Intuition

Although from the outside it looks like working in real estate is a property business, it’s actually not, it’s a people business. It’s a business servicing people who are in the process of buying or selling property. Each transaction can vary in the number of people involved. It can be quite a significant number when you take into account the buyers and sellers (and their families), but also the other potential buyers who looked at the property but were not successful.

One aspect that you become fascinated with as an agent is how these people process information, make decisions and emotionally react to the responsibility of what are often major life decisions. As you can imagine, capabilities vary from person to person and responses can range from clinically logical to wildly emotional. To be effective as an agent you need to study and understand different personality types so that you can provide guidance in a format that they will understand and get the
most value from.

Part of this is understanding how people make decisions. On the surface you would think that the more information someone is given about a particular topic, the more likely you are to arrive the correct decision. Studies have shown however that this is not always the case. There is a point where too much information just confuses us.

The studies have shown that if a reasonably straightforward decision has to be made then we can weigh up each side of the issue and make a decision. However, if we have to make a decision that has many layers to it and is overly complex then it’s been found that the answers to these problems are
correct more often if we revert to our intuition or our “gut feel”. Our intuition is the product of our whole life experience and is a valuable tool when things get confusing.
It seems like it should be the opposite but this is not new science. Sigmund Freud, (1856-1939) the father of modern psychology said “When making a decision of minor importance I’ve always found it advantageous to weigh up the pros and cons. In important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner nature or our being”.

This maybe helpful to you if you find yourself having to make a major life decision, although there is another saying that I always find comforting. “If it’s not ready to be clear, it’s OK to leave it confusing”. Sometimes it is not imperative to immediately find the answer to complex problems, but if you absolutely have to, maybe relying on your “gut feel” is as good an option as any.

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