Human beings are creatures of habit. We learn something—a skill, behavior, statistic—and burn it into our being. The more we use that “thing”, the stronger it becomes. We’re hardwired.
Some might say “stubborn”.
In many instances, being hardwired is perfectly fine. That staunchness, however, is a problem when we become inflexible as a result. People who do not embrace the will to unlearn and relearn will live their lives with limits. Learning to rewire your hardwired thinking is a worthwhile effort.
Destin Sandlin, founder of SmarterEveryDay, conducted a test of his ability to rewire his hardwired thinking. He had a bike that had been re-engineered so that turning the handlebars in one direction actually veered the wheels in the opposite one—contrary to a normal bike. When he attempted to ride this altered bike, he couldn’t maneuver the opposite steerage. It sounds simple, but Destin found the challenge greater than he expected.
For eight months, Destin spent five minutes a day on the backwards bike. Then, it suddenly clicked for him.
“One day, I couldn’t ride the bike and the next day, I could,” he explained. “It was like I could feel some kind of pathway in my brain that was now unlocked…but if I wasn’t paying close enough attention to it, my brain would easily lose that neuropath and jump back on the old road it was more familiar with. Any distraction, like a cell phone ringing in my pocket, would instantly throw my brain back into the old control algorithm, and I would wreck.”
Destin added that one of the lessons he learned from this experiment is that “knowledge does not equal understanding.” He knew how to ride a bike, but his brain resisted the change to his accepted perception of this knowledge.
Your mind is a powerful tool, and it takes concerted effort—like Destin’s—to rewire your established thought patterns from the existing tendencies, or biases. It’s easier to wire your thinking, behavior, and understanding than to rewire it.
Are you so hardwired that you’re missing new home sales opportunities? Is there a behavior, action, or reaction that needs to be retooled? Making change requires commitment and effort.
“Repetition is the mother of skill,” Tony Robbins stated.
“Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment,” Zig Ziglar posed.
Destin Sandlin rewired his brain over an eight-month period. He presented the same challenge to his young son, who had been riding a bike for three years. The youngster managed to ride the backwards bike in just two weeks. His mind was more open to new thinking.
As we gain experience, we can fall into the trap that knowledge means mastery. This thinking can close our minds to learning and growing. Sales managers often see that bringing in an inexperienced sales associate is preferable to a seasoned pro, because it’s easier to manage their training than attempting to fix the hardwired patterns.
I challenge you to take a different approach in your new home sales techniques. It could be as small as the way you welcome a visitor to a model or as complex as your method of making the presentation and asking for the sale. Start somewhere. Pull the plug. Then power up with another outlet.
Myers Barnes is America’s favorite new home sales trainer, author, speaker and consultant. For more information, please visit www.myersbarnes.com.
