My Goals for a Balanced Life by Ian Watt

Every year I have the Ian Watt AGM where all the shareholders take off to some fancy resort and make new goals for my business. Ok I’m the sole shareholder in Ian Watt, Inc and yes I go all by myself but there are no arguements and there is never a fight on the company’s direction. The whole point of the excersice is to reassess the past year and make new goals for the next chapter of my business life.

The kind of person I am, if you haven’t noticed, is someone who is always reinventing and trying to better my business and challenge my abilities behind the helm. Unfortunately, as you saw in my past blogs other than Be a Great Dad (which couldn’t be more important to me so I never had to write it down), I never made any personal goals. My goals always had to do with business, money, sales, homes and other tangible items.

So last year I made these goals, and throughout 2011 I have been trying to my best to achieve them all day, everyday.

 - Be Happy

 - Be Healthy

 - Be Present

 - Work only 40 Hours a Week, and

 - Get Busy Living

Lets start with working 40 Hours a Week – Why do we start our own businesses? The challenge? Money? Freedom? Whatever the reason we know that running a small business becomes your life and sucks all your free time, especially at the beginning. Furthermore, we all know that the real estate business is an all or nothing, feast or famine business and you only get out what you put in to it. We probably all know the quote “Success Takes Sacrifice” sadly the things we sacrifice are usually the things we love. So this goal is the most important out of the 5 goals I have for no other reason than because none of the other 4 or any other personal goal is achievable if all you’re doing is working. So yes I now usually work 6 days a week and probably about 7 hours a day on average, so that gives me at least 8 hours a day to be me, do the things I love, work on my balance, and be with my kids. I will write about how I am achieving this goal every week in next week’s blog.

Being healthy has two different facets; my physical and mental health. As I’m sure a lot of you workaholic realtors are aware when you work 16 hour days (what small business owner hasn’t?) eating healthy is not a high priority. Skipping meals, eating fast food, 10 cups of coffee a day, and dinners at 10:30 at night are the norm. Its funny because we all know we should be keeping fit and eating right but that’s easier said than done. Slowing my busy brain down has also been a challenge but with lots of help and tons of work that has become one of the most entertaining, interesting and unexpectedly enjoyable goals I love to work on. More to come on the things that I’m doing to achieve that in the coming weeks.

Not being present is something I think we are all guilty of. Its a world of multi-tasking and I did that as well as anyone (look at my early blogs). Take a moment and think about the last time you did anything with your kids, your spouse or even by yourself then ask yourself this; did I spend a noticeable amount of time on my phone either talking or texting with clients, or on Facebook, or whatever else other than being 100% focused on my kids playing or the company I’m with?  If you were 100% focused on the moment, that’s great. Either you are my hero, or you are a complete liar. For me staying focused on the present moment has been a huge challenge all my life and even more with all this amazing and cool technology at our fingertips. This goal is my biggest challenge and I think for me, but even more so for others, it’s so rewarding.  Enjoying the moment for what it is, and giving those around me the respect of being present is the least I can do. Of course we need to make the odd exception here and there, but how I used to be was making the exception to peel my eyes away from my phone to join the conversation. Not cool and not healthy.

Be happy. Sounds like a stupid goal because who needs to write that down? Maybe I’m the only person in life who needs to, but trust me, I needed to and still need to. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t miserable because being happy in all aspects of my life was certainly achieved. Unfortunately, all I ever did was work! So it was very important to me to be happy being idle, shopping, being with friends, and taking time off. Even being stuck in traffic used to really piss me off but now hey … I think its about taking the moment to think, reflect and appreciate whatever it is for what it is. All the things that I would begrudgingly do like paperwork. Happy to be doing the little things. Happy to be doing the uninspiring things. And happy that I even have this moment when many of us don’t. Even when things got really tough my blood would boil, now I say, I wonder what I’m suppose to learn from this?

