Coach Patti's Blog

That's all I can seem to say today - WOW!

Thanks to the visionary Stefan Swanepoel for his work in creating the list of the Top 100 Most Influential Women in leadership roles in the Real Estate Industry, and for doing the polling to identify the top 25 and top 50.

To have been included in the 100 was wonderful recognition, and I am doubly honored to have been chosen in the top 50 of this extraordinary group of real estate leaders. There is nothing quite as gratifying as knowing that your work matters to others, and that you have made a difference.

Thank you all for your votes of confidence. You have given me encouragement to keep striving to do better each day.

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations! 

Take control of your Life and Business, and create extraordinary results.
Join a select group of real estate professionals at
Coach Patti's Annual Jump Start Workshop, November 14-16, 2008
With special guest speaker, Floyd Wickman.
Reserve your seat today!

You have to prime the pump before you can drink from the fountain.

Referrals. They are the lifeblood of every successful business. We want them, we value them, we are grateful for them. When referrals start flowing into our business, we know we are doing things right.

But they don't start flowing by themselves. A pump needs to be primed to work properly, and you need to prime your referrals fountain to start that flow that brings with it your most valuable kind of business. People want to refer friends and advisors they trust. Your goal is to create relationships with a large network of people that know what you do, and who like and trust you. An important part of building that trust is consistent follow up to stay on top of people's minds so that they remember you always.

How do you build trust? Obviously, you do it over time, by building relationships, and by showing that you are both caring and trustworthy. When you help people this way, you are absolutely not selling – you are making deposits into their emotional bank accounts. As the balance grows, so does your standing. It's not difficult to do; you simply need to be thinking of what you can do to help someone, how you can act as a connector within your network.

For instance, you might invite two people to lunch from your network that might be able to support each other. At first they may expect you to solicit them for business, but you will tell them that they have been invited to connect with each other and to perhaps help each other. Or perhaps there is a family that needs baby sitting, and you know another family with a teenager who is an experienced sitter. That would be a great connection for both of them. You should have lunch with a prospective referral source once a month with the intention of supporting their business. One good guideline is: Never eat alone, and for heaven's sake don't eat with another Real Estate Sales Associate!

Here's an example from my life. Our accountant knew my husband and I were looking for a different financial advisor. He invited us to play golf with him and a financial advisor from his network he thought would fit our needs. This way, he gave us an opportunity to see if we liked the adviser without having the pressure of actually interviewing him. If we liked him we could go to the next step, and if we didn't then doing business was a moot point.

To keep in touch, and at the top of people's minds, mail greeting cards and personal notes. Consider Joe Girard who has been in the Guinness book of records for 12 consecutive years as the world's greatest sales person. He sold 6 to 7 cars daily, all at retail, all by referral. He built this success partly by sending out personal notes. I heard it was 14,000 handwritten notes or greeting cards a month! You don't have to try to match Joe Girard, but you can keep track of two dates: a person's birthday and the anniversary date of when they purchased their home. Then send an appropriate card (not boring!) or note with a personal message.

It sounds straightforward, doesn't it? And yet many people don't practice these simple techniques. In some cases, fear of rejection and fear of doing something new can keep someone from making that call, asking someone to lunch, or offering help. Sometimes it's a matter of time – they feel overwhelmed with too much to do and just never get around to making the call. Whatever the reason, I've found that there are things you can do to get beyond the barriers.

• Once you recognize the value of making those deposits in others' emotional bank accounts, you can start by making your own list of things you can do.
• Make sure your list is broken down into small steps that you can see yourself achieving quickly and easily, just so long as every step takes you closer to that goal.
• Create realistic short and long-term milestones for yourself.
• If you are feeling overwhelmed, delegate or outsource whatever you can that will free up the time for what you do best. Focus on building your network and making connections; let someone else open the mail and keep the books.
• And always remember to recognize and appreciate people when they give you a referral.

Over the years, I've learned these and other simple elements of building a successful referral business, so that now almost all my business comes through word of mouth. One of the best parts of this is the rewards that have nothing to do with money; when you deposit in someone else's emotional bank account, you increase your own at the same time.

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations! 

