I have worked in customer service based business for my entire working life. I understand human interaction with goods and services better than most people would even imagine.

Sales people are a different breed. We’re trained to read micro queues, body language, subtle changed in voice or how you’ve worded your email slightly different to normal.

What people who have never been through sales training don’t understand is how obsessed we are with non verbal communication.

We know when to bow out, we know when to push, we know when the conversation is now pointless and the most interesting thing about learning sales is understanding where to spend your time for the biggest dollar return.

The most successful sales people know how to attract those who like them and when to walk away from those who don’t.

Arrogance is a description that is thrown around a lot in real estate in particular. Often, people assume that because an agent will choose to walk away from business, it is because she/he is to arrogant to ‘do what it takes to win the client’ when in fact it’s because that agent has mastered the ability to recognise a client that is not worth the hassle because they don’t align with their beliefs.

In my experience, and I have over a decade of it.. When you are your most authentic self, you attract people who are aligned to you and you no longer have to waste energy on pretending or catering to other peoples expectations or demands.

This related to business, personal, relationships and so so much more than you would even realise and this post is about to plot twist in a way you did not expect.

Often when we are our most authentic self, people either like us, or they don’t. And yes, we are trained to be able to identify which is which. This is why more often than not, when you come across a really successful person who has accepted themselves for who they are and stopped trying to shy away from the confrontation that may come from it, it’s all just water off a ducks back and they very quickly get on with their day.

The biggest lesson I learnt in my career that I have applied to every aspect of my life is that you can only control, what you can control. Here are a few examples of things you cannot coltrol.

• Rain on your wedding day.
• That the grass is green.
• The colour of your skin.
• Someone else’s actions.
• Serious illness or disease.
• Advancement of technology.
• The twelve universal laws.

However.

What you can control, is how you prepare, react and what you decide to do with your own time. Here are some examples of what you can control in response to the above.

• Having a wet weather plan on your wedding day.
• Move to the desert where there is no grass if it’s that big of a problem for you.
• Stop treating people of different ethnicities differently to how you would expect to be treated with your differences.
• Your own actions and who you allow in your space.
• Fuelling your body with key ingredients to help you fight the illness or disease.
• Use technology to your advantage instead of complaining about it.
• Learn the twelve laws, accepting the twelve laws and what your life effortlessly improve.

My two best friends are the most incredibly inspiring people I have ever met in my life. They’re both unbelievably intelligent, kind, patient, ruthless, tenacious and extraordinarily successful in their respective fields of work. They’re also both completely different to each other ethnically, socially, culturally and spiritually.

One has been by my side for twenty four years, she has almost died and has had a serious brain injury at a very young age that caused her to have to relearn key factors of her personality before she was twenty.

She flew over three thousand kilometres when my kidney was removed to be there for two days. It was all the time she had to spare with what she was going through but she sat next to my hospital bed and watched nonsense with me, catered to my flowers and stood up for me when I couldn’t stand up for myself.

My most recent diagnosis, she moved from that town she lived in that was over three thousand kilometres away because she knew I had limited support here. And she still lives with me now, stumbling through adulthood just as ungracefully as I am and I really hope she never leaves me. Ever.

The other friend is the reason I was successful in real estate. He was a few years ahead of me when I joined and he still has the same goals and aspirations as I do seven years later. He has had major surgery (I won’t go into detail here as he is less public about his surgery than I am) but I can tell you that no one else, on this planet, can sympathise with me over having major surgery on a vital organ like he can.

I remember one day we were at an event, and sorry mate if you read this. We’re here now, deal with it. But I was having a hard time listening to someone talk about kidney failure. I was fairly fresh out of having my kidney removed and the person talking on stage really pulled at my heart strings and I did start crying and I genuinely couldn’t stop.

And whether or not he even remembers that he said this. We’ll see. But someone asked if I was okay. He turned around and he said mate, I hope you never come to understand what she’s feeling right now. She’s not okay, but she will be. It’s not not something that most will even be able to begin to grasp.

You just know when someone allows you to feel your feels, stops trying to control it and embraces all the of the good, the bad and the traumatic with you, that that person is special. Both of these people are overwhelmingly special to me and I can call them with anything and I am confident they will support me, call me on my shit, offer help, have love and kindness and no matter what, just be my friends forever.

Neither of them have a preconception to what should happen. Neither of them have any desire to control, judge or speculate on what is going on. Both of them are unconditionally brave and step into the hardships life has thrown our way and while we may fault a little bit when standing of the edge of the cliff, we’ve always jumped.

There is not much I am afraid of anymore because what I have watched myself and my two best friends go through is worse than what most will ever experience in their lives. I know for an absolute fact that at the end of the day, after any scenario, I have my fiancé and my two best friends there to catch me, encourage me and support me through whatever curve ball is coming our way. And yes, I say ‘our way’ because as Kevin Hart says, “You’re my best fking friend bitch, that’s your job. The day we signed up and said that we best friends, that means that my bullshit, is your bullshit. And your bullshit, is my bullshit.”

Out of sheer sass and consequence of being my best friends, and husband to be because you’re a part of this too now, you’re now involved in all of my crap, but I do hope you all read this. I am so fundamentally proud of my people. Every single day I watch you take brave steps towards the lives that you want and I hope you know I will be here, every single step of the way to encourage you, be excited for you and pump up your tyres on the days you’re feeling deflated and don’t have any energy left.

I am so grateful that even in all my chaos and trauma and out of all of the yucky bits of my life I have questioned, doubted and sworn at out of frustration, grief and anger, that I managed to find you.

Thank you for being my people, never leave me or there will be serious consequences 🤍

Sarah x