Turn Downturn Anxiety into a Once in a Lifetime Opportunity
“When the bear growls, stress, and fear rise – stand, do not run.”
Whether your clients are leaders, executives, families, or investors, hopefully, they are beginning to stop and ask searching questions.
Some, of course, will be paralyzed and not want to confront the truth; others will be keen to get on top of the impending gloom. As a business or financial coach and advisor, I suggest that you be ready to deal with all possibilities of what is coming as swift action will be required.
Even the thought of what is happening may be causing severe financial stress that depletes your clients’ energy and yours. However, you can turn this impending season into a “mental freedom” opportunity and be a catalyst for unleashing tremendous positive opportunities to improve or even restore lives and businesses.
I have learned that some anxiety is a good thing if it pushes you to think outside the box and make some adjustments to change the energy flow. There is nothing like an adrenaline rush to bring opportunities that can lead to great outcomes. The key is not to let anxiety take over until it eats you up.
Remember, in a downturn, you can only address what you can control. Survival for you and your clients will require doing things differently, and doing them quickly.
With DNA Behavior, out of my anxiety and stress, I was able to see the silver lining in the 2008 GFC crisis and then the recent 2020 pandemic. With my team, we took the “bull by the horns” to make strategic decisions that transformed our behavior tech product lines, unlocking long-term growth. In the future, you will see far more emphasis on how people’s “Money Energy” has a significant impact on stress, our ability to do more and overall wellbeing.
I will say that having the financial flexibility of a twenty-four-month cash runway for your business and life with no other burdensome financial obligations helps provide tremendous mental freedom and the capability to make decisions.
Are you prepared to 10x your service by engaging with your clients at a deeper level than before? Are you ready to be challenged and embrace the opportunities ahead?
Accept Money Anxiety Requires a Behavioral Response
“Now is the time for you to be the behavioral guide of the client and facilitate them through the downturn.”
I am not playing the role of the economist, commentator, medical practitioner, or advisor. Rather, as a Money Relationship Integrator, I use behavior and money insights and my financial expertise to help people make high-stakes decisions, accelerate performance, and build enhanced relationships. My purpose is to self-empower people globally with identity and money clarity for unleashing behavior and money energy so they can stress less, do more, and be well. From that perspective, I know that this emerging economic situation is causing significant financial anxiety for many people in various ways. The potential loss of money always causes stress.
Therefore, your clients’ behavior and money energy will be a factor in any decision, whether you are their business or financial advisor or coach. Every decision a person makes (or does not make) has a far-reaching financial consequence of some sort. The risk is that people will fall victim to their biases and emotions as uncertainty and time pressure increases.
As a business or financial advisor, you are not a therapist. Nevertheless, you can provide a safe place for your clients to talk about their reactions to the downturn.
Are you ready to take your clients on a behavioral and money energy journey?
Prepare Yourself to Guide Clients Through Stressful Times
In my usual practical way, I want to prepare you to start helping your clients, family, and community manage their behavior and money energy in the upcoming stressful times.
Achieving success through these challenging times will involve changing how you and your clients experience the world environment and how you and they respond to fears, whether physical, emotional, or psychological. This will involve a change of your and their mental model. The key will be to not allow pessimism to set in as that will trigger a downward spiral and at the same time not allow over optimism as that can lead to disappointment when things do not work out.
Nevertheless, there must be a healthy faith in prevailing through the storm and emerging stronger regardless of the difficulties. Importantly, there may need to be some regular confronting of the brutal facts of your and the clients reality , whatever they may be. I would call this “bounded optimism”.
Hopefully, you and your clients will get re-positioned in the right places to take advantage of the opportunities that emerge over the following two years.
What steps will you take so that you can be at the epicenter of your client’s journey as they navigate the stresses of a severe downturn?
Put Your Own Mental House in Order
“The unmanaged stress of a downturn can reduce brainpower.”
Knowing your money energy can help you better serve your clients and prevent them from becoming self-destructive.
As a coach or advisor, the first step is to be mentally well prepared to handle the more challenging times and the consequential financial anxiety. You must be emotionally centered enough to “check yourself before you wreck yourself” with any personal decisions you have to make. Otherwise, it will be difficult to guide, advise or support anybody else if you carry your anxieties into the advisory arena.
This same point applies to your whole team. Stressful market conditions can be taxing for everyone. Your team needs you to go above and beyond. You need to think about caring for their minds as much as your own; clear and calm minds will help your team better manage the clients through the downturn. Teams that are highly emotionally engaged are better performing.
What steps are you taking to reduce your stress and your team’s so you all stay energetically calm?
Learn About Yourself at a Deeper Level
“Continuous learning is an important part of life. You can never learn enough about yourself as a human being and how you handle life and financial events.”
Before you start guiding your clients through what could be unprecedented times, address how the pressure of the situation will cause you to respond. Even for the most experienced people, it is easier for the subliminal mind to be triggered to some degree. The reaction will show up through your “hard-wired” behavior and money responses that have been ingrained from early in life and can unintentionally frame the advice you give.
To become more behaviorally aware, have you and your team take an objective discovery of your inherent strengths, struggles, biases, and communication style?
If not, explore our solutions and start learning more about how you will instinctively respond under pressure when triggered by a stressful situation. This knowledge will put you in a much better place to guide your clients.
Become More Behaviorally Aware