Get busy living or get busy dying. I took this quote from the Shawshank Redemption and I love it. So many of us waste time. Sitting around waiting for life to happen and making plans for tomorrow. Trust me I’m a dreamer if there ever was one, but all those close to me know I do, and I am going to suck every second out of this life. Plus I don’t want my kids or anyone I love to say when I die, “Man nobody sold more condos than Ian, he was awesome”. How empty is that? All I want to is for everyone to say “Fuck, nobody lived like Ian. You name it, he did it. He had a great life and was a great dad.” Because I live in an amazing city I have opportunities to do a lot of things that most people travel around the world to do. My days are packed with activities that most people dream of only while on vacation. However, I sincerely think it has nothing to do with geography, but everything to do with my frame of mind.

Stolen from US Military’s brilliant recruitment campaign on the 1980s I do more by 9:00 am than most people do all day, and I’m proud of that. Get busy living or get busy dying!

Time to Step Back from the Running Water by Ian Watt

So there I am with the idea to change my entire life, but at the same time not knowing what it was that I was going to change? Obviously there are some things we simply can’t change, so the question was ultimately what could I change in my life? I realized that I didn’t know the answer to either of those questions. Furthermore, what was it that I was going to change my life into? Guess I didn’t know that either. All I knew is that I wanted a simple life, I wanted balance, and I wanted to have fun – all day, everyday.

Like a fat person wanting to be skinny, no like a fat person wanting to be fit, there is no shortcut or easy way to change your life. Actually, it’s possibly even harder than being fat because there aren’t too many organizations out there like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers to help people get their life and balance back in sync and be happy within all areas of their life. The reason I use weight as an analogy because most people can understand how easy it is on January 1st of every year to set a goal to lose weight and starving yourself can make a sudden impact on your overall density, but its a longterm lifestyle change that helps you truly become healthier on the inside and out. So no matter how you look at it, there is no easy route when it comes to breaking old habits and routines.

This is the only life I knew. I loved my work, and I loved being a dad, and other than being superficially happy with everything else in my life, thats as deep as it got. So the question became how can I be as happy doing other things in my life as I am when I’m with my kids or working, especially since I didn’t do anything but work or spend time with my kids? Great questions, unfortunately no answer… I had a feeling this was going to take a while to figure out and it wasn’t going to be easy.

Although I didn’t know the answers, I realized exactly what the next step was going to be after I read this Taoist proverb;

No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

Take a moment to think about that, pretty simple but quite profound. How can we see who we truly are if all we are doing is running from appointment, to engagement, and back to appointment again? I love that quote and that quote made me realize I needed to take a step back from the world I knew to explore who I was. Its true, if you really want to make changes you have to take a step back and not only see what you are you doing, but you also have to take another step back and truly see why you are doing the things you do. See what the things are that truly motivate us, scare and us and see what we are running from.

Without hesitation, I slowly started stepping back – I know some of you saw this as I received the hundreds of emails that began with the same “Ian are you ok? Haven’t seen you for a while…” would indicate. To set out towards the goal of making a simple life and quiet life, I decided to cut out everything that was a distraction, an irritation, or unhealthy (including people). I stopped speaking, travelling to conventions, being a part of the real estate community, I asked people to stop blogging about me and my business, stopped being social with acquaintances and people who I knew were friends solely because of business, connections and influence. I was barely on Facebook and I even deleted my Twitter account (and don’t miss it a bit). So thats exactly what I did, I hid. I hid from the life I knew, in hopes the waters would be still enough to see my reflection.

Of course there were things in my life I couldn’t run from. Responsibilities I had that I couldn’t put on hold, for example being a father, financial responsibilities like mortgages, my business and clients etc. So other than those things which I powered through on autopilot, all I did was think in hibernation. Unfortunately, when all I did was let my mind race day and night it caused me to sleep around 2 hours day and I lost nearly 40 lbs too. I was exhausted and weak but knew I was heading in the right direction.

