It’s 2010. Chances are you have made some New Year’s Resolutions. A good question to ask is, “Are you paying attention to what really matters?” To determine what matters most in your life, answer the three following questions:

1.  Name the three most memorable events in your life.
2.  Name the five most important people in your life.
3.  Name three things you wish you had more time to do.
4.  Name three people you would like to spend more time with (and include the activity where you would be together.)

Did any of these include work? If you’re like most people, probably not. Unfortunately, our society often portrays being a “workaholic” as something noble—”The market is really tough. I have to 16 hours a day if we’re going to succeed!” “We both have to work—the kids would be stuck in a lousy apartment and a lousy school if we don’t!” “My clients need me—I have to be available when they call.”

If you look back on your past, chances are pretty good that your most precious memories are not of work—they’re of times spent doing special things with those you love or times you’ve taken time for you. So the next time you’re considering missing time with loved ones to stay at work or putting off caring for yourself because work is more important, remember what matters.

Posted by Bernice Ross, author of the Best Selling Book at NAR 2008-Real Estate Dough Your Recipe for Success. For More Information on Bernice or to book her for your next event call 1-877-211-6472

Have you ever heard the phrase: “Ask and you shall receive?” As common as this phrase is, it would be easy to conclude that many people have mastered this skill. In actuality, most people have mastered “giving” while very few have mastered “asking”. To develop the life you’ve always dreamed of, asking for what you need is essential.

The two key components in asking for what you need are giving yourself permission to ask and practice. While not everyone will accommodate your request, mastering these two steps can open a whole different world for you.

For most people, practicing is the easy part. The hardest part is actually giving yourself permission to ask. Consider your own life for a moment — how do you determine when to give yourself permission to ask for what you need? Is it after a fight? Must you struggle with something first before you give in? Do you need someone else to say it’s ok first before you give yourself permission? What belief or “truth” do you currently hold that blocks you from asking for what you need?

To determine what may be blocking you from asking what you need, sit quietly for a moment and picture someone you know who easily asks for what they need. Do you see this person as “pushy”, “forceful”, “obnoxious” or do you see them as a role model? By discovering your own attitudes towards those who are good at asking for what they need, you may be able to identify the beliefs that hold you back. For example, if you view people who ask for what they need as being selfish, you may avoid fulfilling your own needs because you don’t want to be perceived as selfish. To make the shift, consider fulfilling your needs as taking very good care of yourself instead of being selfish. Another common way people avoid fulfilling their own needs is to expect that other person “intuitively knows” what it is they need. Given that most of us aren’t mind readers, the smart move is to simply tell others what you need. This simple strategy helps to avoid anger and disappointment from unexpressed expectations.

To practice asking for what you need, a simple approach is to view it an expansion of a skill you already have. For example, when you go to a restaurant or to a movie, you have no trouble telling others what it is you want to eat or see. To build this skill, practice expanding it to other situations. A simple place to start is by asking someone at the grocery store to help you find an item or asking someone to help you with a problem you’ve encountered.

Asking for what you need is neither a skill you can delegate nor overlook as you live your life. The time you spend practicing will return far greater dividends than any initial discomfort you experience.

Coaching Tips:

Ready to begin asking for what you need? One way to break through any limiting beliefs is by the simple step of taking action. The goal here is to practice asking for what you need in small areas of your life. As you gain experience, learning to ask for things in the major parts of your life becomes easier.
1. Choose one small area of your life that you feel confident and comfortable in. Choosing a small area where you do not have high expectations or “attachments” will make this process much easier.

2. Give yourself blanket permission to ask for what you need. This means that you can ask for anything you might need — period.

3. Consider your chosen area and come up with one thing you need. Again, by making it a small need, you increase the likelihood of success with this exercise.

4. Ignore any internal dialogue about whether you “should or should not” be able to get this need met. The larger and more significant the item that you need, the more likely you’ll run right into this voice. For now, just thank the voice (thought, feeling, etc.) for the feedback and move on.

