Focus on Happiness Factors Under Your Control: Start Blogging

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

by Bob Simp­son, Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Consulting

One prob­lem that I per­son­ally expe­ri­enced and have noticed over the past 14 years of work­ing with advi­sors is that the day-to-day grind of being an advi­sor reduces hap­pi­ness and creativity.

Research by pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gists indi­cates that there are three major fac­tors that affect happiness *:

• 50% from genetics
• 10% from envi­ron­men­tal cir­cum­stances, like where you live or how much money we make
• 40% to aspects that are under your con­trol like what we do and how we think

This rein­forces the sports psy­chol­ogy con­cept of “focus on the process and let the score take care of itself”.

By allow­ing your­self to get caught up in the day-to-day activ­i­ties of your busi­ness and focus­ing on rev­enue and assets under man­age­ment, you can lose your hap­pi­ness per­spec­tive.  To build a great busi­ness and live a happy life, you need to pro­tect fac­tors that reduce stress and free your­self up to orga­nize your thoughts.

I use blog­ging as a way to orga­nize new con­cepts that I have been work­ing on.  For exam­ple, right now I am read­ing a book The How of Hap­pi­ness by Sonja Lyubomirsky as a follow-up to The Hap­pi­ness Advan­tage by Shawn Achor.  As I spend more time dri­ving and work­ing out than I have free time for read­ing, I lis­ten to a lot of audio­books.  When I hear an inter­est­ing con­cept, I book­mark it in the Audi​ble​.com iPhone app and then do addi­tional research.  Then, I write a blog about it.  Writ­ing the blog helps me to orga­nize my thoughts and gives me a syn­op­sis to which I can later refer.

It is impor­tant to find the right bal­ance.  Your goal should be to spend 60% of your time in client-facing activ­i­ties (man­ag­ing client rela­tion­ships, doing busi­ness devel­op­ment and solv­ing clients’ finan­cial prob­lems).  Try to use your non-client-facing time to be cre­ative, think and write to keep your cre­ative juices flow­ing and to man­age your hap­pi­ness. For many of you, you are not using this time pro­duc­tively now and con­vert­ing it to pro­duc­tive and hap­pi­ness gen­er­at­ing activ­i­ties can have a major impact on your success.

Blog­ging is a great way to focus on the hap­pi­ness fac­tors that are under your con­trol.  Focus on writ­ing about pos­i­tive things, espe­cially dur­ing times of tur­moil.  By achiev­ing greater hap­pi­ness in your life and busi­ness, you will have a more pos­i­tive effect on clients and other peo­ple you meet.

Focus on what you con­trol.  Hap­pi­ness is con­ta­gious.  Focus on the process of being happy and you will achieve greater results in your busi­ness and life.

*  Source:  http://​pos​i​tivepsych​.webs​.com/​a​b​o​u​t​.​htm

Bob Simp­son is Pres­i­dent of Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sul­tants.  Bob can be reached on his direct line at 905−502−0100, toll free at 866−646−6002 or by e-mail at bob.simpson@synchronicity.ca.

About Bob Simpson

Syn­chronic­ity Per­for­mance Con­sult­ing has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

Bob Simp­son, pres­i­dent and founder of Syn­chronic­ity has been involved, directly or indi­rectly in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try since 1981. He has been a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial advi­sor with Nes­bitt Thom­son Inc., a major Cana­dian finan­cial insti­tu­tion. Between 1981 and 1989, he built a busi­ness with more than $120 mil­lion in assets under man­age­ment, was branch man­ager and SVP National Sales for Mid­land Wal­wyn and has been coach­ing finan­cial advi­sors since 1998.

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Tags: Achor, Additional Research, Assets Under Management, Audiobooks, Business Development, Client Relationships, Creative Juices, Creativity Research, Doing Business, Environmental Circumstances, Facing Time, Free Time, Genetics, Happiness, Happy Life, Iphone, Psychologists, Reading A Book, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Sports Psychology
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