You are going to feel various amounts of stress when you are working on growing your business. But, what are the best ways to relieve this type of tension? We’ve got to deal with various types of pressure, either from within the business, or from our work-life balance being out of sorts, and as a business leader, this stress can easily get to us. So, with that in mind, how can we best manage our stress, and are there things we can learn to ensure that we don’t get that tense ever again?
Establishing The Root Cause
It’s a very common psychological tactic, but we need to establish the root cause of our anxieties. Sometimes, we actually can’t pinpoint what the reason is, and we just feel stressed. But this could mean there is a multitude of reasons. Whether it’s the financial aspect of the business, or you are feeling, in a subconscious sense, that the business is going down the tubes. The best way for us to calm our own anxieties within ourselves is to identify the root cause and take the positive steps towards eradicating this. If cash flow is a problem, there are loans with ASNEF and other financial institutions, but if the root cause is deeper, and it’s affecting your entire life, inside and outside of the office, by identifying what the reason is, you can then break down the appropriate tasks, and after you have isolated the problem and fix it, you have a coping strategy to use every time you feel this anxiety.
Learning How To Switch Your Brain Off
This is always easier said than done, but while switching our brain off doesn’t necessarily mean learning how to sit in a darkened room, with our legs crossed, going “ommmm” for hours on end, the best way to switch our brain off with regards to our working life is to distract ourselves. In other words, get a hobby. Bill Gates likes to read for an hour before he goes to sleep, no matter how late it is into the night, Warren Buffet plays the ukulele, and it’s a lesson every entrepreneur can learn in life, taking the time to refocus your mind onto something that you enjoy. We can spend a lot of time looking after our employees, dealing with problems on a constant basis, but it’s these challenges that can wear away at our sense of self. So, to reclaim who we are, we should take these opportunities to focus on something that we love. And if you think you don’t have the time, maybe it’s worth building a proper schedule. Other entrepreneurs, like Jack Dorsey, stick to a schedule so he can manage his stress better. If you feel you are unable to cope with everything that comes your way, by breaking down the tasks into more manageable chunks, this will be integral to how you cope with the business stress, as well as your own.
Making A Distinct Difference Between Work And Life
If you struggle to structure your life in a certain way, this could be the best opportunity for you to make that difference in your head between work and life. You may communicate to your employees ad nauseam about the importance of a work-life balance, but do you practice what you preach? If you don’t, then you need to start thinking about this in a practical sense. Some people reassess their entire lives because they had a health scare. If you look back on your time in the business, and look at how much quality time you spend with your family in comparison to the amount of work you’ve done to build up the business, if the balance is solidly in favor of the office environment, you don’t just need to re-evaluate this for yourself, but for the ones you love. We can all justify it within ourselves, that we need to work hard so we can provide for our loved ones, but it’s not worth a dime if you can’t spend that quality time with the people you love. Making this distinct difference between work and life is going to work wonders for your outlook, and the best way to do this at the very beginning is to, very simply, not read emails in bed! We feel that it’s nothing to climb into bed, check our phone quickly, and turn the light out, but then our brain continues to process this stuff hours into our quiet time. But if you can climb into bed, and actually go to sleep, this is the first step towards achieving that proper work-life balance
Working Under Pressure In The Office
And for all of the things we can do outside of the office to relieve stress, we may walk through the office doors first thing in the morning, and feel the pressure flooding right back. In which case, as well as structuring your days, there are numerous ways you can cope with the workplace pressure. Prioritizing your workload, focusing on the here and now, as well as looking to yourself and examining what things you procrastinate, even in the minutest of ways, are little changes that will help you to work smarter. We work hard, but this can be to the detriment of our health. So by altering your own perspectives of what it means to work harder, you begin to see what is actually good for you, health-wise. Maybe trying the Eisenhower model of tackling deadlines could benefit you, or maybe you just need to take the pressure off yourself, because if you are constantly fighting deadlines, and you feel at the end of the working day that you are exhausted, it’s just going to get worse over the years.
Business pressures are numerous, and while many people thrive under this pressure, it’s not going to benefit them in the long run. And so, by isolating the causes, but also tackling tasks in a more proactive way, you will begin to make the most potent alterations, not just to your business, but to yourself.