Remember the first week or two of January when your boundless optimism about the brand new year had you waltzing into the workplace with a new frame of mind?
Did you keep your New Year Resolutions? Or did you sink back into predictable patterns and let the day-to-day stress wash back over you and take away your newfound enthusiasm?
Here are three tips on keeping your stress to a minimum and maintaining focus on improving your financial advisor practice.
Watch Your Watch
Today’s smart watches do an excellent job of all sorts of tasks. One of them is to help you relax.
For example, the Apple Watch has a “Breathe” app that reminds you a few times a day to simply take a moment and connect with your breath.
Focusing during that moment allows the drama of the day to take a back seat, and bring your hear rate back to a calmer tempo. You’ll be surprised how much clarity this simply moment of mindfulness can provide!
Add the Right Smartphone Apps
The App Store on your smartphone is chocked full of various apps to help with productivity, communication and more. But when Apple picks the 2017 App of the Year and it’s all about relaxation, you know it’s a great app that delivers.
Calm, describing itself as the #1 app for relaxation and sleep, delivers a wide range of relaxing sounds and visuals. And tens of millions of downloads from users indicates that it certainly does the trick for many.
The free version has lots of options to bring you back towards a positive place, and various paid features can provide additional programs including mindful movement and stretching. Plus, they offer hundreds of hours of exclusive music and story tracks engineered to help you focus, relax or even sleep.
Walk the Walk
When potentially contentious conversations need to take place or when difficult problems need to be solved, the office environment may not set the proper stage for a calm, purposeful meeting. Instead, why not take a walk?
In fact, there’s real science behind this approach, as found in a Stanford Study. According to this research, your creative output is increased by 60% when you’re simply walking. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re outdoors or indoors; just that you’re moving.
There’s a reason why Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and other successful big thinkers have been ambassadors of taking their meetings on foot to get the creative juices flowing. It works!
Next Steps
Want more ideas on how to get your practice moving in the right direction and make positive progress? Set up a complimentary Ironstone Exploratory Strategy Session.
As a financial advisor coach assisting clients coast-to-coast, we’re ready to help your advisory firm embrace best practices through our proven Fundamental 4TM approach.