Simplify Your Life

Any of these sound familiar? You’ve put a great deal of time and money prospecting a potential client. He then takes his business –and your ideas!--to a competitor. You find yourself losing concentration, losing productivity and struggling with nagging aggravation. You end up with a backache, headache, heartburn and/or sleepless nights.

You finally go on vacation, only to find that you cannot unwind until three days into the trip. Then you begin "winding back up two days before getting back. That leaves you with two days of relaxation--two days that will have to hold you over for months, or even years, until you make arrangements again.

You miss your family when you’re at work, but find yourself short tempered with them when you get home.

All of these are signals that you may be lacking balance in your life. Real fulfillment comes from balancing multiple areas of your life. For example, when the areas of work and play are in good proportion to each other, the ups and downs of business don’t hit as hard. When you take good care of your health and energy level, the stresses of busy days don’t drag you down and leave you fatigued. Your overall well-being affects…well, your well-being over all.

During his address at the National Education Conference in June, Eli Broad said, "Numerical results are not the only important things to measure our success."

In upcoming issues of SunAmerica Securities Today, we will address the other "important things" in your life that contribute to your success and profitability.

This four step process for making lifestyle/workstyle changes will dramatically improve your productivity and relationships without draining time and energy away from your business.

Step 1. Assess where you are at today. To help clients achieve their financial goals, you review their assets, liabilities, investments, budget and aspirations. You have to know where you are to plan where you want to go. The same is true for you physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally and intellectually. How satisfied are you with your current health in each area and where do you want to be in one month, year, five years, ten etc.

Step 2. Plan for and create the lifestyle/workstyle changes necessary to increase your productivity based upon your inventory. Evaluate what is "do-able." Smaller, realistic changes make for lasting changes. Losing 20 pounds, getting physically active, taking more time off on weekends and pursuing a long forgotten hobby are great goals. Having the support systems and resources for effectively and safely achieving these goals takes information and planning.

Step 3. Execute the plan making adjustments as you practice. Financial success is generally achieved by most by sticking with the plan for the long haul, up or down markets or up and down days.

Step 4. Accountability is important for staying on track. You help clients remain accountable for financial decisions. I keep clients accountable for lifestyle/workstyle choices. This column will provide you with ideas, solutions and accountability recommendations to keep you on track for building a life that holds you up when the market and clients are attempting to pull you down.

We take better care of our cars than we do ourselves. Just as cars need oil changes, new filters, quality fuel and air in the tires, we need tune-ups and maintenance. We will have multiple cars over a lifetime, but only one body. Running it on high idle, without care and regular maintenance will cause it to run down sooner than necessary, at a high cost.

Men have a hard time caring for themselves. One of the ways this is evidenced is that men live, on the average, seven years less than women. There is no biological factor that causes this phenomenon. The next time you take your car in for a tune up, consider when was the last time you had a check up? Knowing your current level of health provides you with a baseline for where you want to go.

You conduct a financial inventory with new clients. Why not give yourself a physical, emotional and relational review? From there you’ll know where to invest more time and energy to increase the success and profitability of your whole life.

Kate Larsen works with people wanting to simplify their lives and take charge of their health. For a copy of your Personal Health Investment Portfolio Review, call 612 943-1430 or email your request to KTLarsen@aol.com.

CALL US: 888.LIF.WALK

Kate is a senior partner with CLC, Inc.