A Life Lesson From Real Estate
Stay in your power.
One of my hobbies is to go and tour open houses on the weekends. My partner and I want to get a house together in a couple of years so we have been going together and making lists of the things we like and dislike. The idea was that our combined list of ‘must haves’, ‘nice to haves’, and ‘deal breakers’ would combine to be our ultimate roadmap we could provide to a real estate agent when the time comes. It’s been an enjoyable process.
Mostly.
Until something in my ‘must haves’ ended up in his ‘deal breakers’.
I am a huge fan of open concept. I like the spacious feel. I like being able to see the tv while I am working in the kitchen. I like being able to keep an eye on my girls while I am working in the kitchen. I think it is the best. My partner, it turns out, does not like open concept. Like at all.
When I found this out, I was upset.
The key realization for me though was that I was not upset that he didn’t like open concept. I was upset because my thought about that expression of preference was that our relationship was doomed.
We didn’t like the same kind of things.
We would never be able to find something that we both liked.
We won’t be able to live together.
We are doomed.
That is the whole story I concocted over him not liking open concept.
The thing is, him not liking open concept doesn’t mean any of that. That entire story I had about it was optional. It was just one possible interpretation of it. And when I was believing that story and feeling upset about it, I was arguing with him about why open concept was better. I did not want to go to more open houses. I was looking at all the other things we disagree about and making them all mean the same doom story. I didn’t ask him why he didn’t like the open concept. I didn’t make any attempt to try to understand his preferences. I checked out.
Doing all of those things, I am the one dooming our relationship. Not the open concept. I have taken a difference in preference and used it as an excuse to check out of the relationship. The only way this difference in preference dooms us is if I make it doom us. I could just have easily gone to work in brainstorming layout options that could work for both of us. I could have dug deeper to get an understanding of what he doesn’t like about it. I could decide that I could like something other than an open concept. There were options open to me other than the one I went with.
Being able to recognize that my thoughts are optional has been a total game changer for me.
In every situation, there are the hard facts of the situation and then there is the interpretation a human brain gives it. Recognizing my own interpretations of the facts has given me the ability to take responsibility for my own feelings and life experience. I am able to choose on purpose which thoughts I want to keep and which ones are not serving me. We might not have control of every thought that pops into our heads, but we certainly have control over which ones we choose to interact with and believe.
So now I get to choose. What do I want this difference in opinion to mean? This is where all my power is-in the meaning I give to things. Making this choice consciously keeps me in my power. Making it unconsciously gives up my power. I do not want to give up my power. I want to decide this on purpose.
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