Take control of your Life and Business, and create extraordinary results.
Join a select group of real estate professionals at
Coach Patti's Annual Jump Start Workshop, November 14-16, 2008
With special guest speaker, Floyd Wickman.
Reserve your seat today!

Ask yourself, would any serious athlete think of competing without a coach? Of course not! Why then would any modern businessperson, who faces overwhelming competition daily, not work with a coach?

Maybe it's because we're not sure what a good coach does and how working with a coach will help us. Like the flea on the elephant, most of us see only a small part of the larger world as we go from day to day. The coach helps you to see the big picture, the game you are in, and how well you are playing. The right coach helps you out of a slump and brings your game to the next level.

It’s an odd thing about humans; the only way we can see ourselves clearly from the outside and in context is through someone else’s eyes. Unlike an expert or a mentor, the coach does not tell us what to do, but what she sees, and by sharing what she sees, challenges us to do better. By listening and asking the right questions, the coach helps us find our way past blind spots.

What are these blind spots? There are many habits we develop that seem comfortable but keep us from performing at the top of our game. Things like procrastination, insensitivity to others, not taking responsibility for our actions, and lack of integrity may be hampering our progress. The thing is, we can't usually see them for what they are, so we don't change. And then we wonder why we are not getting any closer to our goals.

The right coach can help us see what is holding us back, and then identify what we need to change. But change doesn’t occur from feedback alone; you have to be willing to put in effort to make change happen. Behavior change comes only after you've constructed a new mental model, a new description of purpose and meaning. Then it's practice, practice, practice, until new habits are formed over the old. That's where working with a coach pays off.

Coaches are “change partners” for those who refuse to stand still, who realize that if you're not progressing, you are going backward. When you work with a trained and experienced coach, you have a partner who will not only set you on the right path, but will work with you right to the end. The basic rule of "adapt or perish" applies to business just as it does to species like the Dodo bird. By helping you become more flexible and creative, coaches help you survive the ongoing evolution of business.

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations! 

Take control of your Life and Business, and create extraordinary results.
Join a select group of real estate professionals at
Coach Patti's Annual Jump Start Workshop, November 14-16, 2008
With special guest speaker, Floyd Wickman.
Reserve your seat today!

Putting Your Energy Where it Counts

Damn! You've lost your car keys. You know they were here someplace. You gobble down your breakfast as you tear the place apart, find that uncashed check and the dog's lost collar, and snap at the next person who calls you. It’s not their fault you lost your keys. But once you've apologized and are trying to have a productive conversation with them, your mind is still poking around in the bottom of your purse, your briefcase, or underneath the driver's seat for those  keys. You're distracted. You have to ask the caller to repeat what they just said. You only realize they've asked you a question when silence stretches out at the other end of the line. Sound familiar?

Okay, try this one: You've lost your car keys. You have to have them, right now, because you have to meet the client who's going to sign the big listing. You have everything you need: business cards, contracts, marketing package. Now all you need is the keys. You turn and glance down and they’re sitting on the carpet right below the telephone table.

So what's the difference here?

The difference is intention and focus. You’ve heard the stories about someone lifting a car off their child. That's intention and focus. I'd venture to say that just about every athlete who broke a record (performance-enhancing drugs aside) did it through intention and focus.

When we want and need to achieve a specific goal, it becomes very real to us. We can taste it, see it, feel it. And the more clearly we see it, the better chance we have of achieving it. We eliminate the distractions, narrow our field of vision and laser beam in on our goal.

But the external distractions of today's communication-rich world are a lot easier to shut out than the internal ones. The problem a lot of us have, especially in shaky market conditions, is that we have an enormous amount of internal noise. Am I going to get the escrow check in time to pay my mortgage? If I don't make my car payment, I may not get approved for the equity line. If my daughter doesn’t get the scholarship, she'll have to live at home, which means we won't have the rental income from her room. Etc., etc., etc.

It's not that these aren't valid concerns. They just have a way of leading us off course as they distract us from what's important. They keep us thinking about what we DON'T want instead of what we DO want. They keep us from finding the keys.

Another problem with this distracting noise is that it's contagious. How many times in recent months have you heard agents complaining about market conditions? Somebody tells a story about an impossible buyer and then someone else shares their woes about the sellers who won't budge even after their house has been on the market for two years. And so on. I've talked with a number of top-producing agents who simply won't go into the office any more because they don't want to get infected with gloom.

