Stop Stressing – Don’t Look Back

By Larry Tobin

The past can be a problematic albatross to carry around. We’ll forget where we left our keys 20 minutes ago, but ask us to remember an embarrassing moment from our childhood and it will come to mind like a flash. For some reason, we seem incredibly predisposed toward reminiscing over troubling events. We replay and replay them in our minds until we can’t focus on anything else but feeling mortified and wondering if we made the right decision.

Simply trying not to think about the problem doesn’t necessarily help, either. Studies suggest that simply trying to ignore a thought process doesn’t work; in fact, it can lead to thinking more about the very thing we’re trying to forget. This builds and builds, until we’re so worried about the past that we can’t live in the present like we’re meant to, and the stress of things that aren’t relevant anymore is still tearing us apart.

What’s needed is a system – a way of approaching the problem piece by piece and addressing each part until we can settle it logically.

Step One – Interrupt the Thoughts

As we’ve discussed before, good habits can be built on other good habits. They reinforce one another, each one making the others stronger and more resilient. To that end, if you find yourself endlessly replaying your bad conversations, interrupt the cycle with the STOP method we’ve discussed before.

Say “Stop” aloud: This verbal affirmation serves as a trigger for the habit and a reminder to yourself.

Take a Breath and a Breather: Give yourself a few seconds to practice your deep breathing habit and get your body’s physical responses under control, then take five minutes to unwind and explicitly focus on something uplifting and soothing.

Own Your Outcome: Remember to list several of the goals you’ve set for yourself, as well as the next step you’re going to take to make them yours.

Praise Yourself: Go over what you’ve accomplished thus far, including the most recent steps you’ve taken toward your goals.

Again, this will reinforce the strength of the STOP method overall, allowing you to integrate it more fully into your habit-building process. After thirty days of practice, it will seem like second nature.

Step Two – Analyze the Thoughts

Remember that thinking things through logically helps defeat illogical worries and unnecessary stresses. If we can contextualize the problems we’re dealing with, they can’t do as much damage and never seem quite as worrying as they did before we thought them through.

Once you’ve used the STOP method, take a moment to go over your thoughts thus far, piece by piece.

First, ask yourself why the event happened the way it did. Look at the whole matter fairly and objectively. What reasons could the other parties have had for reacting like they did? What are some good reasons they might have had, and what are some bad ones? Why did you react the way you did? What were your reasons, good or bad?

Be fair in your assessment, both to yourself and the other party. There’s nothing to be gained from inaccurate, angry criticism. To make this an approachable habit that’s easy to integrate, break it into small steps. First, think about the problem as a whole, then list one good and bad reason for your actions and the other parties’ actions. Three easy steps make this a habit that’s simple to adopt.

Step Three – Make a Wish

Now that you’ve gotten the problem into context, consider ways to use it as a learning experience. Given the benefit of time, distance and perspective, what do you wish you had done instead?

Worrying about and regretting the choice you made is a good sign that you might have made the wrong choice, so take some time to consider it. Was there something you might have said that would have made more sense? Would a calmer reaction have made the situation better? Write down several wishes you have for how the situation might have gone instead.

Also, consider another option. If one of your wishes can be fulfilled now, do so! Even late, good actions are a great way to make amends.

Step Four – Resolve to do Better

With the scope of the problem firmly in mind, and with your wishes stated for how it might have gone instead, it’s time to take the next step. Very specifically, write down your biggest regrets about the situation. Confront your worries realistically, be they about the situation itself, about how you handled it or about what’s come about as a result of the encounter. Then make a decision about each one.

If your problem was your tone, dedicate yourself to exercising control of your voice the next time you have an argument. If your regret lies in not listening, resolve to be more attentive to what others have to say every time you speak to someone. Then tear the paper up and set it aside. If the worries try to push themselves back into your head, say “that was then, this is now,” and find a way to act on one of your affirmative resolutions.

Some people dream of success, while others wake up and work hard at it!

The concept that success is mine when I work my hardest to become my best, and that I alone determine whether I do so, became central to my life and affected me in a most profound manner. – Coach John Wooden

(by SuperCoach Michael Neill):
There is a story about a young aide who began working for former US Seceretary of State Henry Kissinger. After preparing a 10 page brief for Kissinger, the aide was quite surprised to find the brief back on his desk the following morning with the words “You can do better!” written across the top.

Diligently, the young aide checked and re-checked his facts, this time visiting a few additional sources and turned in the now 15 page brief to Kissinger’s office. Within an hour, it was returned to him, once again with the words “You can do better!” written on the front.

Once more the aide checked and re-checked his facts, garnered yet more sources of information, and after nearly 36 sleepless hours of diligently gathering all the available information, making enquiries and checking facts, he proudly presented the now 20 page document to Kissinger’s office, only to have it returned to him yet again with the now familiar words “You can do better!” written on the front.

Despondent, they young aide met with Kissinger to offer his resignation. “This is the best I can do,” said the aide. “I’ve given my all.”

“Good,” replied Kissinger. “Now I’ll read it!”

