Fridays with Laura has her out of office turned on and will be back next week…

Current status: relearning how to fly a kite!

Welcome to Friday, let’s sweep this week as we again prepare for another, together. Before I get to the “what if…” within my subject line, let’s first look at what is so that we may continue to know our numbers and craft a true narrative for our clients who need to know! *Tammy Heldridge, thank you for your text this week and share of this quote – both meaningful to me…

“The two skills of modern business: storytelling & spreadsheets. Know the numbers. Craft the narrative.”

Ok everyone! Here is what is as we sweep & digest this week…

“It’s important to remember the mind is like a parachute, it works best when it is open.”

I am listening,

Laura Smith | Windermere Real Estate Co.

laurasmith@windermere.com :: 206.227.7133

There’s a lot of turmoil in our world at the moment, caused by long-standing inequalities that have deep roots in our country. Our community is the heart of Windermere and that heart is hurting. As a real estate office, we have historically not spoken out on matters of social and racial justice, and sometimes we struggle with knowing exactly what to say. But remaining silent isn’t the answer, and this statement is long overdue. Black Lives Matter. While we support everyone equally and have zero tolerance for those who don’t, the ongoing violence against the Black community shows us that there is still a long way to go. Undoing what divides us is hard, ongoing work, but it is necessary. Let’s draw strength from each other, inspire one another, and listen closely to the individual stories told by each of our neighbors. Without hearing and understanding these perspectives, we cannot truly build the community we all want to call home.

I’m listening. – Laura

Welcome to Friday, let’s sweep! In my humble opinion, this week’s sweep is a meaningful moment in recalibrating our resiliency together moving forward. As we await continued improvement with our local and global health statistics to show us we are ready to further open our business and lives – I am certain there are blindspots and struggles we have not yet faced. We’ll need to find continued resiliency to endure these next miles.

I’ve brought in a special person and message for you with a focus on key ingredients that just may help us with our resiliency.

For many of you, let me first take you back to our 2020 kickoff events as we prepared to set tone + focus for a New Year. No doubt what we are experiencing collectively right now was not a part of our programming on our stage that day. Gian Paul Gonzalez however was on our stage that day and I’ve brought him back to help guide us onward deeper into 2020.

For those of you who have not yet had a chance to hear Gian Paul on stage, welcome to this virtual stage and messaging during our Stay Home, Stay Healthy order.

PSA: this message is 27 minutes. My hope in working with Gian Paul was a brief hello and check in with all of us – he gave us much more than that. He’s just that kind of guy!

To wrap this week, I’ve written two words below in bold. They will make more sense after you watch Gian Paul’s message…

THANK YOU.

“Let’s stay all in by being resilient.” – Gian Paul Gonzalez

…and please share this message with anyone. In “showing up” for each other – despite distanced – we too can each be a key ingredient to another person’s resilience.

All In, for you. All In, for us.

Good news, the number of new pending sales continues to rise and the most current week is 79% of the same week in 2019. 

The months supply of inventory is 1.0 vs 1.3 a year ago. Demand high and supply low.

Reminder: Weekly statistics are for the week ended every Wednesday. They are generally published by the end of the day Friday – here. However, we are rushing to get them out on Thursdays. *If you’d like me to email you the full weekly report for more on King, Seattle and Eastside footprint – text me: 206.227.7133

Where I was able to join you on zooms or calls this week you may have heard me in my tone and focus in identifying moments of collective weariness. These moments of weariness within our Stay order hits each of us at different moments and in different ways. The difference right now is that the adrenaline surge we all experienced early in a time of crisis has worn off. While Covid-19 is not behind us and as we move slowly towards more re-opening of life, we’ll need to continue to find ways to work with weariness during continued unprecedented times.

Adrenaline got us through; now what?!! Bringing in Brene Brown into our mix once again to speak to this on her Unlocking Us podcast…24 minutes to help us navigate collective weariness!