So how can you dial down the noise, regain your focus, and get back to business? Here are some tips:

• Don't play the gloom game. When the conversation turns to market miseries, either redirect it by changing the subject or leave the room. Let people know you're interested in what’s going right, not what's going wrong.
• Sit down and face your concerns. This is the real world, with plenty of imperfections and problems to go around. The problem with problems is that we never give them a rest. The reality is usually far more manageable than the monster in our worried imagination. Make a list of the things you're concerned about. Get them out of your head. Acknowledge that these are your concerns and now that you can step back and read them in a list, you can begin to solve them, one small step at a time.
• Decide what you really want. You're the athlete at the top of your game. If you want to break a record, you need to know what the previous record was. Then you start visualizing the new record. Focus on your goal and make a list of all the things that would help you get there. All the positive things. More qualified buyers. More motivated sellers. More referral business. An assistant. Some new technology skills. A blog.
• Write it down and put it up. Specific goals get specific results. Write down your goal and post it somewhere you'll see it (or in a few somewheres): on your bathroom mirror, the refrigerator, on your steering wheel, on your office coffee cup. Every time you see the words, envision yourself achieving the result.
• Talk about it. Just like bad news is infectious, so is good news. Once you have your goal in mind, bring it out into the open. Whether you talk with your business partner, your coach, your friends or loved ones, be open to creative ideas for realizing your goal. Brainstorm. Get excited. Share.

Now go out there and break some records. You can do it. Athletes have soared over higher beams and shaved time from records that were thought to be unbreakable. You have the goal, the focus and the intention. And now you have the keys. Go do some business!

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations! 

Take control of your Life and Business, and create extraordinary results.
Join a select group of real estate professionals at
Coach Patti's Annual Jump Start Workshop, November 14-16, 2008
With special guest speaker, Floyd Wickman.
Reserve your seat today!

Discovering the recipe for a delicious, successful life

A lot of things can go wrong in the kitchen. You can put salt in the cake instead of sugar. You can forget to turn on the oven, or turn it to the wrong temperature. The beautiful, golden roasted turkey can slide off the platter and bounce across the kitchen floor. Every cook has stories like this.

What happens next illustrates the difference between a kitchen drudge and a chef. The drudge turns immediately to blame: somebody put the salt where the sugar was supposed to be; the turkey is inedible. But the chef sees opportunity: okay, the cake is salty, but a drizzle of sweet, dark chocolate and a peak of whipped cream will fix that; a quick swipe with a damp cloth and a glaze of gravy and no one will ever know where that turkey's been.

There are other differences between the drudge and the chef. The drudge cooks out of obligation; the chef cooks out of passion. The drudge skimps on ingredients; the chef chooses the best ingredients available. The drudge cooks the same old things; the chef reads, experiments, and invents.

There's a parallel here between the kitchen and the business office. You know who the drudges are—they're the ones who always have an excuse, who don't do what they've agreed to do so you have to step in and do it for them. They're the ones you'd rather not work with on another deal. You also recognize the chefs: they're the superstars, the ones who are writing deals in the down market, trying new ideas for promotions, and always taking time to help someone else. You want to do a transaction with them because you know it will be done right—and it could lead to more business!

In reality, most of us fall somewhere between the drudge and the superstar, but we can learn from both. Here are some ingredients to consider the next time you're cooking up a deal:

Every ingredient matters. If you're going to spend your time and money creating this dish, why not use the finest ingredients and make it as delectable as possible? We are continually confronted with decisions: the inexpensive baking chocolate or the high cocoa mass chocolate? The assistant who will help me look like a pro or keep muddling through, typos and all? In business, as in cooking, every decision we make has an effect on the outcome that may extend beyond our current project. When the really big deal comes along, is that client going to choose someone who skimps on details?

Even 'failure' has a measure of success. Failure provides information, motivation, and it teaches us a valuable lesson that we can apply on our next project. Failure is not only the output of an unsuccessful activity, it is also the input for the next successful one. We need to think like the chef and look for the opportunity in the failure.

