Coach Patti's Blog

You know, the deer-in-the-headlights look? These days you don't have to look very far to see real estate agents who are frozen, paralyzed, and panic-stricken. It's perfectly understandable with the worldwide financial crisis, and an important presidential and congressional election less than a month away. Whether man-made or natural, catastrophes affect people deeply.

The thing is, catastrophes happen. Hurricanes like Katrina and Ike, earthquakes and mudslides, tsunamis, and stock market slides. A catastrophe can be a divorce, an unexpected death, a serious illness, or a business failure. They happen. We cannot control them, we can only choose how to respond.

You've heard it before: Change your thinking, change your life. Right now we’re feeling that the sky really is falling. What we need to do is look down from that sky and backward in our own lives to where catastrophes have happened before, and we survived. Sometimes, we not only survived but came out in a new place that turned out to be better. My own life has a perfect example.

In the dark early morning of January 17, 1994, the massive Northridge earthquake literally threw me out of my bed so hard that I hit the ceiling. It split my house open and destroyed life as I knew it. We were fortunate we had no injuries, yet everything was gone in a few minutes of earth-shattering natural disaster. That's the day I cried, "Uncle!" and my career as a real estate agent in California ended.

Yet within 30 days my whole life changed for the better. With the house unliveable, I moved to a new town, and created a real estate coaching program that was the basis of this career I love. I was forced by catastrophe to let go and say, "I don't want to do what I've been doing, and I don't know what's on the horizon, but I'll find my answer." And I did.

Change happens and it's not always comfortable. In fact, I don't know anyone who likes change other than a wet baby! There are changes, like the cyclical changes of the seasons, that we accept and adjust to by changing our wardrobes to match the weather. And there are structural changes like the use of computers, the Internet, and multi-function phones. You can say "What the heck is this?!" and reject technology, or you can embrace it. But like it or not, technology has changed how we do just about everything.

When the change is catastrophic – an earthquake, a market meltdown, a life-threatening disease – you also have choices. You can resist the change and watch helplessly as everything around you seems to crumble. Or you can recognize the change, accept it as something you cannot control, and find a way to work with it to improve your life and your business.

Now I'm not some Pollyanna singing, "Just let a smile be your umbrella." Of course you will feel worried, stressed, and powerless. What I'm saying is that you probably have an example somewhere in your life where you have survived another catastrophe and have come out the other side. Look back at your life and at changes in the past, remember how you felt powerless when the change happened, and that you didn't like what was happening. But somehow you got to that place of "So what? Now what?" and things did get better eventually. 

Even the most horrendous events, like that earthquake in 1994, or hurricanes, have some positive outcomes. Building regulations improve, better evacuation procedures are developed, people take warnings seriously and act on them. I'm not saying there isn't a devastating human toll; I'm only saying that we need to hold on to the perspective that we learn and improve from even the worst events.

We see the best come out in people during these times, too. Randy Pausch, the professor and author of "The Last Lecture," (pictured at left) had a grim prognosis but managed to leave great gifts for his wife, his children, and the world. He didn't say, "Oh, dear!" and crawl into a corner. He said, "So what? Now what am I going to do about it?" and created a legacy of hope.

Randy took the tools he had – wisdom and words – and created some good out of a desperate situation.  We can do the same thing. We don't have to like what's going on, but here it is, and we have to find a way to "So what? Now what?"

So here we are…now what will you do? Next time, some thoughts about what real estate agents can do when the whole world seems to be turned upside down.

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
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