Managing Stress: What Separates the Burnouts from the Always Burning

Whether the stress is coming from physical health, financial issues, relationship issues, or personal self-doubt and self-sabotage, stress is a fact of life: especially for entrepreneurs. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 20 percent of small businesses fail within the first year. By the end of the second year, 30 percent of businesses will have failed. How you manage stress is equivalent to how you manage the hurdles and obstacles that inevitably come as a result of being an entrepreneur.

After conducting our primary research, we know that these business owners often don't fail due to circumstance or human error. Most of them fail because they lack the certainty, support, strategies and tools to manage the life cycle of their products and services. The stress of launching, growing, and having one's products and services mature, has become too much for some new business owners.

How do you manage the highs and lows that comes from entrepreneurial life?

Step #1: Reestablish your Why

Establishing your why will become your compass and fuel to steer your success in the right direction. Being vigilant about your why will allow you to embrace opportunities that help your mission help you communicate that vision to potential collaborators, employees, stakeholders and prospects. Knowing why you're in business in the first place will help keep you focussed.

Step #2: Develop your Success Rituals

How are you starting your day? Do you wake up feeling refreshed, renewed and confident? Or do you barely roll out of bed before having your coffee and rushing to your first meeting? Starting off the day right is critical to your overall success. How we start our day and end our day is vital to our mental disposition. When we go to bed early and wake up early, we grant ourselves the space and time needed to ease into the day with gratitude, purpose, intention, and with healthy habits like meditation, physical exercise, affirmations, reading, journaling or doing something creative. Having this sacred time puts you back in control for the day and by extension back in control of your future and the future of your business.

Step #3: Get Back and Step back!

Our interviewed subjects have all stressed (heh! no pun intended!) the importance of stepping back from our hustling entrepreneurial life to: gain clarity and focus, recharge our energy, recheck what we're doing, all while giving our minds and bodies time to think and breathe. When we've built these step back points into our system and schedule we prevent getting scattered with our work, missing opportunities, and most importantly we prevent burning ourselves and our families/relationships out. Often without step back points, we become busy: but not a good busy.

Step #4: Face your Fears

The quickest way to make a problem bigger and last longer is to avoid it all together. When we try to escape a situation, feeling, thought, or relationship, that energy is magnified and only get worse like an untreated wound. Spirituality teaches that in order to heal, we must face what is causing us pain and allow ourselves to feel those feelings so we can reach a place where we are calm, level headed, rational and ready to take on the challenges of the day. Avoiding the solving of a problem or the onset of a problem is just as bad if not worse than avoiding to talk about it with someone when you're unable to solve it on your own.

Step #5: Embrace "Failures" and "Negative Outcomes" as part of the journey

When things don't go our way or we're feeling victimized by a person, situation, or circumstance we disempower our capacity to tackle the issues at hand. Often this is due to the fact that according to our research, most people won't actually ask for help or work on themselves till they've lost their business, gone bankrupt, burned out themselves and/or family, or until their life unravels. After we face our opposing circumstance, we must embrace all challenges, failures, and negative outcomes as guiding tools to help us stray away from paths that weren't going to lead us anywhere good while also granting us the opportunity to reassess, reevaluate, and recalibrate ourselves and our businesses resulting in inevitable improvement and progress as we inch closer and closer to our goals.

Stress is inevitable. But the way we manage it and get on top of it, makes all the difference and can change our outcome from burned out, disenchanted, doubtful, and fearful, to becoming resilient, purpose-driven, hopeful, and optimistic about the future.

For more strategies, resources and tools on how to get on top of your emotions, your behaviours and your lifestyle, let's chat. Book a time that suits you and let's get you the support you need: https://calendly.com/rbitton/consultation