Every market is filled with opportunity. It's easy to be successful in a hot market. But when the market changes, look at the superstars. Have they stopped working? Are they in a panic? Probably not. For one thing, they knew this day would come, so they stocked some extra ingredients in the pantry. They're open to new possibilities, new recipes. They exude Success, and whatever the market conditions, nothing is as attractive as success.

We can all do something well. Most chefs are not equally skilled at pastries and entrees. But all chefs are really, really good at some aspect of food preparation and they've built their career using that as a starting point. Each of us is terrific at some aspect of business. Maybe it's people skills, or numbers, or negotiation. Whatever it is, we have to recognize it and use it as the foundation for building additional successes.

Chefs are made, not born. Every cordon bleu chef spends time slicing and dicing, stirring pots and washing dishes, before earning that tall white chef's hat. And even with the toque on their head, they don't stop learning or practicing. The more time we spend on the fundamentals, the more solid our business will eventually be. The more we stretch our skills, the more we'll be ready for any client, any property, and any market condition that comes along.

The chef who can laugh oversees a happy kitchen. Okay, so the roast is as hard as a brick or the birthday cake looks like pudding. You know what? That's actually pretty funny. If we can laugh at the problems, it dispels that first smack of anxiety. It also rallies everyone to our side to help us come up with creative solutions that could be even tastier than the original recipe.

We all have a chance, starting right now, to be five-star chefs. Life is a recipe—flavored with joy and mystery. What are you cooking today?

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations! 

Take control of your Life and Business, and create extraordinary results.
Join a select group of real estate professionals at
Coach Patti's Annual Jump Start Workshop, November 14-16, 2008
With special guest speaker, Floyd Wickman.
Reserve your seat today!

Time to take the temperature of your subconscious!

Just like the flu, real estate anxiety is contagious. Agents start to feel squeezed. Like popping vitamin C, they’re hammering out frantic letters to lenders, hoping to cash in on the foreclosure business. To save money, they’re abandoning their marketing. They're looking around for someone—anyone—to blame, and finally, when the fever of anxiety gets too high, they’re leaving the business.

But right there, in the midst of the chaos, there's something else going on. Maybe you’ve noticed: some agents are having their best year ever. How is that possible?

It’s all about mindset.

The reality is that the market has changed—not just a subtle adjustment, and not just sub-prime fallout, but one of the biggest paradigm shifts our industry has seen. And where there's change, there's opportunity!

We now have four generations of buyers and sellers in the marketplace, from Baby Boomers to Gen X, Gen Y, and the Millennium generation. These groups relate differently to each other, to technology and to real estate. The tools we've come to rely on—the MLS, business cards, Just Sold mailers—can't meet all the needs of these groups. How do we keep a competitive edge and not become obsolete, go broke—or go crazy?

We have to have intention.

As my workshop participants know, I like to get people up on their hind legs, thinking, talking and working together, and, very importantly, laughing. At a recent workshop, I gave the group a challenge: working as a team, you have 30 minutes to build an airplane using all 250 pieces in a Tinkertoy® set. Oh, and one other thing: each person had one arm tied behind their back.

"Impossible!" they said. But everyone quickly realized that "Impossible" wasn’t an acceptable response, and in a half hour they proved that we can accomplish much, much more than we first imagine.

This is the formula for success and it works whether you’re putting together a book, becoming a competitive dancer or having an astonishingly good year in real estate. We all use it sometimes; extraordinary people—Olympic athletes, best selling authors, top producers, even toddlers—use it all the time. The formula is:

I (Intention) + M (Mechanism) = R (Result)

Intention is deep knowing—commitment and focus beyond willpower. It’s in your gut. Mechanism is what you already know: the "how-to." The Result is what you get, whether it’s what you want or not. Where there is 100% intention, there is 100% result; the way to get there will just seem to "appear." If you don’t get the results you believe you want, there's usually something amiss with your intention.

Let's say that the result you want is to take home $200,000 this year. You're going through the motions, sending out mailers, checking the computer, holding your opens, working the mechanism. But you’re just not on track for that result. Why not? You’re really trying, aren't you?

