What if there’s a better one out there?

My husband and I have been house hunting recently. Since we both work from home, we picked a city we wanted to live in, and spent a weekend looking at nearly 20 potential options to be our next home.

Luckily for me, I've had some mindset changes, so I didn’t feel my normal drive to over-research our favorite options or stress that there was one “right answer". We made a decision the next day, put in an offer, and moved forward.

However, the cyber Real Estate sites I had previously subscribed to didn’t receive the memo of said offer, so they kept sending me new listings via email as new homes were added to the MLS directory.

At first, I would click on them out of curiosity. Then one came up that perked my interest and I started to question the decision we had made. This house is bigger for less money! Did we make a mistake? Maybe we should go look at it and get out of our other contract. Just like that, a house I had previously loved dropped in the ranks and wasn’t all that special anymore. What is worse is it happened without even seeing the “better house” in person!

Luckily it didn’t take me long to realize what was happening. No matter what, there will always be better features in some ways, but maybe not better in others. We all too often glamorize the parts that seem better in something else and forget what we loved about what we have.

I unsubscribed from most of the real estate notifications and have been focusing on our home as it continues to be built. I think about how much I’m going to enjoy the view of mountains from our front porch; the quiet, peaceful area in our back yard; finally having a gas stove again! Having everything new and clean.

With the new insight, I decided to peek at some listings that came out to experiment on approaching it differently. I discovered I was able to find things I loved about each property without it affecting my love of the house we are under contract on. It helped me see the good in all the options out there, including my own. This was so enriching for me.

How can this be applied to our relationships with people? Is it possible to see the good in everyone while excluding the need to compare? Can we recognize that every person has imperfections, but choose to focus on their strengths or “superpowers” without diminishing our strengths and “superpowers”? Is it possible to enjoy others’ strengths without comparing them to our weaknesses and feeling ashamed or less than? Or to compare our strengths to others’ weaknesses, breeding self-righteousness?

I know it is possible, but it doesn’t come naturally. It takes effort and control of your mind vs letting your mind go into autopilot and do whatever it wants.

Consider ways you can apply this in one of your relationships. Or, catch yourself next time you find yourself judging others or yourself and use it as an opportunity to be more intentional in your thinking and/or your focus.

High Five!