STRATEGY SUMMIT FOR BROKERS IN THE COVID-19 CLIMATE
Zoe Slater has been involved in Personal Development for over 30 years and counselling for over 20 years.
Zoe is referred to as the Brokers wife and facilitates PD sessions for several Broking Business like HLC and Pivotal. Zoe spoke recently at MFAA’s Qld PD Day Rising To The Challenge with A Fresh Perspective from the Royal Hain Commission.
She is the CEO of Freedom Choice Academy that offers Counselling, Coaching and Personal Development
courses. Zoe has spoken on stage, on radio Australia and America, interviewed by numerous newspapers, sat on discussion panels and more. Zoe is very active wearing many hats namely, counsellor, coach, author, workshop facilitator, practitioner trainer, wife, mother of 3 children.
Zoe has created a Life Transforming model and program that assists her clients in achieving advanced results faster. And Zoe developed a fast counselling method called ECR and trains other practitioners with this method.
Zoe has designed a Success Diary that powers you up, focusing your mind and heart to consciously achieve
results faster.
Zoe authored a book called KIDS OR NO KIDS helping women and men decide whether having children is right for them or if their relationship can sustain parent-hood. She also authored and created the Zoeism insight cards.
In addition to Freedom Choice Academy, Zoe co-manage their family companies that include property development and rentals.
Mental health issues are a community concern. Zoe has helped many clients quit their anti-depressants. Positively transforming anxiety and stress-related issues including childhood trauma to clarity, happiness and the joy of living.
Zoe’s biggest aim and reward in life are to help as many people as she can to live a purposeful and prosperous life. Helping people gain Self Mastery emotionally and mentally in all areas of their life is what ultimately achieves personal freedom and choice. Zoe loves what she does and feels honoured that she can help people every day in a meaningful way.
Zoe’s clients include a mix of local and international achievers and professionals that also fly in to see her.
Zoe recently joined in a collaboration to create the mini-course: Freedom is a Choice
This is a fantastic resource for brokers and expands more around mental health and how you can navigate through change and the idea of Stress To Success.
Click below to learn more and sign up for the mini-course.
Nadine: Hello and welcome, everyone. We’re here running a short summit with the aim to provide brokers with the general and industry-specific strategies, hacks, and information to assist with the continuation of business through the current COVID crisis. We’ll cover four important topics delivered by industry experts in their respective fields.
Mindset Strategies for Mental Health will be delivered by Zoe from Freedom Choice Academy. How you going, Zoe?
Why is it so important to protect your mental health and that of your team and what are some kind of strategies that people can put in place to achieve this outcome?
Zoe: Okay. Thank you, Nadine. Thank you for asking me to help you and help all the brokers out there because your mental health is your wealth and it’s critical to turn that stress into success. And what I want to do today is also help you about how to make some decisive decisions to improve your communications and your connections with your business, your marriage, and your family and your friends because they’re a part of your mental health and self-care. So I want to give you a little overview what I’m going to talk about.
So about why it’s important for you to turn your stress to success because I want you to know that you were designed by nature to actually experience a little bit of stress to move towards the success that you desire and right now goodness knows how much stress you are all under. And in this moment it’s important to be able to take a breath and experience that stress and focus on, there’s three things that the stress actually does, it produces Norepinephrine for you to think clearly. It produces Cortisol to protect your insides, whilst the Adrenaline puts blood to the edges for you to take the right kind of action. So it’s so important right now to be more connected to yourself than ever.
I want to also talk about a quick mental health check and which is really important because I am finding right now that people are actually, you know, it’s this situation is creating two diverse responses. Some people are saying ‘this is fantastic’, ‘I’ve got time at home’, ‘I can be with the family’, ‘I’m chilling out’ and others are absolutely stressing out they’ve got lots of work to do or no work to do and it’s stressing out and they’re thinking ‘oh my god, what’s going to happen with my business’ and ‘how do I feed the family’, their livelihoods are threatened. So it’s a really stressful time and knowing how to calm yourself down is really important.
So I’m going to give you three tips on how you can do that, how you can calm yourself down because it affects your mind your body and your spirit. And when you’re not calm, when you’re completely stressed from a point of view of being stressed for too long and in prolonged stress, not able to communicate to your family properly.
