09/17/2014

I always thought Charlie Chaplin in the early 1900's was way ahead of his time with his insight into humor. Besides his physical humor of falling down from the silent movies he could make you laugh with some amazing facial expressions. He did have a quotation in the graphic I think is a reminder to us with friends, family, acquaintances, business clients, those we don't know on social media, to remember--- Humor's Proper Role. Much truth in humor in being sarcastic or mocking, to lighten up others or laugh at difficulties but LAUGH "with" PEOPLE NOT AT THEM. If you laugh at people you are being cruel. A "minor" tease is one thing, but if you get under the skin, or hit a raw nerve of something that they are self conscious about or VERY vulnerable about whether they are a lightly sensitiv... 09/16/2014

Like death and taxes I always say CHANGE is a constant in life. It is relentless like a rusty car in a field disintegrating over time. Keep your eyes and ears perked up on THIS MOMENT cause it won't come back again. SERIOUSLY. Settings, people, all in flow persistently. I like this quote on change cause it has beautiful imagery: "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same river." Accept that as fact or NOT, cause life really doesn't care, it just moves on, ready or not. If you accept this FLOW aspect of change you will be much more at peace. Churn in the water is good for you too. It is a shake up principle, keeps life very much alive. In the Dolphin Tale 2 movie, Morgan Freeman illustrates this lesson with a pocket watch that runs for f... 09/14/2014

Social Security Benefits - When you retire, do you know how much money you will receive from Social Security? This segment talks about receiving your social security benfits at age 65 or waiting until your 66 or even 70 yrs. old. Do you know how much money you will receive if you wait until your 70 ? Listen to my segment on Social Security - Click here >Robert J Russell Financial Services Show - Social Security Benefits     09/13/2014

Occasionally in life you will run across in business and friends information HOARDERS, the ones who do not want to share with you lessons learned and their knowledge. In general they need to learn that There's Enough Pie For Everyone. This is generally most often true. Teaching others good techniques of their own set of customers, their own use does not threaten you in any way. They hold tight the information cause they are basically insecure and want to keep some kind of perceived power. There are exceptions like telling a For Sale By Owner tips or advice they should be hiring you for. Or a technique you developed that uniquely positions you in your own marketplace with everything you worked so hard to build. I don't mean to contradict myself but a small portion of knowledge falls into... 09/13/2014

09/12/2014

I have ALWAYS been fascinated by the word NORMAL and observing what others consider normal cause for myself I was always the square peg with round holes around me, the proverbial ODD DUCK. Through years of life I have concluded Normal Is An Illusion. Normal behavior might be a range of where we should act, or what society says. Even what society said in 1900 is not what society says today. I think normal for all of us has to be internally driven or externally driven spiritually but I hear many things about normal for understanding. Normal is just a setting on the dryer. Normal is an illusion, what is normal for the spider in a web is chaos for the fly. I have been in the same UPSCALE neighborhood of $700K to $1 million dollar homes and seen one house immaculate inside with the next bloc... 09/10/2014

I got to thinking about agency with our real estate clients the other day and one of the fiduciary duties we have with them. We hold clients in high honor and ONE very important duty to them is LOYALTY. And WHAT could I use as a symbol to remember to be loyal to them? Your Loyalty Should Be Like A Retriever Dog. Have you ever had a Golden or a Labrador? Many dogs are pretty loyal to you but the Retriever breed is especially friendly and loyal to all things YOU. Unconditional love, your best interest, listen seemingly to your every word. Or is it the cookie in your hand? LOL. Think Retriever dog for loyalty with clients if not friends as well. ALWAYS there for you. YOU are #1 to them. 09/10/2014

I have always communicated to everyone around me that life is this big roller coaster ride with the ups and downs and those downs EVEN IN A SINGLE DAY are not permanent. If we look at this roller coaster ride in a single 24 hour period what we need to do in our work and our personal lives is to Create or Be Aware of the Happy Points to enjoy them along the way. Having pets in your life is almost a given happy point you can create as well as accomplishing something for yourself, doing something you like, or serving others. In the awareness department keep your eyes, ears, and all senses open to the SURPRISE happy points that you did not even expect. A hug that came from someone out of nowhere, someone else laughing because of you. Happy points are what make life worth living. Cherish them. 09/09/2014

Everyone can choose to live their life how they want. But some variant versions of the Golden Rule have popped up in friend discussions and also people I read on Facebook and I wanted to give my take on COURTESY. I say, Being Courteous Does Not Take A Day Off. The variant on the Golden Rule was, you treat me nice, I will treat you nice. You treat me bad, well BAD is coming back your way buster. Where did that come from? And how would that make any difference to a better world? It is back to an eye for an eye. EITHER someone has been hurt so bad they forgot this courtesy all the time thing. Or, somehow in their upbringing they did not learn that courtesy reflects on THEM and not on others the way you are treated if badly. Keep working on YOURSELF and even if handing out truth or disagree... 09/08/2014

In real estate transactions, raising kids, having a love life, doing a chore you don't want to do, being a caregiver, helping a friend in need,  -- OFTEN life can get pretty messy. We need to recognize if we are going to live life fully, We Must Embrace The Messy. We often have to do things we don't necessarily want to do. Be places where we don't want to be. The key is that we see that IT IS WORTH IT, out of love, out of duty, out of honoring someone.... It is a delicate balance cause in general you should invest your time, life, energy in others that invest in you except in the cases of SACRIFICE. As they say with pick your battles, ALSO, CHOOSE YOUR MESSINESS. With real estate you don't have to take on all clients. In life other than immediate family needs some people are too messy f... 09/06/2014