You know how some people always need to be with people like a crutch and can’t be alone? Its like a dependancy that helps us from looking in the mirror. So being alone, without feeling lonely, was a goal I had during this time. For me it became very natural to be alone, and those times when I was feeling lonely I would call my best friend or my mom, or go visit my kids for the evening.

Over this 6 month period I spent a lot of time alone. This kept me grounded and focused on peeling back the layers bullshit and finding out who I was. I spent every day and night thinking about how wrapped up I was and why. Thinking about what a simple life meant to me, and what a balanced life meant to me as well. After months and months of self-discovery, therapy and honesty, I thought it was time to write down some goals to achieve balance and a simple life.

Eventually with endless days to reflect I came up with these 5 simple goals for my personal life (yes I have 5 for my business life too);

– Be Happy
– Be Healthy
– Be Present
– Work only 40 Hours a Week, and
– Get Busy Living

Great goals, but how was I going to achieve them?


Where my Search for Balance Began by Ian Watt

In early 2010 I noticed that things were moving so quickly for me. My IanWatt.ca business was great, working tons, was just getting ready to launch CondoGo.com, and I was traveling a lot doing social media speaking. I loved my life and still had a ton of passion for my work. I was full of confidence and nothing could stop me. 

I remember thinking, if I won $25,000,000 today I would still go to work tomorrow, that’s how much I loved my business. Unfortunately, with all this passion for work, all the hours invested, I hadn’t even realized that, other than my kids, I had no other passions or past times. 

Although I was having a ball day in and day out, I remember the feeling of getting home every night and being exhausted from working all the time, which consequently caused me to be, at moments, set off and at times erupt by the smallest of issues. I was too busy to consider or even notice those issues – actually I just would put it behind me and never think about it again which also meant I never thought about others too much or said sorry for pissing whole lot of people off. I was too busy to care. And running on adrenaline all day, everyday, I had no time to relax – no, I MADE no time to relax – and it was slowly killing me. Don’t misunderstand me, I was having the time of my life, so slowing down was the last thing on my mind.

To be perfectly honest with you, there was no major crash or hitting of the wall that opened my eyes to my reality, but I do remember sitting in a hotel room in Calgary when it all changed. 

I had just finished speaking at the Calgary Real Estate Board about how I run my business, and this questions was asked, what AM I doing here? If you’ve ever spent 3 days in Downtown Calgary I’m sure you have said the exact same thing, and if you haven’t, close your eyes and imagine New York, and the people, great restaurants, the action and the excitement… Now think of the most opposite place on earth and thats Calgary. A night there can make anyone question their being. 

So I’m walking around now in this frozen ghost town with absolutely nothing to do (Welcome to Calgary) thinking why am I doing this?Why did i come to speak in Calgary? I don’t need the money. My ego was already healthy enough. I didn’t want to become famous amongst realtors. I love giving back and think we all should, but what’s the point of all this? I didn’t even have any free time for myself. So why? 

So as I walked around in search of urban grocery store (never found one – again Welcome to Calgary) I realized the reason i was there, making more work for myself, was mainly because I had absolutely no hobbies, plus idle time drove me crazy, consequently work ultimately became my everything. 

So there I am, with nothing but idle time, which I hate, and nothing to do but think, I asked myself this… Why don’t I have hobbies? I used to have hobbies. I used to be fit. I used to be calm. But the most important thing I recollected or realized was that I used to work to make money, so i would have financial means to have fun. Now work was my fun. 

This same question kept coming back too, am I going to be one of those pathetic Realtors at one of those real estate conventions that has every material item ever sold to show success but nothing else to show for their life? Jesus I hope not. 

How did I get like this? How did my job become my life? How did my job become me? How did real estate become who I was. Where did the old Ian go? How did IanWatt.ca over take Ian Watt the person?

So like an alcoholic having a moment of clarity, I decided, fuck, I needed to get some balance and somehow become the old Ian again.  

And here is my journey…

PS 

Yes my writing is like a conversation, probably far from grammatically correct, and littered with typos… I know… but if you don’t like it, then i have a simple solution for you, don’t read it ; )