*and if you want a good laugh, imagine my husband trying to go to sleep and me making him stay up and listen to Brene for 24 minutes. He was a little over me in that moment. Just calling that moment what it was! And oh, then I proceeded the next morning asking him “what your # today?” Really over me at the moment. Good laughs though! You’ll “get it” if you listen in…

“Unlocking Us; on comparative suffering, the 50/50 myth and settling the ball“

Welcome to Friday everyone as we roll into Mother’s Day weekend…and a beautiful one anticipates us! Just tallied my Zoom meeting count for this week = totaling 22. Wow. Yet the wow I’m really focused on is awaiting a final tally on Neighbors in Need campaign. Together we have accomplished amazing. These funds will make a direct impact to our local food banks throughout our footprint. My heart is so very full.

Ps, if my mom is reading this – thank you for participating in this campaign! Love you mom! Love you Windermere.

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“To be of championship caliber, a crew must have total confidence in each other, able to drive with abandon, confident that no man will get the full weight of the pull…. When you get the full rhythm in an eight, it’s pure pleasure to be in it. It’s not hard work when the rhythm comes—that “swing” as they call it. I’ve heard men shriek out in delight when the swing came into an eight; it’s a thing they’ll never forget as long as they live.”

– George Yeoman Pocock, from Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat

The Boys in the Boat  is one of my top 5 books of all time and today being what would have been Windermere Cup 2020 I am giving a nod to both this true tale of the University of Washington men’s rowing team’s unlikely victory at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and to our annual celebration of community + sport. I miss everything about this weekend; including the grit & character I witness at the finish line from athletes around the world.

This weekend’s checkpoint; your “swing”

Being that Gov. Inslee extended our Stay Home, Stay Healthy thru May 31st 2020, I again share the checkpoint below as a way to take a pause amidst our larger pause and see what adjustment you will decide to make in order to find your “swing.”

Keep in mind, you are not rowing alone. The moment when a crew suddenly is rowing in near-perfect sync, with complete trust in and respect for other rowers is the moment of “swing.” Continue to show up, lean on each other and trust that we’ll together reach our Stay Home, Stay Healthy order with strength and reach another level of grit & character. Our continued recovery will be a direct reflection of our focus right now.

What vital few activities can you do in the strokes ahead to increase your scores as we continue to recover? What are non-negotiable?

Need help finding your “swing“? I’m in your boat. Ask for help at this moment of checkpoint within our extended Stay Home, Stay Healthy order.

All in, for our boat.

This week’s mile(s); a checkpoint.

Welcome to a new week within our Stay Home, Stay Healthy environment. As Gov. Inslee further prepares and communicates with WA State on what further reopening our economy will look like, my gut tells me this week is a good time for a “checkpoint” within our own marathon.

This “checkpoint” is of self-assessment. Sharing a tool below to help in grabbing very well earned hydration + fuel as we prepare for the continued miles ahead.

If you are finding your scores lower than you had hoped at this “checkpoint” – focus on this > what vital few activities can you do in the miles ahead to increase those scores as we prepare for recovery? What are non-negotiable?

 There will be a finish line to our Stay Home, Stay Healthy marathon. Our recovery will be a direct reflection of our focus right now. I’m still very much laced up and running right alongside of you…

Welcome to Friday! A focus today on what we didn’t do this week, what we haven’t done during our Stay order and what continues to clutter (and frustrate) our minds. In our house, we call this the “shoulds” list. Let’s bring some welcomed perspective (at least for me) to this conversation from a 4.7.20 article published on Upworthy. Cliff note version: let’s not forget to give ourselves a sense of grace and a reminder of why we are in this Stay order in the first place.

…ps, the end of today’s post I’m share the most popular course in Yale’s 300-year history, The Science of Well Being…complimentary to you + me! The course is 10 weeks and teaches students how to be happy; without having to go to Yale to take it. This too we can do from our living room as we slowly + safely begin to further turning the dial on real estate. As a psychology major (which I am), I would have eaten this content up within my degree! Might just have to add to my coursework.

First though, this…

A trauma psychologist weighs in on the risks of ‘motivational’ pressure during quarantine. 