In the pest extermination world for the do it yourselfer, they had this contraption called the ROACH MOTEL. Where roaches check in but they don't check out. OK, not to gross you out with bug graphic images but it was like in life we get into something and our little feet just can't escape, WE ARE TRAPPED. We need to learn easy steps to GET OUT. I see this in real estate with bad credit scores. People have to find a way to increase the number to get a mortgage. I see it with sellers not willing to act on deferred maintenance to prepare a home for sale. I see it with buyers who "want to keep looking", and the search goes nine months or beyond. Many situations in real estate, business, or our personal lives where we get STUCK, and don't escape the roach motel. The three step formula for ES... 09/05/2014

We lost a very good man to cancer on Labor Day this year, Russell Lewis my friend and fellow REALTOR® and blogger from Austin. I met in person Russell in 2010 at a blogger RainCamp and his infectious smile and wild and craziness personality stayed with me as we chatted via commenting back and forth in blog land and also Facebook. His funny hat picture with coming in second in a peach preserves making contest always stuck with me. And talking about running races we shared on our schedule like a half marathon in Dallas. He was not pretentious at all, but was the real deal with a heart of gold and an acceptance of me and everyone else just as they were was precious!! I don't think Russell was afraid of death either and of the eight months I learned battling this illness revealed to very fe... 09/04/2014

There are not really many ways a doctor and a REALTOR are similar but many say if you want surgery you go to a surgeon not a plumber, you want to do a real estate transaction you don't do for sale by owner. I get that, but it is kind of simplified. But I thought one area of commonality is the Hippocratic oath. It in essence says, "Of my patients according to my ability and my judgment first, DO NO HARM." This is similar to fiduciary duties of the agent in real estate with REASONABLE CARE. Help or do not help if you can't with someone, BUT DO NO HARM. Be aware with your talent or lack thereof, your mouth, your writing, your tone, your pointing people in the wrong direction when you are GOING DOWN THIS HARM path. No one ethically wants to harm another, and the key is to THINK before you h... 09/03/2014

In the Reader's Digest they had a humor column with jokes called Laughter is the best Medicine, based on that quote. Throughout life when laughter pops into our lives I always think, Laughter The Great Destressor Something about it blows away the stress at least momentarily. Practice laughter with those around you. Surround yourselves as often as possible with people that make you laugh, and laugh HEARTILY. I really think it is good for your well being, your heart and your soul. Soothes you DEEP DOWN. 09/02/2014

As we head into the last part of the year we all need to REMIND ourselves a little lesson about HAPPINESS. Too often we think the ups and downs of a day, OUR CIRCUMSTANCES single handedly control our happiness. This is NOT TRUE. It is an INSIDE job. Remind yourself very emphatically, You Control Your Happiness No One Else. Do more things that make you happy to boost that inside feeling but MAKE THAT decision on your inside each day when you get up, YOU WILL BE HAPPY. It will set you in a good mood for your day. 09/01/2014

In the olden days of cheaper car manufacturing often believe it or not ONLY some flimsy glue held the rear view mirror to the inside of the windshield. Heat over time and vibration of the car would knck it loose. Torn Down Rearview Mirrors Can Be A Good Thing. Not for driving but in life as an analogy. Don't look back and dwell on the past so much. Hold tight the good stuff. Push far away the bad stuff. Your eyes are mounted on the forward part of your head cause that is where you are going. A baseball pitcher after giving up a home run with a short memory strikes out the next several batters to get out of the inning. Think of that image of the torn down rear view mirror to FOCUS best on the next phase of your life and as the singer says in the song below, bye bye to the past, welcome t... 08/30/2014

It stuns me constantly of all the blessings we truly have, the gift of another DAY, of LIFE itself, that people take for granted. You simply CANNOT waste the precious element of time you are given to be your very best every day. A humorous saying is ANY DAY THIS SIDE OF DIRT IS A GOOD ONE. I know MANY in my life, many close ones as a matter of fact, who are no longer here. No longer around to share conversation, hear their voices, listen to their thoughts, share their laughter. Now even Robin Williams who made us so laugh ~ GONE. He talked about Carpe Diem in Dead Poets Society, Seize the Day, making the most of it, GATHER THEE ROSEBUDS WHILE YOU MAY, before you are some old dusty black and white photo in a trophy case, and "worm food". We all must WAKE UP and be thankful for OUR life a... 08/28/2014

One thing I do get tired of particularly listening to others in meetings is COMPLAINING. But for ourselves, we can Stamp Out Complaining By Counting Our Blessings. We have it so tough. Telemarketers, traffic, business is not up to par, the price of food or gasoline. True, some of us have relationship or health ills but if you are alive, somewhere along the way that will strike you. But compared to others in the world, who would trade places with you IN A FLASH with security of their lives, pestilence, crime and hatred around them, start the day with COUNTING YOUR BLESSINGS and what is going RIGHT in you life, and put those COMPLAINTS ASIDE. You will have a much better day. 08/27/2014

Wildebeest 08/26/2014