How often in our own lives do we do the bare minimum we need to do to get by, satisfying others without in any way satisfying ourselves?

When I look back on my own life, many of the accomplishments that people assume I’m most proud of fade into insignificance compared to a stone wall I built in my parents driveway when I was 15. I built that stone wall by hand, choosing each stone with care. It’s not perfect by any means, but I have never put more of myself into a project, and the fact that two decades later, the wall is still standing pales into insignificance compared to my experience of truly giving everything I had in service of my goal.

This week, do yourself a favor – don’t fake it. Don’t “get away with” anything, and don’t just show up. Put in the hours and put in the effort, not for your employer’s or client’s sake, but for your own. Just for this week, work like you DO need the money and reap the rewards of success, fulfillment, and well-being.

Today’s Experiment:
1. Choose a project you are currently working on.

Examples:
Something at work, your relationship with your spouse or your children, Some DIY or home improvements, etc.

2. If it was given back to you with the words “You can do better!”, what could you do to do it better?

Examples:
Put in more time, put in more effort, put in more thought, get help from others, learn more about it, etc.

3. Know that you CAN do better and do what it takes to know that you have done your best. Remember, you are the only one who can determine when you’ve done so.

I’ll leave you today with one of my favorite quotes of all time from the French actress Sarah Bernhardt:

“Life begets life, energy begets energy.
It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.”

——————————————————————————–

Hey Team!

We had a great Team Meeting yesterday, with a lively discussion about how to handle today’s buyer, you know, the one who appears to be “sitting on the fence”. We role played some great dialogue, and our in-house lender, Steve Hankla, shared market information and how he handles that waffling buyer prospect. It was great stuff!

We also got a market update from our sponsor, Kristen Thompson, with First American Home Buyers Protection….along with the wonderful, yummy breakfast burritos that Kristen is famous for bringing!

So, the bottom line is, if you are not putting the Team Meeting on your calendar, you are missing some great opportunities to learn and grow! Just sayin’……

–

Jan Cotten
Your Productivity Coach
Agents Who Choose to Be Successful Are Attracted to My Program!
Keller Williams Coastal Properties
Long Beach, CA
janc@kw.com
jan@kwcpstaff.com
www.LBAgentSuccess.com

(from Michael Neill, author of Supercoach and other books):

“There is no try – there is only do or not do” – Yoda, from The Empire Strikes Back

The other day, I was explaining to my wife why I hadn’t emptied the dishwasher when I heard myself saying “well, I tried to do it, but I just didn’t have time”. Meaningful though this response seemed to me at the time , I realized that what I had in fact done was simply not made it important enough to get it done.

For most of us, when we say we will “try” and do something, we mean one of two things:

1. We have no real intention of doing it and want to get our excuses in early (“well, I did say I’d TRY…”)

2. We don’t feel the project/task/outcome is worthy of our full effort and commitment. However, if we can accomplish it without too much focus or effort, we will.

Why isn’t your diet working? Because you’re not really sticking to it. Why isn’t your relationship working? Because you’ve not really made it the most important thing in your life. Why aren’t you where you want to be in your career? Because you allow other things to take precedence over it on a daily basis.

In fact, almost nobody I know has weight problems, relationship issues, or career challenges. Is this because my friends are so cool? (Well, they are, but no!) It’s because 99 out of a hundred times, the challenges we all face are actually about prioritization.

“Not me,” I hear you cry. “I do my best, but money (traffic/my partner/my kids/my boss/insert excuse here) won’t let me do what I want to do!”

Here are my two favorite tests to see if it’s life or your priorities that are holding you back…

1. A Gun to your Head

“Knowing you are going to be hanged in the morning focuses the mind wonderfully.”
-Samuel Johnson

If you knew that anyone who arrived late to a meeting would be killed, would you prioritize leaving earlier and arriving on time? If you knew that the difference between your loved ones living and dying was your ability to not lose your temper with them, would you prioritize mastering the skills of emotional control?

Unpleasant though these images might be, a lot of things that we call “impossible” suddenly become extremely possible if someone has a metaphorical gun to our heads.

Richard Bandler, co-developer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), refers to this as “Smith and Wesson Therapy”, and throughout his writing cites any number of supposedly incurable psychological conditions that cleared up or shifted almost instantaneoously under the patients’ real or imagined threat of death.

2. A Million Dollars

In the movie “Indecent Proposal”, Robert Redford offers to buy a night with Demi Moore from her husband for a million dollars. Whether you liked the movie or not, the point is that when there’s real money on the table, what we can and can’t do often shifts, and it becomes clear that the real question is what we will and won’t do.

What would you be willing to do for a million dollars? What would you no longer do? If you knew you’d receive a million dollars cash if you could be on time for every appointment you have this week, what would you do to make sure you arrived on time? If you would inherit a million dollars on the condition that you were nice to your family for a whole month, would you find a way to do it?

The fact is, we are where we are in our lives for a very good reason – accidents and twists of fate aside, our circumstances are a fairly accurate reflection of our priorities – of what we’ve chosen to make important over time.

