How Do You Handle Stress as an Entrepreneur?
The following is an excerpt from Module 1 of our digital course. Learn more about the full course and get started now.
What are you enduring right now?
Where are you living currently on this scale? No stress? Life is an endless vacation with no worries?Or the other end; extreme stress, not sure you can go any further. How much stress do you feel you’re enduring currently as you follow your passions and chase your dreams toward that ultimate vision and passion that you want to fulfill?
It’s been said that stress comes from the gap between your perceived ability and the things you need to do. Not enough time creates stress. Lacking skill creates stress. Uncertainty about what will happen next creates stress. Feeling unprepared for what’s next causes stress. Borrowing time from personal relationships and spending it working on our businesses creates stress. Financial risk creates stress. These are just the realities of being human.
If you’re under a great deal of stress, you’re probably enduring fast change in your life or in your business. Maybe you feel unprepared for what’s next. There are some scary unknowns. There are things you don’t even know that you’re going to have to deal with next and that worries you. You’re taking real financial risk. It could lead to personal bankruptcy or maybe just losing all your savings and setting yourself back 10 or 20 years for the financial goals that you’ve been working toward. Or maybe you just have a completely unrealistic workload right now. You’re asking so much of yourself that it’s just not possible to do the things you need to do.
Look at the scale on the graphic above that says “Where are you now?” On the left is no stress. On the right is high stress. The left again is life’s a vacation. You’re just doing whatever you want to do. There’s no pressure on you to perform. You feel fully prepared for whatever tomorrow is going to require of you or the next month or the next year or the rest of your life even. No worries come to mind when you think about what’s next. You are financially secure. There is just no way this could go wrong in a way that your basic needs and requirements for life would come into question. Everything’s fine. You’re confident in your plans for how to deal with whatever’s coming next. Whether you know what’s coming next or not, you know you’re going to be fine.
Circle one of these numbers from 1 to 10. You can fill in the box if you want. Just take a second to reflect and figure out where you are on the scale.
Now, let’s talk about what you are experiencing.
Where do you see yourself on this scale, from centered to highly activated? This scale is about your response to the environment that you’re in. This is how we’re handling, and how we’re responding to the stress that we’re enduring right now. Some people are born with high natural resilience to stress, and that’s great. Most of us are not. I certainly have found in my life that I do not have strong natural resilience to stress. For people like me, and the majority of people, we must learn to use tools that allow us to handle the stress that we cannot reduce. Our options are either get better at handling stress or find a way to reduce it. What most of us need to accomplish is a little bit of both.
This is a scale of your actual stress response. Let’s just think about it. If you’re handling stress really well, and you’re very centered on the left side of the scale, the low numbers, you’re feeling at ease personally. This is your response to whatever you’re enduring in life. You’re calm. You have an even mood. You don’t feel these swings from high to low, from excitement to depression, which sometimes we can experience even in the same day. You might have swings from a little above center to a little below, feeling a little down, but you come back again quickly and that’s just normal in life. You’re able to keep a really positive self-dialogue internally. Things are going well, and things are going to continue to go well. You can feel confident about that. You feel energized. You don’t feel like what you’re putting yourself through is dragging you down to a point that you’re never going to get back up again.
If you’re activated, you’re probably feeling anxious. You’re feeling these huge mood swings from super high, almost like moments of mania and excitement and power that are driving you forward, and then falling back to doubting everything that you’ve been working on and judging it and being harsh on yourself. You’re probably feeling these moments of high, high excitement where you’re getting really activated and your mood is shooting up, and your energy is shooting up. Your heart is racing in these moments of excitement, and over time they leave you exhausted. You’re in reaction mode. Responding to the things that you’re dealing with in life, not in front of them, but kind of behind them, just trying to keep up, put out the fires and keep it together.
Circle a number here from 1 to 10, with 1 being the center, calm and even, to activated, 10, being anxious, excited, and just exhausted. There is no wrong answer here.
So, how do YOU handle stress?
I’ll propose that if your dot on the scale is to the left of where you were on the previous scale - if your number is lower than where you picked on the previous scale - then you’ve got some tools that you’re using to manage stress, whether you know it or not, or you’ve got some natural resilience to stress. You can measure your physiological response, your resilience to stress, and you can improve it, and we’ll talk about that more later in some of the other modules.
If your dot is in about the same position as it was in the previous scale, then you’re just riding the wave of stress and allowing it to do as much damage as it would like. The more pressure you endure, the more you suffer, chase your dreams, pay the price personally, increase your goals, increase your suffering. In this position, you’re fully exposed to the risk of stress.
Now if your dot on this scale is to the right of where it was on the previous scale, you’re probably so bad at coping with stress that you’re stressed out about how poorly you’re handling the stress. Don’t worry, I’ve been there before, and for a long time. Stress is having an exponentially negative impact on your life. Dial up the stress even a little, and you’re past the tipping point.
If you’d like to start tracking and improving your mind as an entrepreneur, consider trying the Founders First app free for seven days. This could be the moment that starts moving your life in a new direction, and you’re joining over 3,000 entrepreneurs who already work together to make our tomorrows a little easier than today. Come join us.
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