You’ll need not able to communicate to your client. When you’re trying to listen to your clients speaking to you about what kind of deal they want, you’re stressing thinking ‘oh my god, is the bank able to do that’, no we need you to be present. We need to be totally connected to your client so they feel like you are okay, that you are stable in this interesting environment, chaotic environment, that there is order working with you. Really important.
And so, and then I’m going to also just remind you how the spirit of you is fundamental and the vision of you is fundamental to secure your clients, to secure your team, and stabilize people around you so that they feel like when you’re coming from the true spirit of your company that they know this is why they’re working with you. When you’re coming from the true spirit of yourself, they know why they’re with you. And when you’re in that place, you can share a vision that they feel part of, want to belong to, and want to be inspired to help. It’s really important.
So these are some of the things I’m going to cover and I’m gonna go through it with you. One of the things about stress is when you’re in that place, I want you to think about calming down, taking really big breath, and check into yourself and realize how much of you already adapted to.
The government keeps changing the coast to protect you and help you. There’s been social distancing. You’re now working from home, you cram there with your family and kids and your pets and you’re probably trying to find your own workspace or having to share workspace, and perhaps create shift times like, ‘you take these clients’, will have this time with your partner and so ‘you can do business and I’ll look after the kids and then let’s swap’. So there’s a lot of conversations, there’s a lot of management of emotions and relations and how you can function within your family environment at your optimal. Really important. You know you’re rationing food, the kids are probably trying to eat all the food, you know you can’t go on school holidays right now and you know your livelihood is threatened through this time as a broker. You know there’s, we know that it’s impacted from the real estate sales there’s that certainly has diminished although they’re being quite creative there, hence, why you know it’s great that Dylan and the others talk to you because you still need to be creative with regard to creating your business and keeping it moving.
So just gonna go in a little bit mental health. I want to check with you right now. Are you feeling borderline depressed? Because if you are, here are some signs. You might be drinking through the day. I know brokers tend to have a relaxing drink in the evening but if you’re drinking through the day, please stop. If you’re angry or argumentative, if you’re obsessing and you’re ruminating, if you’re slothing around in your pajamas, you know if you’re finding yourself moody and you’re eating bad food they’re all signs that you start to slide into depression.
Please be warned. We don’t want this to be your new norm because you know as we’re moving through, you know, this pandemic, everyone has the mindset that what’s happening right now is potentially going to be the new norm and you need to set yourself up to win how you maneuver through this. So I wanna give you a different perspective, I want you to get to think about what’s going on a little differently because you are forced to be home right now and it’s almost like you’re forced to be home because you’re feeling sick, but you’re not sick, right? But when you’re home, it’s the best place to heal, to recover quickly, and bounce back energized. And so when people are home and when people are sick they often think about ‘how did I get here?’ they’re reflective, ‘why am I sick?’, ‘what’s my life like right now?’, ‘what do I need to consider?’, ‘why are my perhaps out of balance?’.
Perhaps what you’ve neglected, I really want you to think about these things so you can find a new balance a new norm in your current environment. So I want you to think about these eight areas. I want you to make a list right now, I want you to think about you know your spirit, what makes your spirit wake up in the morning and not give in and go for it. I want you to think about your physical world, what are you doing? Exercise. Nutrition, how are you looking after yourself to keep yourself strong? Because I don’t know if you’ve heard but sitting is the new smoking because it affects your cardiovascular, it affects your spine. So your exercise is so important.
Emotionally, how are you connecting with the people in your family? Are you stressed and go ‘don’t talk to me leave me alone’? Or are you calm? Are you listening? Are you present? Because this is, that emotional world is also about you. Social distancing, social connections, using social media in a really fun way that you’re able to. Then there’s apps, there’s party apps out there, there’s a whole bunch of ways that you can regularly connect with loved ones, regularly connect with friends. If you can make a little habit to go one person every day you’re going to connect with whether they’re in your immediate family or whether they’re at an extended friend, somewhere in your friendship circle. Make an effort to connect with people.
And then I want you to think about the community, how you’re still part of the community that when you do go out into the street, be kind. Don’t go ‘oh my god, you’re in my space. Social distancing’. Just look at them and be respectful and if they’re not present, just maneuver around them. Don’t judge them because they might have lots of other things going on in their mind. It’s about you being present.
And then I want you to look at you know, mentally there’s a lot of fun things you can be doing; going online, looking up new interests, you could be furthering your skills, I know Leah has lots of things that you could do, that you could be upskilling and doing and going online and looking at exciting, I know, I’ve got people on clients who are learning new languages, who are studying new things. There are so many online programs that are available.
