Not Choosing is a Choice

Not Choosing is a Choice

Here’s a short meditation for buyers and sellers… Prevailing wisdom says there are no two ways (or even three or four) around it,  change Is scary.  But Is that really true? 

Something hit home with more clarity this week while I was helping a client through a difficult transition. It’s not real, actual change that’s scary. 

That’s just a clever illusion we’re used to fabricating. An obfuscation we manufacture to make it harder to wander outside the perimeter of our tightly-constructed brain maps, past the established fence lines of our own backyards and towards the great unknown looming like a dark ego-less abyss without any apparent handhold to grab onto or solid ground to step onto.  

Mostly because we haven’t had the chance to integrate the new-ness into our unconscious loops or comfortable self-definitions yet, it’s really the thought of change that’s the scary thing. The yet to be experienced prospects of change. The future imagining of what change will be like. The threat of the fear of fear itself that’s always most fearful.

Often on autopilot, we erect elaborate obstacle courses full of “what-ifs” in our heads. Ones that seem too tough or insurmountable and run us around In circles. Ones that obscure our vision and pick apart our resolve.

What if I get an offer on my house but can’t find another place to move? What if I buy a new house and lose my job? What if prices go up? Or down? What if I can’t stand the freeway noise? What if it isn’t perfect? The list of what-ifs can go on forever. Ad infinitum.

And that’s what is truly scary. The absurd lengths many of us often go, to avoid change. That’s the most insidious of all the bogeymen-creatures lurking in our closets. When people are struggling with change, something intriguing becomes clear: Doing nothing exists as the default selection on the spectrum of choice. Not choosing is a choice too. It’s called “None of the Above” on the exam.

What is it about human nature that makes it so easy to do nothing and spin our wheels in the same place rather than move forward into full engagement with a new and different place? (Perhaps a really exciting and life-affirming place precisely because it is new and different!)

And this is what’s so great about working in real estate. It’s a core pay-off that goes way deeper than status or success or the desire to pay the mortgage on one’s own home. It’s the privilege Realtors have of being regularly invited into people’s homes to share their most intimate processes/struggles/triumphs around change.

Thirty-five years and counting. I have yet to  work with any buyer or seller that wasn’t going through some major transition. Home Is inexorably entwined with every single passage in life. Home both as a metaphorical extension of self and home as an actual physical exoskeleton surrounding us.  

Realtors don’t necessarily feel privileged every minute of every day of course. There are times we feel like throttling clients when the bad and ugly of their natures eclipses the good. Or stupid human tricks become the temporary special du jour.

But that’s what makes it all so worthwhile when, on frequent occasions, we help/witness people summon up courage and navigate past their fears. Maybe in the form of a first time buyer rising to the occasion. Or a recently widowed spouse finding a path forward.

Brain maps are like ankle bracelets for minimum security offenders. Doing the time isn’t that bad.The three hots and a cot can be pretty cushy, except for that little electrical jolt we feel, when we choose to step over the invisible boundary. 

It’s fascinating to consider the irony: Home is our most important place of security, comfort, safety, privacy, refuge. But it’s also a place that can be a prison as well… House arrest leads to arrested development. And arrested development makes it harder and harder to embrace change.