When work becomes overwhelming, undermining your life and making you unhappy, something has to change.
There came a point when Gemma Siddle, Director of Client Services, Eldon Financial Planning, realised that work had taken over her life – she was working 60 hour weeks, being overly self-critical, had low self-confidence and had stopped enjoying life. Then something happened to change all that, as she tells PP editor Rob Kingsbury.
Gemma Siddle began working at Eldon 19 years ago, starting as an administrator, becoming a paraplanner and is now the lead financial planner in the firm, as well as Director of Client Services.
“Had you asked me back in 2008 when I was a paraplanner if I wanted to be a financial planner, the answer would have been a resolute ‘No’,” she says. “What’s happened has been gradual. As the founding directors have retired, so I’ve taken on more responsibility within the company.”
There are three directors of the firm, Gemma, Kevin McCarthy, the Managing Director and Adam Kinsley, Operations Director, who is also a Chartered Financial Planner.
Altogether the firm has four planners, all Chartered, three paraplanners and two administrators, and they are currently looking to hire.
Most of the firm’s circa 340 clients live fairly local to the office in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham.
“I’ve always been prone to doing too much work wise,” Gemma says, as she starts to explain how she found herself with a work overload in her life. “I think it’s very easily done, certainly in our profession because so many people care about doing the right thing and getting things as perfect as possible for clients.
“I’m passionate also about learning more. When I ran out of CII exams to do, I went on to do my CFP and then when I ran out of financial planning qualifications, I went to do an MBA at the Open University.”
“On top of this there is always CPD and I was passionate about paraplanning, so I got involved in the paraplanning community from an early stage.”
All of which was great while she was an employee working for the original directors. Things started to change when she took on greater responsibility.
“What happened was that when I moved from being told what to do, to being able to choose what I did, I just found myself picking up more and more things that I was passionate about and cared about as well as doing the day job.
“I got more involved with the paraplanning community, as well as with financial planning groups, sharing ideas and information. My profile in the industry grew and I was getting more and more requests to do things and being asked by the media for comment as well.”
All of which she was able to balance while family consisted of herself and her husband; then Gemma became a mum. “I had severe post-natal depression, to the point that I had to have someone with me all the time. So my husband left his work to stay with me and look after our little girl. It was amazingly supportive of him.”
In time, it was decided Gemma would return to work and her husband would stay home.
It was then, Gemma says, she should have set her boundaries. “But I didn’t.”
She plunged back into work, taking on more responsibility and becoming a member of the board. She also took on compliance and HR responsibilities within the firm.
“I was growing into business management and the leadership role. What you don’t realise is that you can have all of financial planning qualifications in the world but running a business is an entirely different state of affairs.”
While she found herself taking on more and more, she was also enjoying doing it. “I really was enjoying it – the responsibility, getting involved, being passionate about getting everything right for clients and the business.”
But that came at a cost. “I would be working long hours – 60 hours regularly – and I would always be available, whether that was 8pm on a Sunday night or 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. And that then sets expectations you feel you have to meet.
“And I worried about our people all the time. I wanted them to have the best opportunities, but that can get exhausting if you’re hiring and training and teaching, on top of everything else you need to do as a director and financial planner.”
In addition, she says, she became super self-critical, focussed on the minutia, trying to get everything perfect and on what she hadn’t done rather than on the positives of what she had achieved, which in turn affected her self-confidence. “I set myself a high bar. If I didn’t fly over it, I felt I wasn’t good enough and if I did, then the I thought the bar wasn’t high enough.”
There came a point at which, she says, “I realised I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I was just getting exhausted physically and mentally. I’d get to the point where on a Saturday morning I just couldn’t talk to anyone until lunchtime, because I needed that time to decompress after the week. I was on the edge of panic attacks a lot of the time.
“And I hadn’t realised that I had gradually stopped laughing and having fun. Pleasure had leached out of my world in place of worry. My default mindset was to be looking for the negatives and the additional workload/responsibilities involved in anything.”
She wasn’t unaware of the pressures she was putting herself under but addressing them was harder than she imagined. “I saw the signs and I tried to make changes but I just never quite managed to stick to them,” she admits.
And then Covid happened. Everything shut down and Gemma found herself spending time with her husband and daughter and enjoying it.
“When the pandemic happened, at Eldon we were quite well prepared and we just worked from home and met clients on videocall. The client workload decreased as there were fewer changes following meetings.”
For Gemma, her workload also dropped off because outside of making the situation as smooth as possible for the clients, everything else she had been involved in came to a halt.
“In all honesty, I was left with very little to do compared to the hours I had been working. It was still a full time job without a doubt, but we had this glorious weather and I had my gorgeous little girl and all of a sudden, I was seeing what I had been missing. Before, I’d be out before she was up and I’d be home after she was in bed. It’s heart breaking now to think of it.
“Not just that but mentally and physically, I was re-invigorated. I had more energy than I’d had in a long time. I was laughing and playing and just enjoying myself.
“I lost loads of weight over that summer as well – four to five stone – because my diet before had been so bad from sitting at my desk so long and when I came home finding the easiest thing to cook, like a pizza.
“The pandemic was terrible, and I feel for everyone who lost loved ones during that time. I was one of the rare people whose life was turned around in the pandemic in a good way.”
Having found her new lease of life, she was determined to keep hold if it, she says. “Each time old habits look like they are creeping in, I find a way to push them back.”
What has helped her, she says, has been to focus less on the minutia and more on the bigger picture. “I now know what I need to do. It’s not about doing more in terms of productivity, its outcomes that make you feel like you’ve achieved something. Focusing on them and my sense of achievement is really important.
“I’m now fitter than I’ve ever been and I’m making time and space to do things for me. I’ve got much deeper relationship with my daughter, I’m much closer to my husband, and I have better friendships as well.
“I volunteer at a local annual event called Kynren (https://www.11arches.com). My daughter takes part too. There’s over a thousand volunteers that run a world-class show every Saturday in the summer, performing to over 8,000 people. It’s huge and it’s bringing together people of all sorts into a community. I am a great believer in human contact, human communities, and charitable sectors.
“The way I used to work, I simply couldn’t have committed the time. Now it’s something I do with my daughter and which I thoroughly enjoy.”
The ‘workaholic’ trap is an easy one to fall into and can be difficult one from which to extract oneself but, Gemma says, not impossible. “I knew I wasn’t in a good place, but I didn’t realise how far it had gone until it all lifted. Now I just feel so much more alive and connected with the world, with family, with friends and with everyone at Eldon too.
“I’ve gone back to seeing and feeling the fun and taking delight in the imperfections in life, and that feels much better!”
Main image: milad-fakurian-iFu2HILEng8-unsplash