But wait a minute! Didn't you say, in a private phone conversation, that you hate working? Or silently think that the market is terrible and it’s impossible to be successful? Oops. What just happened to your intention? No wonder you’re not getting the results you want. The stronger of two beliefs will always win out; based on your results, you will always know where your true intention is. Henry Ford put it this way: "If you think you can do a thing or think you cannot do a thing, you’re right."

You can't trick your subconscious. There are two layers to our thinking—the conscious and the subconscious. As we go along on our life journey, we pick up beliefs—from our family, our friends, our teachers, and all kinds of other places. Those beliefs get locked into our subconscious and they hang on for dear life. Some are helpful: "I'm smart." Many are not: "I'm fat." "I'm ugly." "This is a really bad market."

The thing is, as long as we hold those beliefs, the results we get will prove that they’re true. All of our actions are filtered through our beliefs. If your belief is "I can't understand computers," learning how to operate that simple new software is going to be agony. But what if you said, "I can cook, I can understand recipes, so I should be able to understand a computer!" You'd probably be amazed at how quickly you'd "get it."

To get what we want, we have to change our beliefs. To change our results, we have to focus and commit to a new belief. Sometimes that takes us outside our comfort zone. This new market means we have to get smarter, learn some new skills, adopt some new tools. We have to think creatively, and we may have to change our beliefs about the market.

To be successful in today's market, we have to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. If we push ourselves through the discomfort—focus and commit to our true intention, both consciously and subconsciously—that new mindset will become our new comfort zone. If you want something different, you have to do something different. If you're not getting what you want, it's the belief that's holding you back.

All the workshops, tips, techniques and brilliant thinking in the world will only work if your beliefs allow you to see the opportunity and the possibility in the market. When we make our intention clear, when we believe it, even if we don't know exactly how it's going to work, we can move mountains, or create books, or do monstrous amounts of business. This really works.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations!

Take control of your Life and Business, and create extraordinary results.
Join a select group of real estate professionals at
Coach Patti's Annual Jump Start Workshop, November 14-16, 2008
With special guest speaker, Floyd Wickman.

Reserve your seat today!

How to remove weeds and make your garden of clients bloom.

Just like a garden of evergreens, perennials, and annuals, your business garden of clients needs attention to remove weeds and keep it blooming in the colors you want to see. [link to first part of the blog]

You’ve finally recognized that the client is a weed. You’ve explained your expectations and you continue to be defeated in your efforts to please them. It’s time for action. I call this the “shape up or ship out” conversation.

• Shape Up: The client can rise to meet your expectations and become a desirable “A” client.
• Ship Out: The client does not meet your expectations and accepts your referral to another Realtor.

The best part of this process is that the client makes the decision. If they don’t feel that they can or want to meet your expectations, they choose to fire themselves!

Seven Steps to Getting the Weeds Out of Your Garden

Think of the difference it would make in your business if you raised your standards, weeded your garden, and worked with only Ideal clients. Here's how:

1. Look at your current undesirable listings, buyers, and seller leads.
2. Write down how they create stress for you and the expectations they are not meeting.
3. List what they’d have to do to meet your expectations. If it is impossible for them to meet your expectations for legal or ethical reasons, make a note to let them go.
4. Call them and book a meeting in person or by phone.
5. In your meeting tell them how they are not meeting your expectations.
6. Give them the two options to choose from: “Shape up or ship out.”
7. Let them decide!

A little weed control goes a long way. At first it may seem overwhelming: how can you possibly get this mess under control? But once you’ve dealt with a weed or two, a few things happen: you get better at spotting the weeds, you get better at handling them before they spread, and, best of all, your other plants thrive once the weeds have been cleared out of the way.

The choice is yours. Either you choose to let the weeds take over the garden, or you exercise some weed control and reap the rewards of a well-tended garden.

One final note: weed control is not a one-time task. But if you deal with the weeds when they emerge, they’ll be easier to manage, and if you review your client list and cull the weeds at least once a year, your customer base will bloom and bear fruit for years to come!

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations!

Take control of your Life and Business, and create extraordinary results.

Join a select group of real estate professionals at
Coach Patti's Annual Jump Start Workshop, November 14-16, 2008
With special guest speaker, Floyd Wickman.

Reserve your seat today!

Pull a few weeds and all your plants will do better!

