When The Lights Go Out, Who Do you Call?

When the Lights Go Out, Who Do You Call?

There is a room inside every person that no one else can see.

It is where we go when life stops cooperating. The phone quits ringing. The bills keep arriving. Confidence leaks out beneath the door. After a while, the room gets so dark that we forget there was ever a light switch.

An agent I coach named Erica found herself in that room recently.

She had five homes listed for sale. She was working. She was trying. But the homes weren’t selling, and her sellers were growing restless.

No sales meant no closings. No closings meant no income. And when business trouble lasts long enough, it stops feeling like a business problem. It begins whispering something more personal.

Maybe I’m not good enough.

Fortunately, Erica had Ailin.

Ailin is Erica’s go-to friend. Not her occasional-lunch friend. Ailin is the person Erica calls when the brave face comes off.

They talked every day, sometimes two or three times a day. Ailin made one thing unmistakably clear: I’m here. Then she did something increasingly rare. She came over and spent hours with Erica.

She did not arrive with a buyer. She could not lower interest rates or change the market. She brought something more basic and, at that moment, more valuable. She brought her presence.

Psychologists have a phrase for what happens next: social buffering. The dependable availability of someone we trust can soften the way our minds and bodies experience stress.

In one fascinating brain-imaging experiment, women faced the threat of a mild electric shock. When they held the hand of a trusted partner, the parts of the brain involved in danger and distress became less active. The threat had not disappeared. The brain simply no longer believed it had to face the threat alone.

That may be the hidden power of a go-to person. They do not necessarily remove the storm. They stand beside you until the storm stops sounding like the end of the world.

Other research has linked having a stable confidant with better emotional well-being and fewer depressive symptoms. The important word is not popular. It is safe. A room full of acquaintances may not do what one trusted person can.

Ailin helped Erica climb out of that dark room.

With her mind in a better place, Erica went back to work. She used some creative strategies I had taught her to generate renewed interest and offers in a difficult market. Those five listings that had been sitting began to move.

Then came the part that made Erica’s voice change when she told me.

Five homes sold. Five closings. All in ten days.

I was proud that my training helped. But the larger lesson was not about real estate. Strategy is useless when discouragement has convinced you not to try it. Sometimes, before a person needs a better plan, they need someone to help them believe they can still execute one.

Most of us have emergency plans for our homes, businesses, and money. We know where the fire extinguisher is. We insure the car. We back up the computer.

But do we have an emotional emergency plan?

Who can you call without rehearsing first? Who can hear the truth about your health, your marriage, your fears, or your failures and not use it against you? Who will comfort you without lying to you, challenge you without judging you, and keep showing up after everyone else has grown tired of the story?

That person may be a spouse, sibling, parent, grown child, or friend with no shared blood at all. The title does not matter. The certainty does.

And if you have such a person, do not take that relationship for granted. Go-to friendships are not built during the emergency. They are built during the ordinary Tuesdays beforehand, one returned call, one kept confidence, and one unhurried conversation at a time.

Ailin did not sell those five homes. She did something even more important. She helped Erica find the woman who could.

I may have helped Erica learn where the light switch was. Ailin sat with her in the darkness until she was ready to reach for it.

So ask yourself two questions.

Who is your Ailin? And whose Ailin are you?