We are in the middle of a significant event in the world history of Commercial Real Estate and the economy at large with unemployment reaching nearly 25% which is close to 1930’s great depression levels, as of today, April 28, 2020. Here at The CRE Coach we create content to make commercial real estate easy, but if there is no economy, there aren’t a whole lot of commercial real estate deals happening at all. I implore you, do not waste this opportunity to make the changes in your life that you may need to make and have put off until now. So I want to share some best practices for working and keeping momentum during challenging times when companies are slowing down, tightening spending and even laying off employees. And the first tip to surviving a recession starts from the inside out. In order to lead your life, you must first lead yourself.

Humans are spiritual, physical, emotional, and intellectual beings, and we were made to function at our highest capacity with consistency and predictability. Self-leadership means creating healthy habits, even small ones that you can depend on, day in and day out in every aspect of your life. Your morning and nightly routine should be the same every day of the week. You don’t have to be an “organized” person to experience the benefits of consistency. Especially when working from home, being on furlough, or if you’ve been laid off, the best thing you can do is to create a routine based on a healthy life, and to put accountability around yourself of people who care about you and who will hold your feet to the fire. Don’t begin this process by looking at what is going on in your life right now, begin by defining where you are going, and then start evaluating what in your life today can stay and what needs to go in order for you to get there.

Take 10 minutes and ask the question, “in a perfect world”: what does a healthy spiritual routine look like? Are you right with God? Are you spending time in prayer and meditation? Do you have blocks of time dedicated to serving other people.

What does ideal physical routine look like? Are you running? Doing bodyweight workouts? Feeding your body with fuel rather than trash?

What does a healthy social and emotional routine look like? Which friends are you seeing, which friends are you not seeing? Would you be helped by scheduling phone calls with people who are going to keep you accountable to goals that you set and want you to do the same for them?

What does a healthy intellectual routine look like? do you have scheduled time for reading? education? courses? certifications?

I believe your calling in life is the intersection of the activities and pursuits where you are 1) naturally gifted, 2) what you most enjoy, 3) what you can be the best in the world at. Are you spending your time pursuing those skills and opportunities? Take a few moments to think about your current career path. Does it come easily? Do you enjoy it? Can you be the best in the world at it? Are there other opportunities you enjoy spending more time on but may not know how to make money doing it? There is no better time than right now to be asking these questions. So what do you do with all this? In order to lead your life, you need to lead yourself. so how do you lead yourself? First, design the perfect life. take 10 minutes after this video and design the perfect life taking into account your spiritual, physical, social and emotional, and intellectual life categories. take those activities and create a schedule based on those things. use time blocking and make sure every hour of your day is accounted for and then live based upon that time block schedule.

Next, get accountability. find people who are in the same boat and fired up about taking self leadership seriously and make a schedule where you have meetings with them over Facetime or Zoom or Skype. for example, I have a few friends who I will text at the beginning and end of certain activities so that they know when I’m doing what I’ve committed to. If they don’t hear from me, they know I have not been doing what I said I would do and I hear about it, we talk about it, i apologize for not living up to my commitment, and put measures in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

In order to lead your life, you need to lead yourself. Recessions, layoffs, and in this case the COVID crisis is squeezing everything. You are either going to get squeezed by a struggling economy, or you are going to squeeze yourself and beat it to the punch. The people who don’t change their lives and behavior and put pressure on themselves are not going to survive the recession, or they’re going to come out hungry and helpless and playing catch up. There is an opportunity here to take big steps forward. Don’t let it pass you by.