves as self-aware, right? So you go around, you're just like, hey, are you self-aware? And most people are like, well, yeah, right. So you go around, you're like, hey, are you self-aware? And most people are like, well, yeah, right, yeah, I'm self-aware, okay, um, I I decided in my life I'm just going to identify myself with somebody who's not self-aware and it's just kind of a fun game I get to play with myself and that is that if I always think of myself as an outlier and the rules don't apply to me or I'm this special person, it actually kind of limits my growth because I, I, I give myself a free pass to not think about things, right. So if I just say, oh, I don't think I'm very self-aware which, by the way, actually newsflash, it turns out, it's true, right, not very self-aware, yeah, but the research actually says that somewhere between 10 and 15% of people actually are self-aware, right, in kind of a quantifiable way, which which we'll jump into and so we want to move our awareness forward, because it's the first place for breakthrough, and we've talked about this in the past.
Speaker 1:But one of the ways of thinking about this is exploring the reality habit.
Speaker 1:What is my current reality?
Speaker 1:Where am I really at?
Speaker 1:And it's easy to avoid that, right, right, one of the things I talk about a lot is, you know, if you're having financial challenges, right, one of the things that you might do is choose to not look at your bank account, right, and there's almost this idea of if I don't make myself aware, then I can ignore this, and if I ignore this and there's not consequences.
Speaker 1:But how does that play out? You go broke, yeah, yeah, yeah, it becomes problematic and in real estate, we've helped hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who have had the situation where they're in a bad financial spot financial spot to the point that they have decided to choose to not be aware of their situation for so long that there's massive consequences like foreclosure or pre foreclosure or just massive fines as a result. And the reality is, even if their situation was tough four months ago, five months ago, two weeks ago, it may have been a much smaller issue. So when we're talking about growth and breakthrough and we're talking about maturing as people, there's this whole idea of running to awareness and running to reality.
Speaker 2:That sets a brave foundation for growth nice I think of this as we're talking, I I go back to and I'm going to age myself here uh, pre gps's that were located in your car or a secondary device. You actually had to go on the computer type in the address, map quest. You had to go map quest to the address you were going to and then you also had to put the address where you were starting from yes, right, so yeah awareness is knowing where you're going and where you're starting from yeah, um, since I, you know I used my gps all the time.
Speaker 1:You know, on my phone it goes, you know, it pops up on my screen in my truck I am incredibly unaware of direction.
Speaker 1:I'm incredibly unaware of where I am, especially if I'm in a different city. I have just, I have just like locked onto that thing and I used to have a great sense of direction and I don't anymore. Right, I've just kind of given that up, unfortunately, or fortunately, whatever, it doesn't matter. But in our life, in our business and in our maturing process, this whole idea of awareness and self-awareness is really a foundational piece that, if we don't, if we don't square with it and we don't do some work around it, we don't square with it and we don't do some work around it, us working on identity and then working on specific action items don't have that original starting point and sometimes, a lot of times, we don't even go down this path because we're not aware of it. No-transcript, right, that person is choosing to not square with reality and choosing not to be self-aware and, by the way, that person can absolutely be the man or woman in the mirror, yep.
Speaker 2:For sure, right, yeah, sometimes we're, we are the, and we all just put me like a lot. Sometimes I am the most critical of the people around me and the least critical of me, and it should be the other way around. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So we've got five questions here to help you identify your awareness and self-awareness yeah, so so if I'm somebody that thinks that generally I'm self-aware, it's like okay, so well, how do you quantify that in a way that really helps you move forward or helps you know that you are, uh, very aware?
Speaker 1:Because, without a doubt, there are there are 10 or 15 percent of people who are self-aware, and when I was looking into this, I realized those people didn't stumble into self-awareness. They've actually done intentional work to grow their awareness, and so that's what we want to start with. This model is we want to say we want you guys to consider doing intentional work to become more aware when it comes to thinking time, creating space to just just think about who am I, where am I going all of that stuff as well as our self-awareness. So the first one is, if I'm going to be somebody who's more aware and more self-aware, I have to ask myself this question what are my core values and how consistently do I live by them? I live by them. Well, you want to see like a level of like dysfunction in your leadership? Right Is, say you believe one thing and then act a different way in front of your kids, right?
