I’m not sure if it’s the winter weather, the troubles in the world, or even possibly the phase of the moon lately, as I’ve been finding these days more people being terribly fearful about things to a degree of their being out of perspective with reality. Being worrisome about things that are likely not going to happen tend to bring those very possibilities more closer to entering our realities.
One of my customers at nearly every opportunity brings up the condition his father is in and proceeds to tell me all the things he’s done to protect his father from a possible fall. The intensity of his fear would likely make me nervous to a point where I would fall simply out of being overly cautioned about something hazardous. I can imagine what his poor father must endure with all the fussing that takes place whenever his son pays him a visit. We can only insulate ourselves enough in a general sense from the dangers of living, but I don’t think we can stop the hand of fate. I believe the keeping of everything in perspective helps with the sense of knowing that we’ve done enough. Any more than enough, becomes an overly-controlled environment and life is dull and filled with automatons. Robots are not robots if you can cause them to have a belly laugh.
Some may consider me a bit of a control freak with real estate transactions. Actually I’m not. I simply prefer to have things go smoothly to where I don’t have last minute surprises because someone didn’t follow through with a necessary task. Yes, I sometimes remind people of even the most elementary things they must do, but I’ve found it better just in case some small item was overlooked by a buyer or seller. Over the years I’ve had sellers who’ve been so filled with fear about their homes not selling that they were to the point of believing that their homes were cursed and would never sell. They would find every reason to believe why a buyer wouldn’t want their home because their minds were driven to the point of being out of perspective simply because of their fears being on an over-load. Those homes did in the end sell.
Some buyers are similar in a sense that they look for the most frivolous of reasons to not pull the trigger on purchasing a good home at a fair price. Believe it or not, I worked with a couple on and off for over 10 years showing them homes who would always find something ever so small to cause them to continue looking. They were terribly fearful people. Because both of them were paranoid, they stoked each other’s fires of fear. I’ll never forget the day I was showing them the absolute perfect home for them at a bargain price. I knew they liked it and as we were walking out I said to them, “If you don’t purchase this one, find someone else to work with because I can’t do this anymore.” The wife said with a nervous giggle, “You’re kidding aren’t you.” My response was, “Absolutely not.” After looking at it another four or five times, they finally purchased it and are still happy homeowners. They popped in my mind today while I was waiting for a buyer to arrive while parked across the street from one of the homes they nixed.
Wasted time, missed opportunities, excessive wrinkles, and locks of gray are indeed by-products of not keeping our anxieties at a minimum and the bugaboos under control.
