Sometimes when I find myself “parked” in front of my computer, working or playing, I’ll have the television on.  Usually a ball game, but just as often the Discovery or History channels.  A particular favorite is “Mythbusters”, a show where the hosts make efforts to prove, or disprove popular beliefs and myths.

A night ago they set about trying to prove, or disprove, the common, albeit not so pretty, phrase “you can’t polish a turd”.  Well, actually they used the word “poop”, but the phrase I heard my father utter, on more than one occassion, was delivered in the former format.  It was meant to express the logic that despite your best efforts, there are some things/folks you just can’t fix or improve.

I was at first amused, but later heartened and excited, when they proved the phrase “Busted”.  Both hosts succeeded on creating balls of dung, with a luster shiny enough to pass the definition of “highly polished” according to some sort of official scale and equipment used to measure sheen.

Why “heartened”?  Why “excited”. Well, although I consider myself far from being on the “poop” end of the scale when it comes to Real Estate Agent abilities, the folks that I look up to seem miles ahead, and at levels that seem unreachable.  But the fact the the boys on Mythbusters were able to take waste product and put a genuine shine on it, with nothing but “time on task” says any of us can do the same with our businesses, golf games, or marathon times.  Practice, education, and more practice.  Where do you want to be?  Set your sights, and take action.  Polish up your listing presentation, learn your local market stats.  Know your product, and your consumer.

It is funny that this old adage, and it’s lack of validity, make me think of another piece of my past.  An old song, that I heard Johnny Cash sing, that sounded out against the myth, and pointed to the path of success.  “I’m just an old lump of coal” began the refrain.  “But I’m gonna be a diamond someday”