Earlier this year I had what I would perceive as a negative experience with a real estate agent.

I’m sure I’m not alone in that experience as let’s face it, most real estate agents don’t have a very good reputation for being honest.

That being said the second experience I had was with a very honest and reliable real estate agent who sold our home.

And my faith was somewhat restored.

However I did have another not so great experience a few weeks ago when my husband and I were negotiating on another property. At the end of those negotiations we both felt as though we had been used to push up the price of another potential buyers offer, we felt like the agent didn’t listen to us and that he really showed little care. Our offer was eventually too low so we didn’t get that property but felt that we really didn’t want it in the end because it had been such a stressful process.

This past weekend my husband and I bought what will become our next home and our experience was vastly different! There was no stress and we felt listened to and it seemed to go almost too smoothly.

I realized today that because of my previous negative experiences I was expecting my next experience to be the same. I was going into a situation with preconceived ideas about what the outcome would be.

How often in life do we go into a situation where the outcome is already preconceived?

I received an email today that had the line ‘can we please talk’ and I automatically jumped to the conclusion that it couldn’t be good. It turned out completely differently to what I expected, which was great!

Again another situation where I had preconceived the outcome and created minutes of stress that were completely unnecessary!

I know from my experience working with humans for many years that most of us will do this. I think that it is because we like to feel in control of a situation, be it negative or positive, so that we can be prepared.

But I also know that we can miss out on positive experiences because we have already set ourselves up for a negative experience. We are so far into the negative emotions that we don’t quite get to experience the full positive and happy emotions because we need to hit neutral before we start feeling the positive.

The world might be a different place if we were to practice less judgment and give the benefit of the doubt.

Tanya Carroll

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