The business you’ve cultivated is a garden. You have some clients that are well established, solid, and will thrive no matter what. They’re the evergreens—not very demanding, well mannered, and yours for life. You also have more delicate clients—the roses. They’re the ones that require lots of attention and special handling, but will yield breathtaking results if you’ve nurtured them properly. Some clients are annuals: they bloom once and they’re done; others are perennials: you can count on them to come back for another season or two. Then you’ve got your weeds.

Weeds are tricky. Sometimes they start out looking like lovely additions to the garden. They’re small, bright, and colorful. But suddenly you realize that your pretty little weeds are crowding out your other plants. They’re sucking up water and fertilizer, claiming more than their share of sunshine, sending down tangled roots, and forcing you to spend all of your attention on them.

Every Realtor® has weeds. They’re the clients that cause you headaches and simply cannot be pleased, no matter what you do. As the Master Gardener of your business you have two choices: you can try to train and cultivate your weeds, perhaps at the expense of your other plants, or you can pull or transplant them.

Just as a gardener may grow dandelions and nettles as herbs, some other Realtor® may be delighted to help your weedy clients grow to their full potential. Also, remember that even your roses have thorns. Even the perfect client is entitled to be human, to have flaws, to have bad days—and to question your opinions. Gardening expertise is being able to tell which clients are the roses and which ones are the weeds.

Being selective about your clients dramatically improves the success of your business and the quality of your life. As a Realtor®, you have the power to choose your customers; you are in complete control of the number of weeds in your garden.

Weeds Cost You a Fortune

When you first got into the business, you likely took on almost every client that was breathing and eventually filled up all the hours in your days, and then some! You chased after people without asking if they were qualified because you were too afraid of hearing “no.” You pursued clients who were not loyal, or honest, or respectful, or coachable, or communicative, or decisive. Some were, frankly, nuts. There were even times when you worked your tail off and didn’t see the closing. Sound familiar?

Not only do these weedy clients take up space that could be dedicated to more profitable and rewarding clients, they also add tremendous stress to your life. This stress decreases your overall production by depleting your effectiveness with your more valuable clients, with your staff and, very importantly, with your family and friends. So how do you get rid of them?

It’s up to you to decide what kind of garden you want. If you want a rose garden, you’ve got to be able to recognize the weeds—and it’s silly to accept a friend’s offer of a palm tree. In your business, here’s how that translates:

• You need to decide what kind of business you want. You can’t be all things to all people, but you can design, define, and control your business.
• You need to know how to describe your business, your expectations, and your standards to your colleagues and to your clients. The better you get at describing your business, the more your business will look like what you’re describing.
• You need to be able to describe and communicate your role and responsibilities in the agent-client relationship as well as the client’s role and responsibilities. It is up to you to tell them how they can be a better client for you. If you don’t communicate these standards, you only have yourself to blame for a garden full of weeds. If you haven’t communicated well, start now.
• You need to know how to say “Thanks, but no thanks.” When someone offers you a referral that’s way outside your business model—the palm tree in the rose garden—it’s better to say "No" than to serve the customer poorly.
• You need to cultivate a community of Realtors® with whom you can exchange referrals. One Realtor’s® weed is another one’s rose.

It takes time, effort, and attention, but you can remove the weeds and make yours a gorgeous garden of the kind of clients you want to work with. How do you do it? That's the question for next time.

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations!

Take control of your Life and Business, and create extraordinary results.
Join a select group of real estate professionals at

Coach Patti's Annual Jump Start Workshop, November 14-16, 2008
With special guest speaker, Floyd Wickman.

Reserve your seat today!

Worrying doesn’t make you more attractive, so why bother?

There are a lot of perfectly good reasons not to worry: it doesn’t help; it’s bad for your health; it turns you into a boring person. But let’s talk about the one reason we have to confront every day: the face in the mirror.

Here’s what we do when we worry – which do you do?

• frown
• squint our eyes
• purse our lips
• hunch our shoulders
• chew on our nails, fingers, lips, cheeks, hair
• twitch
• lose sleep
• get headaches
• experience digestive problems
• self-medicate with food, alcohol, or drugs
• suspend healthy habits like exercise
• stop laughing
• communicate poorly
• look older than we are

Worry shows on your face—the frown lines, the deep groove between the eyebrows, the bags under the eyes, the bad color—and every minute we spend worrying makes us look worse. Millions of dollars are spent every year on surgery, Botox, and a host of other treatments that try to take the worry off our faces. But those treatments just deal with the symptoms, not the causes.