So here’s the million dollar question:

Are you prioritizing your happiness, your goals, your relationships, or your television?

Today’s Experiment:

“The best way to prepare for something is to do it.”
-Jacques Prevert

1. This week, prioritize noticing what you’re prioritizing in your life. When do you choose TV over conversation? When do you choose the newspaper over work? When do you choose what you’re supposed to be doing over what you really want to be doing?

2. Listen to your language when you make promises or excuses. Are you blaming (or preparing to blame) circumstances for your actions and results? (If you’re not sure, run your situation through the “million dollar test” or offer yourself a bit of hypothetical “Smith and Wesson Therapy”!)

3. Choose a relationship in your life you would like to enhance. The next time you are with this person, act as if they are the most important person in the world and notice how it affects your time together.

4. Make at least one commitment to yourself this week that you will definitely keep (as opposed to ‘try to keep’). This can be to be on time for your appointments, to exercise daily, to spend time with your partner or family, etc. If you find yourself “forgetting” or “failing” to keep your commitment, notice how you would behave differently if you’d really made it a number one priority.

Have fun, learn heaps, and try and have a great week! (You know, if it isn’t too much trouble and if stuff doesn’t come up…

…How do you achieve excellence? By doing the right thing.

Excellence is the result of caring about what you do, and of putting your very best effort into what you care about.

Excellence is an outward expression of inner integrity, and few things are more valuable than that.

Excellence is a choice you always have the option of making. Whatever your level of skill, whatever resources are available, you can take what you have and move forward with
excellence.

Excellence is a product of your attitude. Excellence is a product of your passion and commitment.

A life devoted to excellence is not easy, and can at times be frustrating and painful. Yet a life without excellence is even worse, because the pain of regret for what could have
been is a pain that never ceases.

If you’re going to spend the time and do the work anyway, choose to do it with excellence. Excellence is an investment that continues to pay dividends long after the effort has
been made.

Hey Team!

Happy 7-11 Day! Did you know that all the 7-11 stores are giving away free slurpees today?? Yum! Stop by and get your share of the sugar today!!

And while you’re coming down from your sugar high, you can mark your calendar for the following business development events:

Tuesday, July 12 – 9:00 – 10:00 am – New Member Orientation — even if you aren’t a new member, you are welcome to join in and re-acquaint yourself with KWCP!

Wednesday July 13 – 9:15 TEAM MEETING! — Market Updates, Vendor Information, Skills Training, getting to hang out with your fellow KWCP agents, and FREE Breakfast!

Wednesday, July 13 – 11:00 am – “All You Ever Wanted to Know About Preliminary Title Reports” with Lisa Lombardi

Thursday, July 15 – 2:00 – 3:00 pm – “How To Prepare A Winning Offer”. This will be a MASTERMIND discussion about preparing offers that get accepted. If you have ever written an offer that has resulted in a pending sale, then BE HERE and be ready to share with us how you write and package your offers…. and if you have yet to write an offer that results in a pending sale, then THIS IS the place for you to be! It’s your chance to ask your fellow agents exactly what they do when writing and presenting offers. EVERYONE has something to share and to learn from this mastermind event, so make sure you are here!

Friday, July 16 – 10:00 – 11:00 am – KW Connect Training

So there you have it! We’ll see you this week!

–

Jan Cotten
Your Productivity Coach
Agents Who Choose to Be Successful Are Attracted to My Program!
Keller Williams Coastal Properties
Long Beach, CA
janc@kw.com
jan@kwcpstaff.com
www.LBAgentSuccess.com

1. Champions Expect to Win – When they walk on the court, on the field, into a meeting or in a classroom they expect to win. In fact they are surprised when they don’t win. They expect success and their positive beliefs often lead to positive actions and outcomes. They win in their mind first and then they win in the hearts and minds of their customers, students or fans.

2. Champions Celebrate the Small Wins – By celebrating the small wins champions gain the confidence to go after the big wins. Big wins and big success happen through the accumulation of many small victories. This doesn’t mean champions become complacent. Rather, with the right kind of celebration and reinforcement, champions work harder, practice more and believe they can do greater things.

3. Champions Don’t Make Excuses When They Don’t Win – They don’t focus on the faults of others. They focus on what they can do better. They see their mistakes and defeats as opportunities for growth. As a result they become stronger, wiser and better.

4. Champions Focus on What They Get To Do, Not What They Have To Do – They see their life and work as a gift not an obligation. They know that if they want to achieve a certain outcome they must commit to and appreciate the process. They may not love every minute of their journey but their attitude and will helps them develop their skill.

5. Champions Believe They Will Experience More Wins in the Future – Their faith is greater than their fear. Their positive energy is greater than the chorus of negativity. Their certainty is greater than all the doubt. Their passion and purpose are greater than their challenges. In spite of their situation champions believe their best days are ahead of them, not behind them.

If you don’t think you have what it takes to be a champion, think again. Champions aren’t born. They are shaped and molded. And as iron sharpens iron you can develop your mindset and the mindset of your team with the right thinking, beliefs and expectations that lead to powerful actions.

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.

~Oprah Winfrey