Positive thinking is a must. But there have to be reasons for it.
Anyone who has spent time around personal development books has heard of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
The advice is pretty simple. Be pleasant to be around. Smile. Show interest in other people. Most people’s favorite subject is themselves, so if you let them talk about it you can make a friend fairly quickly.
That’s not bad advice as far as it goes.
Another major figure in that world is Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote The Power of Positive Thinking. His argument was that if you focus on what you can do instead of constantly worrying about what might go wrong, your results tend to improve. People who expect good outcomes generally perform better than people who assume everything will fail.
There’s truth in that too.
But somewhere along the line a lot of people took the wrong lesson from it. They started believing that thinking positive is the work. If they visualize success, say the right affirmations, or keep a good attitude long enough, things will somehow fall into place.
That’s not really how it works.
I remember hearing Donald Trump say years ago that Peale had a big influence on him. This was around 2017. At the time, you could hardly find anyone willing to say a good word about Trump publicly. Even people who quietly supported him usually kept it to themselves to avoid the argument.
Yet here was someone who had built a massive real estate empire and had just been elected President of the United States.
My thought at the time was simple: there is probably something to the mindset he learned.
And there is.
But smiling and thinking positive by itself doesn’t get you all the way there. You have to be smiling and thinking positive for good reason.
Those reasons usually come from work that was done long before the moment arrives.
Over the years I’ve built systems around land brokerage. I spend a lot of time studying land values, watching who is buying what, and paying attention to what kinds of properties different builders and investors actually want. When a landowner calls to talk about selling, I can usually tell them what to expect before the process even starts.
If a tract shows up that’s a good investment, I can often recognize it quickly and know who it might fit.
If waiting is the better move, I can tell someone that too.
When you have that kind of experience and preparation behind you, it’s a lot easier to be friendly and positive. Not because you’re forcing yourself to think happy thoughts, but because there are good reasons to believe things will work out.
Positive thinking works best when it’s supported by preparation. Confidence is a lot easier when you’ve already done the work that makes confidence reasonable.
P.S. If you own land, you’re probably not ready to sell today. And that’s great. But being prepared with current info is smart. Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?
That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for.
It’s a straightforward Broker Opinion of Value based on current listings, real sales, development activity and the buyers actually active in North Texas land today.
And it’s free (for now). No obligation, no pressure to sell.
P.P.S. If you don’t want or need the Reality Check today but enjoy this kind of thinking, you can get posts like this in your inbox whenever I publish them (usually daily).
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