Speaker 2:Then you get stuck in saying the thing that you, as a kid, never thought you would say which is do it because I say to do it, not because I'm doing something else.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, yeah, exactly so. So there's this, there's this uh disconnect between what I say and what I model Right. And that disconnect, uh, very few people, I think, choose that. The very few people, I think, just say you know what, this is really good and healthy, but I'm going to do this Right. There is that temptation, especially if you're struggling with addiction, things like that, but a lot of times it just comes from a fact that I'm actually not aware of what I say and and what I do and how those line up or don't line up right. So what we can do about this is reflect on what truly matters, uh, and make sure that our daily actions align with those priorities. Consider where I might feel tension or compromise between my values and my choices.
Speaker 2:So this would be step one towards awareness yeah, an example of that would be uh, wanting to be healthy, being healthy as a core value, being fit as a core value, and then eating a butterfinger an hour ago right, yeah, yeah, yeah did you eat a butter? I might have eaten a Butterfinger. It was delicious, and now, as we're talking about this, I'm feeling real bad about it. That sounds like awareness. That sounds like awareness.
Speaker 1:Okay. So secondly is how do I typically respond to stress, conflict or criticism, and what does that reveal about me? So, if I'm creating space in my life to think about my awareness, I think, okay. So when I'm stressed out, you know, when I'm in conflict, when I'm dealing with criticism, how do I respond? Right? And then when I look at my response and I might be, you know, prone to stuffing that down, I might be prone to exploding, right, I might be prone to just be very, very defensive. What does that reveal about me? And if I can just ask myself the question, what does this reveal about me? Now I might be more aware of like I experienced a stressful situation and instead of reacting, I choose to respond.
Speaker 1:Reacting is very primal right when we find ourself being reacting, or somebody would say this person's reactionary right. I'm not engaging in an intentional thought process. So Stephen Covey says it really well in the seven habits of highly effective people and he says between input and response there is choice. I've experienced myself where there's been input and response and I have given up the power of choice just because you know I just respond, or like I just react. And so if I'm constantly reacting there, it's highly likely that a reaction is me not thinking about who do I want to be in this moment, Right, who do I want to show up as thinking about, who do I want to be in this moment, who do I want to show up as? And there's an opportunity maybe for reflection, to bring awareness, but it's certainly better to kind of pre-reflect on those situations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see that a lot with my uh, the way I parent my kids, as I watch them do something, climb a wall or something, that like I have a fear that they're going to fall, but, based on the values that I've put in and that I want to be as a parent, I have to stop and make the choice to allow them to do that, yes, and then that ultimately becomes my response and there is like a gut, jerk reaction of like get down off that, don't do that right, but as the values that I've put in place for the type of people that I want them to be, that that allows them to do dangerous things in a controlled manner that I control yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:The third thing when it comes to like asking the question, like how self-aware am I, is, uh, how do other oh, man, this is a big one how do others experience me and how does that compare to how I see myself? Um, another way of saying this, I think, um susan scott talks about this of us leaving an emotional wake. Right, people experience me as very intense, uh, and as silly as it sounds to say it out loud, there was, it was a couple years ago. My wife and I've been married for almost 25 years and, like a couple of years ago, I went to her and I said, hey, I just realized something. She's like what's that? I'm, like, I'm a pretty intense individual. And she looked at me like you're an idiot, right? Or maybe more, uh, more accurately, you are so unaware, right, but man, this is so powerful because self-awareness really is not just me, but it's me in relationship with other people.
Speaker 1:And if I can stop and just say, how do people experience me? There's a lot for me to learn about that. Do they experience love? Do they experience encouragement? Do they experience somebody in their corner? Do they experience somebody who is just my dad used to say a bull in a china shop in reference to me. Yeah, right, so if I'm a bull in a china shop and I'm just, like every time somebody experiences me, it's just this high level of intensity, without any thought, then I'm not self-aware and it's going to be really hard to grow, because growing is going to require me to walk in and to say, okay, what is the best use of my intensity and is this the appropriate time to have intensity?
