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We started a landscape project at my own home this week and I discovered my brain works differently in homeowner mode than it does in homeowner representative mode!
Confused? Let me explain. As a homeowner, I look at HOA architectural guidelines as a necessary evil designed specifically to make my life more difficult. Yes, I want to live in a pretty and well maintained neighborhood and about the only way to control the quality of how things look is to have uniform guidelines; but it seems like a pain in the rear to try to get approval especially since my submissions were (arrrgg) rejected several times before mostly being approved for our current project.
On the other hand, as a homeowner representative, we understand the importance of HOA rules and regulations and we do our best to help our clients stay informed and within the specific guidelines for their communities. We even generate the design submissions and assist the homeowner through the HOA approval process and you know what? We have never had a client architectural submission rejected.
That's so weird. My personal submissions were rejected like three or four times. Our professional submissions have never been rejected. What gives?
Well, after considerable thought, it may be that I am guilty, like many homeowners, of being too emotionally invested in my own project; whereas with client projects, since our goal is to make sure each client's submission is complete, professional, and compliant, there is no emotion at all.
It was TS Elliot who said "We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions and prejudices so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we appeal to those of others. This is very difficult because our own prejudice and emotional bias seem to us so rational".
"Rational"... Ha! Our position seems rational but it is often not. There was nothing rational about my reaction to our landscape submissions being rejected. In hindsight, the rejections were absolutely legitimate and honestly, they were minor and easily corrected.
And that's the crux of it right there. No matter what happens in our lives, most of it is easily corrected. And even when the correction isn't easy, it eventually gets resolved anyway. That's the cool thing about life; it is ever changing, ever healing, ever giving us new opportunities.
I think the key is to take a step back and look at whatever issue is before us from a detached perspective. Remove the emotion and ask yourself, how important is 'this' really?
If we take the emotion out, we can make an actual objective and hopefully rational decision. We can weigh the pros and cons and save ourselves the embarrassment of overreaction.
The perfect example is one from my past traveling life: It was not unusual to experience flight delays, especially when you're in airports at least twice per week, 52 weeks per year.
Occasionally, after having an especially difficult travel day, a flight cancellation would send me over the edge almost to what an onlooker might interpret as a temper tantrum.
But, in the end, and despite throwing an emotion-laden fit, the flight remains cancelled, you reschedule any missed meetings and you get a hotel room. That's it. It's the same routine every time a flight is cancelled.
So why throw a fit at all? Just chalk the cancellation up to another adventure, get your hotel room and move on because fit or no fit, that's what you have to do anyway. If we can take a breath and think about it, that's how we should approach every interruption or setback that comes our way; with objective, calm reasoning.
Happily our landscape will end up exactly the way we envisioned it, denials notwithstanding. It might have taken an extra month but who cares? Everything in its own time, right?
Now that I am conscious of emotional attachments and their uselessness, I know to treat my own architectural submissions (and any interruption) with the same detached professionalism we do for our clients. Lesson learned....
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Mother's Day, a History Lesson
Do you have any idea how Mother's Day came to be? Surprisingly it has had many incarnations including:
--Ancient Greeks and Romans held festivals in honor of mother goddesses, Rhea and Cybele
--The modern mother's day began as a Christian celebration in Europe called 'Mothering Sunday' and was meant to bring the faithful together at 'mother church' for a special celebration
-- Mothering Sunday evolved into a day where children would honor their own mothers with flowers and gifts
--There were several precursors to Mother's Day in the US, including:
- Mother's Day Work Clubs, formed by Ann Reeves Jarvis to teach women how to be good mothers
- After the Civil War, Jarvis created Mother's Friendship Day as a way for mothers from both Union and Confederate families to meet and work to overcome the division of the Civil War
- Julie Ward Howe, suffragette and abolitionist, wrote a 'Mother's Day Proclamation' in 1870 asking mothers to unite for world peace
--In 1905, Anna Jarvis, daughter of Ann Jarvis, conceived Mother's Day after her mother died as a way to honor her and all mothers for their sacrifices in raising a family
--In 1908, the first Mother's Day was held in a Methodist church in Virginia and in a department store in Philadelphia (the store's owner was the financial backer of both events)
--By 1912, many States had adopted Mother's Day as an official holiday and in 1914 Woodrow Wilson signed a measure officially establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day
The irony though, is that Ann Jarvis became so disillusioned with the commercialism that eventually surrounded Mother's Day that she actively campaigned against it, spent most of her fortune on legal battles to end it, and, at the time of her death in 1948 was still trying to get Mother's Day removed from the calendar as an official holiday.
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The Perfect "Thank You" Gift for Buyers, Clients and Friends
Back by popular demand, we are once again offering our Executive Errands® concierge gift certificate valued at $150 free of charge to realtors and anyone else who wants to say 'thank you' to buyers, clients and friends.
Included with the gift certificate is a copy of our new booklet, Old Wives' Tales, Fact or Fiction, Prepping Your Home for Summer Absences, so your snowbird buyers, clients and customers will have a good start to prepping their home for summer vacations.
This booklet has already received enormously positive feedback! It is great for locals as well as snowbirds too because it doesn't matter if you'll be away for a weekend or the whole summer season, there are still things to know about protecting your home in this climate and the value of having someone check in on your property.
Our Executive Errands® gift certificates have no expiration date and include a place for you to include your name as the 'from' gift giver for a truly personalized 'thank you'.
All you need to do is send us an email request or call us with the quantity you'd like and these gift certificates are yours! Yes Free. No cost. Zero. Nada. Nothing out of your pocket! Why? Because we like making you look good....say thank you to someone today with an Executive Errands® gift certificate!
Send us an email or call us at 760.898.9604
Note: Only gift certificates printed on our cardstock are valid. Reprints from this newsletter shall not be honored.
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Emotions are tricky business. When we care too much, we tend to engage in irrational thinking and/or behavior. Even though I did throw a couple of fits over my rejected landscape submissions, they were in the privacy of my own home and not to my beleaguered HOA manager. She is lovely by the way, with the patience of a saint and very good at her job.
I have known our HOA manager socially for many years and am now proudly living in her community. It is so nice to live in a place where you personally know the manager and where she is so knowledgeable and so dedicated to improving the living experience in the community.
I do feel for her though because like most HOA managers, she has to deal with quite a number of irrational people who do not confine their emotional outbursts to the privacy of their own homes; instead preferring to dump it all on the HOA office.
I honestly do not know how HOA managers do it day after day. Yes, in our business, we deal with our share of occasionally irrational people but more often than not our clients and vendors are all amazing people and a joy with whom to work.
You know, HOA managers are like IT help desks - the only time most people want to talk to them is to complain because something doesn't work, or the neighbor stepped on a crack, or because the pool water is the wrong shade of blue or some other highly important issue (that was humor intended sarcasm).
HOA managers rarely get any positive feedback. And when you never get any positive feedback, your work day can become challenging at best and downright miserable at worst. So if you live in an HOA managed community, I'd like to encourage you to stop in and say a kind word to your HOA team. Take them some flowers or make some other small gesture of appreciation.
And the next time you need to submit an architectural or any other request, please take your emotions out of it. Be nice to the BOD and the HOA. They have the best interests of the community at heart along with both legal and fiscal responsibilities to consider.
I am grateful to live in the home I hope will be my forever home -- given my track record for moving, it is unlikely -- but I love it so much here, I truly do hope to stay here forever. And you know what? My new landscape is going to be gorgeous!
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Until next time,
Leslie Spoor
Leslie Spoor
Executive Errands®
CL#944447
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