The real estate business is a constant emotional and financial roller coaster ride, and it’s easy to forget how fortunate we are. The World Bank reported that over 2.1 billion people lived on less than US $3.10 a day in 2012. And it’s not just “developing countries.” In a book titled $2.00 a Day by Kathryn Edin (Sept. 2015), the author stated that about 1.5 million American households, including about three million children, are living on $2 per person per day.
Consider the orders of magnitude astronomers use when discussing the universe. Our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years in size (about 6,000,000,000,000 miles) comprising hundreds of billions of stars. There are reportedly one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.
The point? We’ve not found life as we understand it yet anywhere else. Our lives are a collective cosmic blink. But for a fraction of a moment in time, we have experienced the wonders of existence, self-awareness and consciousness.
The next time you’re wondering why nothing’s going right, why is this happening to me and what did I do to deserve this, consider these pearls of wisdom in the form of inspirational quotes from some well-known and perhaps not-so-well-known thinkers (attributions are often controversial and may not be accurate):
- “I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.” – Woodrow Wilson
- “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.” – Marshal McLuhan
- “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson
- “Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?” – Frank Scully
- “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
- “Either you think you can or you think you can’t and either way you’re right.” – Henry Ford
- “Before you get angry at someone, you need to walk a mile in his shoes. Then, you will be a mile away from him, and … you will have his shoes.” – ancient Turkish proverb
- “What you do today is important because you’re exchanging a day of your life for it.” – Unknown
- “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” – Beverly Sills.
- “Most of us will never do great things, but we can do small things in a great way.” – Maren Mouritsen
- “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” – Henry Ford
- “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” – Dolly Parton
- “The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.” – Antisthenes
- “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.” – Ernestine Ulmer
- “One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” – AA Milne
- “Speak the truth but leave immediately after.” – Slovenian Proverb
- “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” – Benjamin Franklin
- “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” – David Jakovac (possibly a pseudonym)
- “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin
- “When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell
- “Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.” – Hector Berlioz
- “The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.” – Robert Frost
- “To my real estate agent, Chernobyl is a fixer-upper.” – Yakov Smirnoff
- “What we call real estate – the solid ground to build a house on – is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
- “I put my heart and my soul into my work, and lost my mind in the process.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “Some people never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” – Unknown (not George Eliot)
- “When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money.” – Alanis Obomsawin
- “People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day” – Unknown (not AA Milne)
- “I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.” – Muriel Strode
Chris Seepe spent 35+ years in I.T. before entering commercial real estate a decade ago. He’s a published writer and author of two books on “landlording,” course instructor, president of the Landlords Association of Durham, and a commercial real estate broker of record at Aztech Realty in Toronto, specializing in income-generating and multi-residential investment properties. Call (416) 525-1558, or send him an email.