Social, as I said, just connect with as many, many people as you can. I’ve got people looking at other interest in fact socially and joining other groups because this pandemic has given them a chance to almost close off old relationships and old social connections that no longer were working for them and open new ones. So you know, there are no limitations right now. This is creating an abundance of opportunities for you to really wake up.
And so financially, a great time for you to reflect on your financial position and professionally. You know we’re talking about, you know Leah, you might want to look at all the stuff that she’s got there, upskill and or even just you know, sit and reflect. Does this really, ‘how does this benefit my family?’, ‘how does my profession benefit my family and what else can I do?’. Maybe you need to diversify. There’s my family, that’s me, this is real this is live, this is me making the most of every part of my home and my life and working with my pets and my dogs.
Okay. I want to just give you a quick overview so I want these three self-care tips and because I really want to decompress you and de-stress you and set you up to win. So one of the ways I want you to look at from a mental perspective because a lot of people are feeling anxiety, depressed, you know, and I want to catch you before you burn out, right? Because this is really important and I want to help you make some better decisions and make sure that they’re decisive and on track with your business, your marriage, and your self-care.
But before I de-stress you I want you to know that just like your business, right? That it’s about doing the basic things but doing them right and doing them consistently, and these are the tips that I’m going to give you for you to do right but consistently.
So the first thing you need to do is that you must take control of your mind to take control of your life. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you just sit quietly I want you to focus your mind on one thing either internally or externally. Inside your heart, you might be just following your heart or following the rise and fall of your stomach or you might just look at a tree and just observe the tree but just for two minutes. I want you to just breathe exhale and then breathe through your nose for two minutes and I want you to do that every hour.
The next thing I want you to do is physical movement. I want you to strengthen your heart to handle more stress and I want you to strengthen your spine so that you can enjoy it sitting and also that helps you know, reduce your cholesterol, I’m sorry, cortisol. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to do walking, running, swimming, dancing, cycling. Find something that you can do every day for 10 to 20 minutes but it’s critical that you raise your heart rate just a little and over. Not to a critical state that you know, you’re going to need to go to the hospital but enough to raise your heart rate.
Third thing I want you to do in self-care is your emotional stability. I really want to understand who you are, get to know yourself, and look more introspectively because it really does influence the people around you and how you stabilize people around you and your level of knowing yourself and being powerful in that sense of inner awareness really does advance your communication. It creates safety when you’re talking to your staff, when you’re talking to your family, creates openness and connection when you’re talking also with your clients.
So really important to understand how you communicate and to stay calm. So and I also want you to list your honorable emotional codes, things that, really the way you behave that it positively influences your communication. What words do you want people to be saying about you, that you turn up on time, that you’re honorable, that you’re kind, I really want you to think about who you’re being. I also want you to observe yourself as a leader to listen to the internal dialogue. There’s a positive or negative. If you hear it going negative, I want you to swoop it to positive languaging right away. I want you to be really connected to your spirit about when it says ‘don’t give up’, ‘get up’, ‘keep going’, ‘you can do this’. And it’s not so much about forcing yourself it’s about being consistent. It’s about finding that inner flow.
Leaders are really connected to your vision, you gotta know where you’re going because when you know where you’re going, your team will know where you’re going. Your clients will know where you’re going and when you’re going to take this loan for them. So leaders really know how to trust themselves.
Nadine: I just wanted to kind of summarize quickly. So what I got from that was, take the time to breathe, be present in what you’re doing. Still, be social within the modalities that we can because that actually helps us engage and connect with others. Coming back to breathe, take the time to move don’t just be sitting at your desk, and then try and be emotionally stable for the others around you because all of those preceding items will help you be that. Is that a pretty good summary just for this?
Zoe: Yes yeah.
Nadine: Because if we can be emotionally stable for our clients as well like it’s going to help them as well as everyone that’s directly related to us. You know, home environment as well.
Zoe: Absolutely. Thanks. And you know in that place, and I just wanna say with that being emotionally stable is when you’re at home, it makes it different, when you’re running your business, it makes it different. When you’re out connecting, when you’re at the petrol station, all makes a fundamental difference because otherwise if you’re not, you’re buying into the global anxiety out there and you’re being a part of the problem, not part of the solution.
