I’m guessing that if you’re a small business owner, like me, you love what you do and would never consider doing anything else.
Owning a small business comes with lots of perks…your own hours, being your own boss, and building something meaningful to you. However, in deciding to start your own business, you are committing to a challenging road ahead.
From experience, I know that running a business means that things can often be hectic. It’s been said that no one knows hard work like a thriving business owner because of the number of responsibilities they juggle. With targets to achieve, deadlines to meet and customers to please, it’s all go. In fact it’s not uncommon for a business owner to work 70 hours a week or more and, many owners find it difficult to keep their personal and work lives separate.
The pressure that falls on the shoulders of business owners can be astronomical. For many the pressure is too much and, more than half of all small businesses close within a few years of their opening.
The consequence of working under constant excessive pressure is stress.
When stress is experienced over a period of time, without relief, it becomes chronic and numerous studies have found that chronic stress adversely impacts our ability to perform at our best and degrades our physical and emotional health. Chronic stress leads to a state of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion that can interfere with our ability to successfully keep up with our commitments and effectively run our business.
In short, chronic stress is not good for you or the success of your business.
So what’s the solution?
The ideal solution is to avoid suffering chronic stress in the first place. To achieve this, you need to be able to perform under pressure. Developing this ability enables you to consistently perform to the best of your abilities while avoiding chronic stress.
It’s also vital that you become familiar with the symptoms of stress so that you can identify the early warning signs in yourself and take action to prevent stress from becoming chronic or escalating to the stage that you experience burnout.
And finally you need start using some effective tools and techniques to help you effectively cope with any stress that you do experience and, to help build your resilience. A good place to start is learning some simple breathing techniques.
So to sum up, as a small business owner, learning how to deal with pressure and stress may be as important to your long-term business success and well-being as learning how to make a profit!
What Next?
I help small business owners develop the cognitive skills and behaviours they need to consistently perform under pressure, avoid chronic stress and cope with stress. If you'd like to explore how I can help you, let's talk. You can contact me on 021 056 8389 or email me at tony@tycoaching.nz.
Until next week,
Go well
Tony
Tony helps individuals to harness the power of their mind to achieve success and well-being in life, work and business. Tony's particular area of expertise is in helping people perform under pressure and gain freedom from worry, anxiety and distress. Tony’s solution focused approach to coaching uses a range of techniques drawn from the fields of co-active coaching, clinical hypnotherapy, positive psychology and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
Contact Tony today to discuss how he can help you, or if you think Tony could help someone you know, you might like to encourage them to get in touch with him.