5. Identify one person who can meet or exceed your specific need. If this is a friend who is willing to support you, then tell your friend what you are doing and ask for their support as you gain practice in the skill of asking.

6. Ask. Taking the action step is essential here.

7. Review what you experienced, felt, and learned about yourself and others during this process. Was it easy or hard? Fun or challenging? Emotionally draining or up-lifting?

8. Practice again and again and again. You may find yourself surprised at how easy it becomes asking for what you need.

One final word here — asking for something and receiving what you’ve asked for are not the same thing. Be willing to not get what you want while at the same time being focused on the skill of asking. Over time, you will gain clarity about what is really important to you as well as what really doesn’t matter. Just keep practicing.

Posted by Bernice Ross, author of the #1 Best Selling book at NAR 2008–Real Estate Dough Your Recipe for Real Estate Success. For more information on Bernice or to book her for your next event call 1-877-211-6472.

One of the things about being with BASB is that the Bureau has carefully screened all of their speakers. The quality is definitely there. But what about the bloggers, the panel members who sound great, or the IT folks who have in depth knowledge? Having mastery in a content area is great–it has no relationship, however, to how well the person can convey that knowledge in front of a group.

Today, anyone can proclaim that they are an expert. This seems to be particularly true in the areas of social media and distressed properties. Just because someone has a certification or is blogging or writing about a topic, doesn’t mean that they can deliver that material in front of the room. The question is how to distinguish those who have both the content AND the platform skills that will provide the best value to your audience.

With money being tight right now, it’s tempting to go for the low cost alternatives–the question is, what is the value to your audience? If you cut corners and go for a second tier speaker who has the knowledge but can’t hold the room, everyone loses. The audience is deprived of the skills that could have helped to build their businesses. Realtors vote with their feet and when they don’t like something, they leave (and often don’t come back next year!) Furthermore, with the advent of social media, feedback about the quality of the session is instantaneous. There’s nothing that can kill your future attendance more quickly than having negative posts all over the social media about how lousy a session was.

To keep this from happening to you, ask for references. If the speaker or trainer doesn’t have a video tape, request that they make one. Search the speaker’s name on Google as well as on the major social networking sites such as Twitter. See what the speaker’s reputation is online.

Even more importantly, ask their references about how easy the speaker was to work with–the big ego off stage translates into big ego onstage. The bottom line is that if someone doesn’t express gratitude for the opportunity to speak before your audience, then they’re missing the most important point of all–speakers and trainers are there to be of service–not the other way around.

Posted by Bernice Ross, author of the #1 Best Selling book at NAR 2008–Real Estate Dough Your Recipe for Real Estate Success

Two weeks ago, I did a post on how to stop procrastinating. Today’s post looks at one of the biggest obstacles with respect to procrastination–the status quo. 

If you’re like most people, you have at least one or two areas where you have been putting off taking action. Your awareness of the issue is high, a clear path of action exists, and yet you can’t bring yourself to do anything about it.  Take a moment to write down one situation where you are clearly aware of the necessity for taking action yet you are caught in limbo between keeping the status quo and taking the action to change it.

Before figuring out how to move out of this state of limbo, let’s look at the consequences of maintaining the status quo. In the physical world, energy is required to maintain a stable or balanced state. Just as your body requires energy to maintain an even temperature of 98.6 degrees, maintaining the status quo also uses energy. Maintaining the status quo when a change is needed, however, actually requires additional energy over time. The longer you’re stuck in “limbo,” the harder it is to escape into action. For example, the longer you go without exercising, the harder it becomes to start exercising again. The converse is also true – the more that you exercise, the easier it is to continue exercising. Thus, the longer you have been doing something, the more momentum or inertia you have to keep doing the same behavior.

How can you change the status quo? Begin by taking a small, simple action step. You probably know the old joke about “How do you eat an elephant?” (One bite at a time!) The key is to take a tiny bite and to keep biting. In other words, if you want to start exercising at least four times per week, begin by increasing your physical activity 10 minutes today. Tomorrow, you might do another 10 minutes or perhaps 15 minutes. If you miss a day, that’s OK. Just plan on taking another bite tomorrow.

