“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” — Heraclitus
I had a client — John, naturally — who described a shifting market to me like it was a personal betrayal. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to work,” he kept saying, as if the market owed him the conditions he’d built his business plan around. It didn’t. It never does.
Here’s what I told him: your relationship with change is the only part of this you actually control.
Are you fighting the market, or are you dancing with it?
Change Isn’t the Enemy — Resistance Is
Philosopher Alan Watts said, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” Richard Branson built an empire on a version of the same idea: “Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business, and it has been key to everything I’ve done from the outset.”
Current research consistently points to managing change as one of the biggest challenges leaders face today — and yet most of us still treat change as a threat to be survived rather than a partner to be worked with.
Feeling this one? You don’t have to figure it out alone — book a free High Performance Call and let’s talk through where you’re at.
Three Ways to Shift the Relationship
- Connect with change. Treat it like a friend, not an intruder — one you can build enough trust with to actually hear what it’s telling you about the market.
- Play with change. Bring curiosity and imagination to it instead of dread. Curiosity creates flow. Dread creates resistance.
- Dance with change. Move with it, actively and on purpose, until it stops feeling like something being done to you.
Take action: Name one change in your market right now that you’ve been resisting, and write down one way you could work with it instead of against it.
This is what being an Awesome Human in a shifting industry actually looks like — not bulletproof certainty, but the flexibility to move when the ground does. The agents who last aren’t the ones who never get surprised. They’re the ones who know how to dance.
If your business needs a new relationship with change, book a free High Performance Call.
About Jet Xavier
Jet Xavier is a High Performance mindset and accountability coach who works with real estate agents, principals and team leaders to build sustainable, high-performing careers. Learn more about Jet.
This piece began as a column for Elite Agent — you can read the original here.
