If you’re a real estate agent and you’ve ever had a day when you’ve thought:
“Maybe I’m just not good enough at this.”
This is for you.
Real estate can mess with your confidence.
You win a listing and suddenly you’re feeling fantastic.
Then you lose one.
A buyer disappears.
A vendor chooses another agent.
Your pipeline goes quiet.
And suddenly, you start questioning yourself.
I know that feeling.
After more than 20 years in real estate, one of the most important lessons I learned was:
A difficult market does not mean you’re a bad agent.
In my book Confessions of a Woman in Real Estate, I wrote:
“Property cycles have affected my business significantly, so much so that four out of the eighteen years in business resulted in absolute panic stations.”
There were difficult periods in my own career when things certainly didn’t go according to plan.
But I refused to give up.
Instead of trying to solve everything at once, I focused on something much simpler:
The next listing.
And then the next one.
That’s why I believe it’s so important to separate your results from your identity.
A disappointing result doesn’t define your ability.
A result is information. It’s not a verdict on you.
If you don’t get the listing, instead of thinking “I’m hopeless,” ask:
What can I learn from this?
Could I have handled the presentation differently?
Did I really uncover what the vendor wanted?
Did I follow up well enough?
What will I do differently next time?
That’s how you turn disappointment into development.
As Maya Angelou said:
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”
Confidence isn’t about never having setbacks.
It’s about refusing to let a setback determine what you believe about yourself.
Learn from the result. Don’t become the result.
What do you tell yourself after you lose a listing?