Speaker 1:Sometimes, like for getting people up and going like let's go, let's listen, right, the intensity is great. You walk into a really hard situation, right, like you sit down with a seller and they just they're, they're working through probate for one of their parents. Man, that intensity not okay, right, right. Am I aware of that? Am I aware of the words I'm saying? Am I aware of the way that I'm?
Speaker 2:uh being experienced in this moment Really important. Yeah, it makes me think of the the triangle that you presented at our offsite, which was the love triangle that we love in different ways and it's, you know, the big default that most people struggle with is the care or the candor, right, right, and if you're one of the two where you swing really hard on the other one, you have to work on the opposite.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really hard on the other one you have to work on on the opposite, right? Yes, yeah, so, uh, and I I know for you, we've had lots of conversations and we're in a and pretty deep relationship. You have found a group of people that can take you all, all of what you are. Yes, and how has that affected affected things for you?
Speaker 1:it's been huge, right. So? So the idea of growth, um, isn't to mute or to kind of like bottle up some of your genius or who you created to be. It's really about being aware of how it impacts people. So one of the best things I've experienced in my life is to be surrounded by a group, in this case, a group of guys who I can, I can be me and be on this growth process and have people look at me and just be like, yeah, like I get it Right, or say, yes, I get it, I understand and this is an area you should probably check out, like you should probably, you know, think that through. You should probably, you know, take a look at your awareness of that. But either way, it's just this you know, being in a relationship with people who are willing to kind of put a mirror in front of you, which has just been a powerful thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been really cool for me because I err on the maybe the opposite of intensity, right, Like I'm emotionally. That was one of the things when, when I came over. That was interesting was that my KPA talked all about how intense I was. But I don't feel that extrovertly, it's internal that I'm emotionally. I'm very intense around situations and as we've gotten to know each other, your intensity has allowed me to be more intense extrovertly. Yeah Well, and it's interesting because just the awareness of that situations and as we've gotten to know each other, your intensity has allowed me to be more intense extrovertly yeah, well, and it's interesting because just the awareness of that is, just because you're experiencing something internally intense, doesn't mean somebody else can see that it registers right.
Speaker 1:Right, it's like hey, do you care about this? And inside you're like like I have strong feelings about this, right, I have strong thoughts about this, but that doesn't necessarily come out and so somebody might experience you as being apathetic where you're very not apathetic.
Speaker 2:Right again, it's an awareness issue yeah, and that's something that, with clients like I, have to focus on showing that I'm I am intensely fighting for them, even if, like I know that I am, like I have to show them that I am intensely fighting for them because they may not see it. Yes, yep, exactly. So what are we question for? Yes, what recurring patterns exist in my relationships, work or personal goals?
Speaker 1:Yes, patterns are such a great way If you're creating space to think and you're creating space to ask yourself these questions about the reality habit, about awareness. Being able to see patterns is something that you'll see if you take the time to stop and really reflect and think about this. And patterns for the good or the bad really show you something that comes out of you consistently, like over and over and over again. I can see this pattern in my life. Not all patterns are good, not all patterns are bad. Not all patterns are bad, and some patterns maybe you could even say are irrelevant. They just, they just exist. But if I know that I have this pattern of the way that I start a conversation or end a conversation, it really helps me to be able to understand. Is this default a healthy thing? So I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:Every time, growing up, I would hear my dad get off the phone. He would say bye, bye, bye, like that was just his, his default. And for probably 10 years, every time I would get off the phone with anybody, I would say bye, had no idea about it. Yeah, right, kind of irrelevant, because it's not, it's not hurting anybody, it's not helping anybody, it's just, it just is Right, kind of irrelevant because it's not hurting anybody, it's not helping anybody, it just is. But I was completely unaware and I realized I didn't choose the way that I get off the phone, I just defaulted into it. I was completely unaware. Somebody just finally laughed at me. They just said do you realize that you sound exactly like your dad when you get off the phone? And I stood back. I was like again, after 10 years of being completely unaware, I saw it. So now I have a choice Is this fine, is this good? Is this the best right? Do I need to make a change here Again? All of this leads me to being able to set the stage for breakthrough.
