As the year nears its end, many financial advisors find themselves sprinting toward the holidays, trying to achieve their annual goals with dwindling or no energy reserves. The final months are a flurry of client meetings, financial planning updates, tax-loss harvesting and portfolio reviews – not to mention their personal lives. In all that hustle and bustle, advisors can easily forget about taking care of the people who are serving their clients – themselves.
Burnout, defined as the cumulative impact of chronic work-related stress without effective coping mechanisms, can easily take root during this time of year. Unfortunately, burnout can silently and steadily build up until it impacts not only the advisor’s well-being but also their ability to exercise thoughtful and ethical judgment and good quality client service. That’s why it’s critical for advisors to not only protect their clients’ financial lives but also their own health.
While financial planners emphasize maintaining calm throughout the duration of a balanced and sustainable financial plan, they don’t often practice what they preach when it comes to investing in and taking care of their own health and well-being.
What Causes This?
From an outsider’s perspective, being an advisor seems like a numbers-filled job – one that involves monitoring and reading the markets while creating portfolios that take advantage of dips and low tax opportunities and financial plans that mathematically solve a person’s life.
In reality though, an advisor’s job is very human-centric, as advisors listen to and absorb their clients’ financial fears and concerns. For professionals who weren’t equipped with the tools to protect their own mental health or who didn’t realize that this is a people-person kind of job, burnout can more easily occur.
Absorbing clients’ stress without effective ways to process it can put advisors at greater risk of burnout.
The day in and day out of emotionally holding space for people’s financial anxieties can literally and figuratively exhaust advisors. Absorbing clients’ stress without effective ways to process it can put advisors at greater risk of burnout. Just as advisors guide and coach their clients to create enduring financial plans, advisors have to deliberately work to create sustainable self-care routines for themselves. Having healthy patterns not only creates space for the advisor amidst the weight of client concerns but also provides regularity and reliability which in itself can be calming.
Eight Habits For Well-Being
Here are eight habits that can make a difference for advisors’ well-being:
1. Set boundaries around time and keep personal and professional times in separate compartments. Advisors must devote time and space to themselves so they can continue to be a solid sounding board for their clients.
2. Ensure that you get an adequate amount of sleep. Creating a sleep schedule not only gives advisors a better chance to catch their z’s but also adds to a calming routine.
3. Prioritize exercise, whether that be long-distance running, restorative yoga or regular walks outside. The endorphins that come with exercise or being outside can clear a person’s mind.
4. Eat nutritiously to provide steady energy throughout the day – versus sugary or caffeinated bursts. It takes intention to eat nutrition-guided meals, but what advisors put into their bodies literally fuels their day.
5. Find small ways to indulge, such as restorative time and experiences, meditation, drawing, painting, yoga, woodworking or reading a book for pleasure. These don’t have to be daily occurrences, but finding something that brings joy regularly can be incredibly helpful.
Even when working from home, choose attire that reflects a professional mindset.
6. Dress in a way that helps advisors feel both present and at ease. Even when working from home, choose attire that reflects a professional mindset, which reinforces the shift into “work mode” and supports clear boundaries. Being intentional with personal care choices can help advisors feel more energized and optimistic.
7. Create systems or routines that support positive habits or change old ones. For example, exercising in the morning before family and work demands may require waking up earlier, which in turn means shifting both your bedtime routine and actual bedtime.
8. The holidays can be a time of rejuvenation. Inform clients of limited availability, set out-of-office replies, silence notifications and fully step away from work.
Some other tips to help advisors prevent burnout can include intentionally taking a mental break rather than working throughout the whole day, finding a few minutes to pause between meetings or writing a journal to keep track of your thoughts and feelings.
As the holidays all too quickly approach, advisors must check in not only with clients but with themselves. After all, like they explain during airplane safety demonstrations, you must put on your own oxygen mask first before you assist others. Only the breathing person can help others. Make sure to breathe.
Kristy Archuleta is Professor, Betsy Barnard Sages Professorship in Financial Therapy and Financial Planning, at the University of Georgia.