“A “motivational” message has been circulating during the coronavirus lockdown, which is allegedly supposed to kick our butts into gear since most of us now have more time on our hands.

On its face, it may sound logical. We often don’t do things because we lack time—or think we do—so now that we supposedly have more time, we should be doing those things now, right?

Just one thing though—there’s a deadly global pandemic and massive economic crisis happening, which might be just the tiniest bit distracting right now, Jeremy.

A trauma psychologist from Beirut weighed in on this idea that we should be extra productive right now, and she didn’t mince words. Alaa Hijazi’sFacebook post has been shared 19,000 times, so people are clearly appreciating her wisdom. She wrote:

I thought I was spared the horrid ‘motivational’ phrase going around now—’If you don’t come out of this with a new skill, you never lacked time, you lacked discipline’—until I saw it on my local yoga studio page.

As a trauma psychologist, I am utterly utterly horrified, enraged, and bewildered about how people can believe and spread this phrase in good conscience.

We are going through a collective trauma, that is bringing up profound grief, loss, panic over livelihoods, panic over loss of lives of loved ones. People’s nervous systems are barely coping with the sense of threat and vigilance for safety, or alternating with feeling numb and frozen and shutting down in response to it all.

People are trying to survive poverty, fear, retriggering of trauma, retriggering of other mental health difficulties. Yet, someone has the nerve to accuse someone of lack of discipline for not learning a new skill, and by a yoga teacher!

This cultural obsession with [capitalistic] ‘productivity’ and always spending time in a ‘productive,’ ‘fruitful’ way is absolutely maddening.

What we need is more self-compassion, more gentle acceptance of all the difficult emotions coming up for us now, more focus on gentle ways to soothe ourselves and our pain and the pain of loved ones around us, not a whipping by some random (person) making us feel worse about ourselves in the name of ‘motivation.'”

Indeed. Even those of us who are still employed full-time are finding it difficult to focus some days like we used to. The enormity of this pandemic and the global shutdown over it weighs heavy on all of us. Our sense of normality has been turned upside down and the uncertainty over what even the near future holds makes sustained attention a challenge.

Add in the fact that many people now have children at home who used to be at school or childcare, many are struggling to figure out how they’re going to pay rent or buy groceries, many are watching businesses or careers they’ve spent years building crumble before their eyes, many have health conditions that make them anxious about catching the virus, and it’s not hard to see how neither “time” nor “discipline” are our big problems right now.

If you want to go read books on hustling and build up some skill set, Jeremy, go for it. But let’s not lay a guilt trip on people who are going through a traumatic experience that none of us have experienced before and none of us were prepared for.“ – 4.7.20 article published on Upworthy.

Need some weekly #’s to better understand where our market is this week?

For King County, new sales increasing and are trending up (The low was 40% of prior year increasing week by week to 44%, 56% and 65% ). New listings and new sales are increasing every week since the Stay Home Order went into effect.  When performing real estate activities outside of your home, please continue to take extreme caution (masks, gloves, social distancing, normal body temperature) to keep the community, each other, your clients, and yourself safe.

Note: if you want me to forward you a longer #’s recap for this week: text me! Just ask. 206.227.7133

Want to go back to school during our Stay order?

As hinted at the start of today’s blog post, sharing Dr. Santos most popular course in Yale’s 300-year history, The Science of Well Being, which teaches students how to be happy. Related Upworthy article and your back to school portal here.

Next week, I will begin messaging where I believe we are headed as our new normal in our real estate practices and in supporting our clients that need our services. As Gov. Inslee hinted this week; May 4th will not be the day we “flip a switch” in turning on our economy fully, yet we will continue to “turn the dial” safely in doing so. Next week I will also be sharing a Stay Home, Stay Safe self-assessment. As we get even further into this marathon, I believe it is a very good time to take current inventory of our mindset + skillsets + actions as we continue to plant seeds towards a strong recovery.

Continue to Go Slow & Do No Harm. #healthbeforehouses

Committed to “calm + caring thru crisis.” All in, for you. All in, for us.