Speaker 2:Yep, nice, it's awesome. That reminds me of a habit that I was unaware of, for my first couple of years of real estate was I answered the phone as hello, this is Jake. Without anything, and it came from. I had previously worked jobs sales jobs that I handled a lot of inbound calls and I had to do the script of you know, a motorsport like this is Jake Right. And so when I, when I went into real estate, I dropped the, the company, but I kept the this is Jake, instead of being more um, elaborate.
Speaker 1:And so now I've had to change the way I answer my phones, yeah, and again, it's just like it can be little things and can be big, big things, but if I'm not stopping and thinking about how people are experiencing me, if I'm not thinking about you know what these patterns are, that I'm actually being unaware, yeah, and it's just going to be really, really hard to make substantial change in your life being unaware nice.
Speaker 2:Okay, then we're on to our last one. What emotions do I avoid or struggle to process, and why?
Speaker 1:oh man, um, so, uh, I would say that one of my defaults is, uh has been in the past, that I discounted the power of emotion. Right, like I want to be logical, I may want to make good decisions and that means no emotion, right, and the reality is, is that's not helpful? It's not helpful in sales, right? Because, uh, you know, the old saying is that logic causes people to think and emotion causes people to act. And when I want people to act and I want people to connect with me, I want them to get excited. When I'm excited and I want to be able to, you know, to to express that.
Speaker 1:The challenge can be that, if I'm unaware of what emotions I experience and I'll just say this, dudes happen to be, maybe stereotypically, more in the area of unawareness, right, like, what emotions do guys experience? Anger, what else? Happy? What else Anger? Right, like it happens to be very, very narrow. What else anger? Right, like it happens to be very, very narrow. And, uh, if, if I'm unaware of actually what's kind of underlying that, or or, or what's, you know what the undertow of that is like, what is it that I, what is the emotion that I'm actually experiencing, then I'm going to have a hard time breaking through because I'm not really in touch or thinking about what it is that I'm experiencing. And if I can't diagnose what is I'm experiencing, what those emotions are and what I can do to process that, then again the lack of awareness really leads to a lack of breakthrough yeah, makes me think of the.
Speaker 2:I don't even know where I got this from, but, um, girls or women can remember something like 34 different colors and shades, and guys can remember eight. Yeah, right, and it's.
Speaker 1:It's a struggle for me to get to eight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's the same. It's the same without looking around the room. Yes, it's the same with our emotions, right, like we see black and white and they see shades of emotions, yeah, or they feel them, and so they're definitely more aware of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah so if we zoom out, we say, okay, we're gonna, we're the beginning, we're gonna build this beginning of this model. Before we get to working on our identity and before we get to working on our um, our strategic action, we have to start by saying I want to acknowledge reality and I want to explore what reality is. And you know, what are the things in my life that I'm unaware of? Yeah, you know, am I unaware when?
Speaker 1:When clients experience this out of me a lot of times, they still work with me, but it's not the optimal experience, because I'm just not paying attention to what their experience is Right. Um, when, when I'm uh, uh, you know, when I'm living in front of uh people, do they experience my core values or do they just hear from them? You know, do they just hear them? And so if I look at these things core values how do I respond to stress, conflict, criticism, how do others experience me? What are the reoccurring patterns? And then what are the emotions I struggle with? Struggle with? This would be a kind of a diagnostic of saying, okay, so if I meet somebody I think is is truly self-aware and really working on their self-awareness, they're actually working on these five things right and doing work around that, and so if I join in on working around that, I'm setting myself up for the ability to have breakthrough.
Speaker 2:nice, that's awesome. Okay, so this is a really good foundation to build the rest of this model on, which, coincidentally, is what we're going to do for the next two episodes. Yes, we're going to do a deep dive into your identity shift and a strategic action for the top of our triangle. Yeah, anything else to add?
Speaker 1:No, I'm just excited and all this stuff. Right, we zoom out, we say okay, so this is all you know airy-fairy stuff, but this is the foundation. Like you are the biggest asset and the biggest challenge in your business. Let's grow and mature through this season to remove more of the challenge and highlight the asset that you are in the business.
Speaker 2:Awesome, as always, guys, we're here to impact, empower and encourage you in all things that you do, and specifically this season, in you. Yes.
Speaker 1:All right, guys, take care, we'll see you next time.