Today Entrepreneurs more than ever need to practice stress management. The three major causes of stress are work, money and family. Others are changes in personal circumstances and societal factors. What begins as work related anxiety leads to stress and depression if not tackled early.
Fear of losing a business or source of income, meeting impossible targets and deadlines, relationship with employees & peers in workplace, long commutes, and lack of a family support system are some of the reasons that could be causing your anxiety. Here are 7 Ways to Use Stress Management to Get Up and Running Quickly as Entrepreneur.
Read The Signs of Stress
Do you feel constantly irritable, anxious, sad, sleepless or demotivated? Do you regularly experience backaches, headaches, fatigue, clenched muscles, increased blood pressure, upset digestion, chest pain or breathing trouble? or Do you have trouble concentrating or find yourself procrastinating? One or more of these symptoms recurring often indicates that your stress level is going beyond your control and you need to take corrective action immediately.
Seek Help
Your first step is to seek out positive relationships in your circle of friends, family or colleagues who can provide a safe non-judgmental listening. Verbalizing your feelings reduces anxiety and, in some cases, clears your mind. Secondly, sharing your challenges permits your support system to keep you grounded by intervening and steering you away from a harmful mindset.
Learn More : How to Stay Healthy When You Are an Entrepreneur?
To create and maintain such positive relationships, make human connections a priority. Block time regularly to engage with people at work and life and encourage sharing of vulnerabilities and meaningful experiences. Consider professional counseling to deal with clinical depression and anxiety related medical conditions.
Care for Yourself First
Resilience is your capacity to recover from difficulties. Resilience increases when you take care of your body and mind. The three big factors are food, sleep and exercise, in that order. Eating good food at the right time instantly reduces your stress. Binge eating of sugary or fried foods makes you lethargic and less inclined to take positive action.
Also Read : 6 Relaxed Lifestyle Changes to Be a Better Entrepreneur
Get 7-8 hours of sleep daily. Exercise to boost energy reserves and mood. Take a brisk walk at lunchtime or on your commute. Take a water break often, do deep breathing exercises and spend a few minutes stretching when you reach home.
Manage Tasks Efficiently
After you have your calendar going, deal with individual projects or tasks in three steps. First, prioritize your list and ignore or delegate the rest while you focus on the most important. Break large stressful projects into digestible baby steps that empower you with a sense of progress. Finally, compromise on perfection to seek results that are workable and do not exhaust you.
Reevaluate Your Habits
Take a step back to figure out habits or personality traits that contribute to your stress levels. Perfectionism, negative thinking, dis-empowering stories about people/ circumstances are common traits of anxious personalities. Rethink or seek help to change your interpretation of what happened and what it means for you to build an empowering context. Indulge in humor and fun to shift your frame of reference. Establish a set of habits when you return home from work to dissociate completely from your work stresses.
Overcome Your Stress
Identify real problems and discuss solutions to these stress points and triggers with your friends, employees or colleagues. Outlining your job description, changing roles, avoiding conflict/ negative people/gossip, taking a break and delegating your current job can be potential answers. Apart from money, seek work that have meaning for you. Alternatively, find a higher purpose outside of work, whether in family, community or society, that fuels your motivation and mood.
Read More : 4 Step Guide for Entrepreneurs to Manage Health Issues
Keep Yourself Calm
Learn to relax and calm yourself. Practicing daily gratitude for positive life situations and people is extremely effective. If music is your thing, then put on your headphones during your commute. Practice mindfulness based stress reduction. Use the help of guided meditation apps or self-taught mindfulness to help distance yourself from the constant recording of your mind.
What Did You Learn?
When you make a mistake on account of stress, take a break and ask yourself what did you learn. When you acknowledge each mistake as an opportunity for growth, you expand your abilities and bring back hope and self-forgiveness leading to greater resilience. Recognize the additional energy arising from stress and apply it positively through the strengths you bring to the situation.
Do you know any other ways on how to use stress management to get up and running quickly as entrepreneur? Comment them on Trdinoo for others to learn. Please subscribe and share us with your friends and networks.
