IFA Conference 2024: How emotional mastery can lead to greater career fulfilment

Developing emotional mastery can help combat stress and difficulty and set accountants up for greater career satisfaction, a professional coach told the IFA Conference in London on 25 June. Kim Searle, who specialises in teaching emotional mastery skills, says practising self mastery has benefits “that extend far beyond your professional life” to lay the foundations for a “more fulfilling future as an accountant or bookkeeper”.

by | 10 Jul, 2024

Yellow balls displaying different emotions including sad, happy and angry

Searle says the “inner game of self mastery” was about “employing mindsets, habits and resilience” and “avoid letting stress, self-doubt, and long hours hold you back any longer”. “We’re never shown how to deal with our inner world,” she says.

Being meticulous, compliant, analytical and detail-focused are important skills for accountants and bookkeepers. “You are in a powerful position to influence your clients and those around you,” Searle says.

She encourages accountants to apply their “watchful vigilance” usually reserved for client work to their own inner worlds and a healthy dose of self-care when confronted with troubles. We all have limited capacity over external factors and should instead explore areas we can influence and control such as our thoughts, behaviours and actions to achieve greater inner harmony and resilience.

There is “nothing wrong being in a downward spiral”, but developing a sense of self-belief and safety, as well as speaking up could help reverse this cycle, Searle believes.

Address habitual behaviours in unconscious mind to manage work difficulty

Focusing on what you can control or influence and having a purpose are foundations for emotional mastery. She cites Stephen Covey whose book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People distinguishes between proactive people who focus on their actions and influence versus reactive people who focus their energy on things beyond their control. “The only person you can truly control is you – your thoughts, words and actions and how you process your world,” Searle says.

Cognitive thinking consumes only 20 per cent of your time, according to the 80/20 rule. The rest, Searle says, comes from the unconscious mind where we can implement effective change. “People think they can make a change in the cognitive mind, but the decision is already made by then,” she says. “The unconscious mind is like a radar picking up on everyone else it is in contact with. It is scanning to (determine) whether you are safe.”

Paying attention to the unconscious mind, whose “primary directive” is to keep us alive, can help accountants manage troublesome clients or work difficulties. This is the “reptilian brain” that assesses whether something is good or bad. Searle says it applies a biochemical marker in the form of an emotion that may trigger fight, flight or freeze in the limbic system.

Over time, our brain automates responses to triggers by mapping behaviours associated with them. Habits automate behaviours to make “what goes on easier to make sure you are not being threatened” such as dealing with many people at large, complex organisations. “Our thoughts will impact behaviours and you may not always realise it,” she says.

Preparation and planning help tackle tricky clients

She advises tapping into the “deeper mind” to identify thinking patterns, previous experiences, triggers or habits in response to a situation. One of the ways to reduce thinking patterns such as over-analysis, excessive rumination or worry loops is to write down any concerns dominating your thoughts. “You are calming your primitive mind by saying ‘I’ve dealt with it’,” Searle says.

Failing to address these thinking patterns could have negative consequences, as Searle experienced during a period of burnout in an IT project management role some year earlier. She changed her perspective by focusing on her values of freedom, flexibility, people and variety to understand what was important in her working life. She says the quality of our decisions improves if they are underpinned by our values.

“When you shift, move slowly in the direction that is right for you, and the business will follow,” she says. “You need to be able to do what is important (but) you may not be able to do it all at once. It starts to guide your thinking and thought processes (and) narrows the scope of what you are doing that is important to you. If growth is important to you then delegate more.”

She describes our emotions as a “sat nav of where you are right now” that are influenced by our early childhood where the building blocks of thinking patterns are first formed. The unconscious mind might view a reward as merely surviving an incident. “Your unconscious mind survived what it didn’t like,” Searle says. “You change habits from understanding what is causing you a problem.”

We are all triggered daily at work and in life, but the idea is to be “triggered by the right things” such as good clients and a purpose that aligns with our values. “When you take more control, you move up the energy system to be happier and more fulfilled,” Searle says. “Focus on growth with clients and within yourself. If you don’t appreciate your value, no one else will.”

Preparation and planning are critical in dealing with difficult people who have their own agenda and goals. Listening to their challenges and asking questions provides better insights into their perspective and motivations. “You have to prepare to understand what you want from them and listen and ask questions,” Searle says. “ Once you understand them they can understand you.”


Catch up on previous news from the IFA Conference 2024: How to build family wealth in a tax-efficient way

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