If you’re tackling an elephant, have fun working on it. For example, one woman had been working in the UK for the last 3 years and had placed all of her things in storage. She literally had hundreds of boxes to go through before she moved into her new home back in the US. What she decided to do was to make the tedious task into a treasure hunt. In each box, she was searching for the one treasure she would take to her new home. Everything else she would discard since she didn’t have the space to ship it.

A third approach to changing the status quo is to alter your environment. If you’re tired of telemarketing calls during dinner, disconnect your phone before you sit down to eat. If you find yourself hitting the vending machines at work around 4:00 PM, take an apple or some other healthy snack and place it in your desk so it will be there when you get hungry. If you’re intimidated about speaking to your boss in her office, ask to have the conversation in a less threatening environment.

A fourth approach is to partner up. Parents Without Partners, Weight Watchers, and a host of other organizations assist people facing major life challenges by providing a supportive relationship where positive action is acknowledged and reinforced. In fact, one of the very best ways to partner up is by hiring a coach.

Whether you tackle the elephant alone or with the help of someone else, breaking the cycle of inaction will increase your energy as well as your self-confidence. Remember–just a bite at a time!

Posted by Bernice Ross, CEO, RealEstateCoach.com and author of the #1 best selling book at NAR 2008, Real Estate Dough(TM), Your Recipe for Real Estate Success

Everyone has an online reputation. The question is, “Who is creating your reputation?” Failure to monitor what others are saying about you on the web can cost your business plenty.

To protect your online reputation, the first step is to make sure that you have a presence on the major social media networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter–even if you don’t use the account. The reason? Someone else who is angry with you could impersonate you online. If you do nothing else from reading this post, fill out a profile on these major sites and upload your photo. That way at least, it makes it much harder for people to pretend to be you.

The second step is to use a tool such as Google Alerts. This tool notifies you anytime there is a post the references you, your business, or any other phrase you ask the system to track.

An even better system has just been released by MyFrontSteps.com. Their system allows you to rank any postings that have been made about you. Their “Step-Rep” program has you rank various comments about you as “positive,” “neutral,” “my content,” “not relevant,” and “negative.” Their software optimizes the posts that are positive about you and pushes the negative ones towards the back of the search. Best of all it’s free!

If you’re not taking steps to protect your online reputation, there’s no better time than right now to get started!

Posted by Bernice Ross, CEO www.RealEstateCoach.com.(Bernice@RealEstateCoach.com)

With over 400 published articles and four books to her credit, Bernice has served as a speaker, consultant, trainer, and coach to the leading real estate firms in the country.

Every year we enjoy watching the Tour de France, especially when fellow Austinite Lance Armstrong is racing. The Tour de France is a grueling race that lasts for days. The racers travel around the French countryside as well as climbing through two mountain ranges. While the goal my be to win the “yellow jersey,” on any given day there are a multitude steps that the riders must take  just to stay in the race. The lesson here is that success doesn’t depend upon the ultimate goal–it’s contingent on a multitude of actions the riders take each day. While winning is the goal, in order to win, the riders must stay focused on the steps in the process.

The same is true for your real estate business. When you focus on the process rather than the outcome, you greatly increase your likelihood of success. Your success or failure in the long term will result from the actions that you take today.

If you want to make your goals a sweet reality, the following five steps can help you do so.

1. Clean out your goal list completely. If you have had a goal for more than one year and have not reached it, declare it complete no matter how much or how little you actually accomplished. To do this, write each goal on an individual slip of paper. Next “clean the slate” by burning the slips of paper in the fireplace, burying them in the back yard, or ripping them up and throwing them in the trash. Be creative. Cleaning out your list of goals opens the door for new things to come into your life.

2. Write down five activities that supported you to feel great about yourself during the last six months. What really worked for you? Be specific. Keep these activities alive during the coming year because they work.

3. Eliminate at least one activity that doesn’t support you to feel great. We all engage in behaviors that help us cope in the short-term, but have detrimental effects in the long term. An example of this may be eating a chocolate bar when we’re depressed. Unfortunately, this behavior often results in guilt. Many people use guilt as a strategy to change behavior. “I know I shouldn’t eat this chocolate bar.” A better approach is to be honest with yourself and take responsibility for your choice: “I am choosing to eat this chocolate bar.” Notice there is no guilt or explanation. It’s simply an acknowledgement of the choice. When you say that you are choosing this behavior, surprisingly, it becomes easier not to choose it.

4. List your goals for 2009 and then eliminate 50-75 percent of them. If you find yourself resisting this strategy, look carefully at your past to determine how many goals you actually set and then what percentage you actually achieved. Setting too many goals can reduce your overall success since your energy is scattered in too many directions. In contrast, when you keep your energy focused on achieving two or three core goals, success occurs more easily. Once you reach or discard your current goals, add new ones.

5. Make small changes over time. Achieving goals is easier when you work with small steps over time. Instead of setting a goal to save $10,000, it’s usually easier to take a series of small steps. For example, “I’ll use coupons at the grocery store since it can save me up to $20.00 per week and I will put those savings in my bank account.” It is easier to take action when working with small changes than when working with big changes. By reducing the number of goals you have and by making small changes over time, your likelihood of experiencing success increases dramatically.

Finally, celebrate your wins everyday, no matter how small. This helps you to stay on track for the bigger goals you set. As Lao Tzu once said, “A journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step.”

Posted by Bernice Ross, CEO, www.RealEstateCoach.com

Follow me on Twitter @bross or visit our luxury blog at www.LuxuryClues.com

During the last week, what did you postpone until tomorrow that would have been better handled today? Prospecting? Calling past clients? Saving for a rainy day? Going to the dentist? Paying your bills? Calling a loved one? A physical check up?

One of the great ways we create stress and struggle in our lives is through procrastination. When we say, “I just don’t have the time (or energy) to deal with it now,” we “pay the price” of our procrastination in several different ways. First, when we focus on a task and decide not to act on it, we’ve wasted time we could have used to complete the task or to work on something else. Second, the more we procrastinate, the more difficult it becomes to take action to complete the task. Third, delaying the task often increases the “cost” of completing it, much like paying a credit card late increases the cost of carrying the debt.

What can you do to reduce the procrastination in your life? Here are five simple strategies:

1. Increase your awareness of when you procrastinate. Note how often you decide to postpone tasks as well as how you feel when you make the decision not to act on it now. Notice which types of tasks you normally complete as well as those where you consistently procrastinate.

2. If there’s a consistent area where you procrastinate, it’s probably time to delegate it or dump it. Many times we’re trapped by our own belief system that tells us we “should” engage in a particular activity. For example, you may believe you have to bake a homemade cake for a special birthday when one from the market would be just as good and would be a lot less effort.

3. Tackle the simple items first. If you try to stop procrastinating all at once or tackle the hardest items first, you’ll only create more struggle and stress. Instead, start with what you can easily handle and then move to the more difficult items.

4. Put a “time limit” on what’s not handled. For example, if you don’t read this month’s magazines, put them in next month’s stack. If they are not read by the end of the month,  discard them. Allowing them to pile up is a constant reminder of your procrastination and only makes you feel worse as the pile continues to grow.

5. Prioritize what’s most important and focus on completing those items. The 80-20 rule says 80% of the benefit comes from the top 20% of our activities. Conversely, the bottom 20% produces less than 1% of benefit. For the next week, eliminate the bottom 20% of your activities that produce the least benefit. Reducing how much you have to do frees you up to deal with the important items you’ve been procrastinating about doing.

Reducing procrastination requires a series of small steps over a long period of time. If you’re ready to stop procrastinating, how about completing one item right now that you’ve been putting off?

Posted by Bernice Ross, CEO of www.RealEstateCoach.com,author of Real Estate Dough(TM) Your Recipe for Real Estate Success, the #1 Best Selling Book at the NAR 2008 Conference.