I still remember something I heard in a seminar I attended in June of 1985 that remains quite profound to me to this day. The leader of the seminar said to the audience, "You either have what you want in life, or you have the reasons why you don't."

That was such a simple statement for me to hear, but it instantly resonated deep within me. And I knew it would have far reaching implications to me for the rest of my life, too, as it told me that my success, or lack of success, would be a direct result of my own choices.

With this in mind, when you see the names on the list of top producers in your office year-after-year, do you notice how many of the same names seem to be on that list quite regularly? There's really no accident why this is true -- it's because they've been doing the things that constantly produce large amounts of commissions for both themselves and the office. And the other agents who never make it onto this list are busy doing something else throughout the year. But yes, they're feeling busy throughout the year also.

Achieving the success you've always wanted in real estate involves:

1. Identifying the ideal prospects you want to work with

2. Having both the people and presentation skills to close these prospects on working with you exclusively

The rest is really just details

To show you an example of this, when I first began my career as a commercial agent years ago, I was intrigued by a man in my office who had very little knowledge of property values in our real estate market. But interestingly, he always made great money.

It took me some time before I recognized that his success came from his ability to both identify prospects, and close them on working with him as their real estate agent. But despite his lack of knowledge of fair market value in our marketplace, he certainly talked to his clients and prospects like he knew exactly what he was talking about at all times. This made people feel certainty around him, which compelled them to want to work with him even more.

Now granted there were some times when I saw him with egg on his face when working with savvy, full-time real estate investors who knew value better than he did, but these times were definitely rare. And his confidence, assertiveness, and willingness to completely attach himself to his prospects whenever he smelled opportunity and not take "No" for an answer, made him very successful throughout his career.

In drawing a parallel here, I once read how Thomas Edison went about inventing the light bulb. It took him over 1,400 attempts before he successfully emerged with a light bulb that would work, but it was really his thinking along the way that I found to be quite extraordinary. He was so absolutely, positively convinced that he would find a way to do it, that he considered every one of these 1,400-plus failures an indication that he was one step closer to finding the right solution.

By eliminating what didn't work, one step at a time, he reasoned he was continually getting that much closer to what would work.

The more you're convinced with absolute certainty that you'll achieve the success you aspire to in your business, the more you'll guarantee it happening.

Getting rejected during prospecting, being turned down for an exclusive agreement, and having deals fall apart on you are all part of being a real estate agent. Heck, the most successful agents in the business are the ones who experience the most failure along the way towards achieving that success. They're the Thomas Edisons of the world who are convinced that constantly putting themselves out there and experiencing short term failure, puts them that much closer to achieving their dreams.

In reality the difficulties we experience throughout our real estate careers everyday are not really failures, they're just temporary outcomes. And the more that we understand this, and the more that we just move on to what's next for us to do without all the emotion and drama that can be attached to these temporary outcomes, the faster we'll achieve the success we want for ourselves.

So have the mindset throughout your real estate career that no matter what happens to you on any given day, you have the ability to immediately rise above it. And know with absolute certainty, like Thomas Edison did, that you're now really that much closer to producing the results you've always wanted for yourself in your real estate business.