Worry is a bad habit. What it should be is a little red flag that pops up and says, "Here’s something I have to deal with." But instead of dealing with our concerns and moving on, too often we wear our worry.

But, you say, there are plenty of real things to worry about: world peace, global warming, health, relationships, children, parents, money, the market, listings, clients, competitors, aging, retirement, etc., etc., etc. That's all true, but worrying won't change them; action will. You can actually turn your worries into achievements and take the worry off your face by applying your attention, your focus, your positive energy, and your creativity.

Here are my top ten suggestions for getting rid of the worry habit:

10. Focus on positive possibility. Keep your eye on the good things that can happen—especially the good things that are more likely to happen than winning the lottery!

9. Embrace change. Change happens whether you want it or not. You can’t stop it, so stop worrying about it. Just say "Yes" to change. For inspiration, read a book like Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers.

8. Add structure. Disorganization is the source of many worries: “I can't find it,” “I'm confused,” or “I don’t know what to do next.” Structure provides security and enhances self-confidence. Structure is your home base; it may be something as simple as using a daily To-Do List or an organizational chart for your business.

7. Get the facts. Confusion and ignorance are root causes of worry. It has been said that half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision. Replace time that would have been spent on worry with a search for wisdom.

6. Seek simplicity. We’ve all heard the expression KISS: Keep It Simple, Silly. Simplicity means single-ness of purpose. Simplicity creates trust. Trust eliminates worry.

5. Think, talk, and act cheerfully. Author John Maxwell says, “Your attitude determines your altitude.” It is very difficult to worry if you are being cheerful, saying positive words, helping others, and just being grateful for all you have.

4. Focus on purpose. Focus on your activities and your life’s purpose, not on “What’s going to happen if.…” Align your goals with your personal values and life’s purpose. Achieving meaningful results in every aspect of your life reduces worry.

3. Take action. Crowd worry out of your mind by keeping busy. Read a good book. Work out at the gym. Take a walk. Start a new project. When someone asked Winston Churchill if he was worried about his tremendous responsibilities during WWII, he replied, “I'm too busy. I have no time to worry.”

2. Be a person of integrity. If you are living a life of integrity, you eliminate a source of worry. People worry about getting caught doing something bad; they don’t mind being caught doing good.

1. Pray. Whatever your spiritual beliefs, prayer is a huge eliminator of worry. You may be great at multi-tasking, but you’ll find it impossible to pray and worry at the same time. It doesn’t mean that you abdicate your responsibility; prayer simply means that you’re not handling life completely on your own.

Give these a try. The worry lines you lose could be your own!

“There are two days about which nobody should ever worry, and these are yesterday and tomorrow.” –Robert Jones Burdette

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching

Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations!
Take control of your Life and Business, and create extraordinary results.

Join a select group of real estate professionals at
Coach Patti's Annual Jump Start Workshop, November 14-16, 2008
With special guest speaker, Floyd Wickman.

Reserve your seat today!

These tools are available for anyone who consciously and willfully chooses them. They produce tangible, massive results, and have far more to do with your success than any other factors in your life.

Where do you get them? Well, first you need someone like that little boy in the Emperor’s story. Maybe that’s a business partner, a close friend or a coach—someone who can tell you honestly, yes, you have some pretty useless tools. First step, big step, great step!

Then, one at a time, you look at each of your useless tools and you make a conscious decision to replace it with a new, useful tool. Sometimes it takes some practice before you get used to using your new tools. But once you’ve refilled your tool belt with the tools of mass production, you’ll be amazed at how quickly things start to change in your life. In fact, you may find that your tool belt makes you feel so confident that naked’s not so bad!

You have a choice: naked or equipped. What do you really want?

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations!

Take control of your Life and Business, and create extraordinary results.

Join a select group of real estate professionals at
Coach Patti's Annual Jump Start Workshop, November 14-16, 2008
With special guest speaker, Floyd Wickman.

Reserve your seat today!