Tuesday, April 2, 2024
I’ve been thinking about habituation.
A long-time friend and colleague of mine is known for her fondness of the phrase It Is What It Is. It’s both an enigmatic and a rather matter of fact phrase, and I think it means different things to different people. Recently I was thinking about it with respect to the title industry.
As human beings, we can habituate to both positive and negative things. It’s part of how our brains work, and we can habituate at surprisingly rapid speed.
It can be a steadying force, as author Cass Sunstein describes when discussing his book Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There. He notes how quickly ocean water that initially feels freezing and shockingly cold can, over a short period of time, become more and more tolerable. Soon, the initially startled and freezing swimmer will motion to those on the shore beckoning “come on in, the water is fine!”
Habituation is also key to arriving back home after vacation and realizing how much you love your own place. Things you stopped specifically noticing long ago can regain their novelty and sparkle when you’ve been away or distracted for a while.
Habituation comes about due to a lack of a surprise signal being sent through our brain.
As things begin to become rote to us, we also begin to habituate to them. It’s a key process of learning, growing and yes, even aging.
Can you remember your first 100 days in the industry? I sure can. It felt like I would never have enough knowledge to become a good closing officer. There were so many different scenarios, with different sets of requirements and documents for each. It felt like a million different questions were likely to come my way; I feared being at a loss for answers rather than coming across as a confident professional. There were more than a few days of bathroom tears stemming from overwhelm and frustration.
Yet over time we learn, and what was once new, novel, and foreign work transforms almost imperceptibly and becomes the area of our expertise. We habituate to the skills, the demands and even the contours of an industry itself.
Part of habituating to a career in the title business is learning to accept your part as integral to the safety and soundness of the real estate ecosystem, yet also acting mostly as a background player rather than a marquee headliner. We call it, in loose short hand, being at the bottom of the food chain. We learned to begrudgingly accept it.
And then, we get shocked out of our habituation by a novel event, as was the case for many of us while watching the State of the Union address on March 7, 2024. The surprise signals were sent through our collective brain in an instant, and we realized that it’s no longer a time of business as usual.
For those of you who are engaging anew on the topic of the value of title insurance, remember that others have habituated to your working in the shadows too. You’ll likely decide you need to tell a different story. One that includes why what you do is important. What the value of your work is, and what it means to the economy.
We’re collecting and publishing your stories of Title Insurance at Work, highlighting actual differences made for lenders and consumers by virtue of your curative work and policies issued. We would love to include your story.
As you engage in your markets locally, regionally, and nationally to make your case, try to remember to watch your brain for signs of habituation. Afterall, just because currently It Is What It Is, I’ve never seen a plaque on anyone’s wall that read It Will Remain Forever What It Is Today. Because nothing, not even this current circumstance, will.
Which also happens to be true in everything in life.
Until next time,
Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC