The Mindful Financial Advisor

Is workplace stress or anxiety impacting your ability to concentrate, make good decisions, or to give your best self to your clients?

You may be thinking, “Isn’t workplace stress the norm, given global financial changes and subsequent loss of trust in the financial sector? Doesn’t everyone feel stressed out and anxious at work, especially those of us who are having to prove their worth to their clients every day?”

The answer may be “yes,” most of the time, but I would add that it doesn’t have to feel like this.

You can learn to manage your stress and diminish your anxiety, through mindfulness, and remain calmer in an otherwise frantic world.

According to a recent article in Psychology Today, “Mindfulness helps us keep our attention in the present moment, direct our attention where we want it to go, and potentially even to increase the number of things we can track at one time. In today’s frenetic world, enhancing our power to focus is a serious upgrade.”

Not only that, staying calm may be a key component to success, especially for those who deal with clients whose expectations only add to the pressure. Understanding the principles of mindfulness will allow you to counter the effects of stress, and become more effective, both at work and at home, and is an undervalued attribute among wealth advisors.

Mindfulness principles can make you more effective in your work practices and allow you to provide your clients with more empathic service. Establishing a good rapport with clients is important as you are overseeing not only their investments but also many other aspects of their personal and business life.  Clients need an objective opinion when it comes to their financial plan.  You want them to feel they can trust you, and that you are able to rise above and manage in a stressful world. Mindfulness can help you do that.

So just what is mindfulness, and how do you learn it? Simply put, mindfulness is the quality of being present in one’s momentary experience, accepting the moment as it is, rather than doing what we usually do, which is getting caught up in our thoughts and feelings. It’s a non-reactive form of meditation, where we are paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally—as if your life depended on it.

That might sound simple, but being engaged 100% doesn’t come easy, especially in our world of distractions. It means actively listening and not zoning out when your client or co-worker tells the same story for the third time, and it means using all your senses in even mundane situations like getting ready for work or walking to your car.

If you think this is irrelevant, think again. Paying attention to our surroundings, moment-by-moment, is essential to delivering relevant guidance to clients. Viewing each interaction as unique and paying close attention to every aspect of that transaction will make you infinitely more effective.

Think of it: Each client deserves to be approached mindfully and non-judgementally; without anticipating their needs or using pre-determined solutions. If you approach each client with a calm mental state, you will deliver the very best outcomes for clients.

You may begin to see how mindfulness benefits your clients, but where do YOU begin, in order to see benefits for yourself? Here are a few quick tips to get you started:

Observe your body: Ask yourself, “What physical awareness can I pick up on?” Think about your feet on the ground, your hands in your lap, the feeling of your chair on your back.

Focus on one thing: Choose an affirmation or object or sound and keep your attention on it for a few minutes. If you get distracted, gently pull yourself back to it.

Focus on your breath: Breathe in through your nose for the count of four, hold your breath for the count of four, exhale through your nose for the count of four. Hold your breath (don’t inhale) for the count of four. Repeat 10 x.

Show compassion: Affirm; “I accept and love myself as I am.”