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How to Manage Stress and Mental Wellness When Starting a Business

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By Jean Cherry

The U.S. Small Business Administration reports there are 28 million small businesses, which account for 99.7% of all U.S. businesses. That means a lot of small business owners are making a go as an entrepreneur. Starting a business is exciting and rewarding, but included in that excitement are fast-paced demands and risks of the unknown – all of which can lead to stress.

There are both positive and negative stresses when starting a business. A 2017 survey of entrepreneurs found that positive stressors include increased commercial activity, hiring an employee, and launching a new project or product. Negative stressors include being overworked, employee resignations, and poor business performance.

Here are some tips for small business owners to help manage both positive and negative stressors:

Stay organized.

Stress levels can be diminished when you’re well prepared and have everything in order. Careful planning allows you to anticipate challenges and come up with solutions ahead of time.

Find a creative outlet.

Great ideas come from many places, so take time to dream, take a painting class, get out in nature, meditate, or write in a journal. Business owners can benefit from building time in their schedules to think about innovative and creative ways of doing things and separate themselves from the everyday stress of running a business.

Listen to others.

As a business owner, you have a lot of decisions to make. Being a good listener will show that other people’s opinions are valued. Employees that are closer to different aspects of the business may provide new perspectives.

Be committed and resourceful.

A recent study found that entrepreneurship is common among people who have endured life challenges. They learned to persevere and manage stress by working harder, seeking help when needed, developing social skills, and networking. Everyone can learn from these entrepreneurs.

Balance responsibilities.

One of the most common complaints entrepreneurs have when starting a business is that they feel overworked. Delegation is difficult when there are only a few employees to carry the load, but letting go and sharing the responsibilities of the business can help reduce some of the stress. It’s also necessary to take time away from work and go on vacation. Delegating and taking a vacation helps to avoid burnout.

Exercise and eat right.

Exercise is a great stress reliever. Find something that fits your personality — from walking to marathons to yoga. We have better mental acuity and focus when we maintain a healthy diet. Drink plenty of water, decrease sugar intake, and limit caffeine.

 

Stress management for an entrepreneur is a balancing act, but the journey can be much more enjoyable with good organization, building on creative ideas, valuing input from others, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

 

 

Author Bio: Jean Cherry, RN, MBA enjoys sharing her knowledge of health and wellness with readers in her writing for Walgreens, where you can find a variety of vitamins to supplement a hectic entrepreneurial lifestyle at Walgreens.com.

 

 

Although it is intended to be accurate, neither Walgreen Co., its subsidiaries or affiliates, nor any other party assumes for loss or damage due to reliance on this material. Walgreens does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, physicians, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned in the article. Reliance on any information provided by this article is solely at your own risk.

 

Take 5 Minutes to Find a State of Blogger Wellness

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Not long ago, I asked Pamir Kiciman about his ideas for a guest post. Pamir writes for Reiki Help Blog about practical spirituality. I wasn’t disappointed when his first response said, “I really see no content to help the person doing the biz, it’s all about the tech, biz itself, content, clients, selling, etc. . . . So my idea for your readers is a piece about being healthy at the desktop, some practical, easy-to-use self-enhancing methods to engender wellness for even better output.”

Take 5 minutes to do what Pamir suggests. I did.

Blogger Wellness
by Pamir Kiciman, BA, RM. CHt

Lay of the land

You’ve identified your niche, settled on a blog platform, know your categories, have a SEO strategy and have put yourself out there on the Live Web. Way to go! It’s fun, exciting and fast. Your blog has a clean design and nifty widgets, comments are coming in, people Digg your content and you feel legit.

You social network, your workspace is simple, you love the resolution of your LCD monitor and your chair is ergoncomfy. You’re ready for another day on Web 2.0, or rather the Web on steroids! There’s the Twitter notification, the new comment too and your buddy IMs, a potential client fills out your contact form. Meanwhile your lover texts you about dinner and romance.

Life is good. Or is it? You have nagging tension in your shoulders, your mouse hand hurts and you want to replace your neck. The next morning none of these are too noticeable. Well, at least until the fifteenth email. Then discomfort creeps in again.

After some time, you numb to the physical symptoms although they persist. Yet productivity drops. Your monitor doesn’t look so hi-def to your bleary eyes, and you feel lethargic, even resentful. You feel you don’t have a single original thought to contribute and everything is an effort.

You promise yourself to do something about it before it gets to this point next time, but when you scour the Web next to nothing comes up for desktop health. Until now. In fact the first page of results in Google returns links about getting your health record on your desktop. If you search ‘blogger wellness’ Google asks if you meant ‘blogs health’ because that’s a nice little category.

Antidotes to blogger stress

There’s a natural function of your body that is with you 24/7/365. This function takes place in its quiet way independently of you. It has a job to do and it doesn’t wait for you to show up. Thankfully. It follows a rhythm and doesn’t waver or hesitate. It comes in and goes out like a finely-tuned clock, and doesn’t expect anything. Selflessly it serves you, while you mostly ignore it.

Can you guess? It’s your BREATH!

Nature has so arranged it that the diaphragm will expand and contract on its own, oxygen will enter and carbon dioxide leave, the lungs will fill and empty keeping you alive. After all, during sleep you don’t notice your breath, why should you when awake? You have so many more important things to handle!

Have you ever watched a healthy baby breathe? See that little stomach go up and down? Notice how easy and natural it is for them. Their breaths are full, smooth not jerky, starting at the abdomen they breathe and fill the lungs. They exhale all the way. There isn’t any constriction or unusual noise in the breath.

This is the breath you’ve forgotten. This is the breath you put on automatic pilot. Your breath is the one friend that you can ill afford to take for granted. It doesn’t require a cell phone or e-mail. It’s free and loyal. It doesn’t argue back.

But breathing without awareness means you’re not getting half of what you could from this resource. The breath obviously brings oxygen into your body and takes carbon dioxide out. The action of the diaphragm massages the internal organs. Even these mundane benefits aren’t properly available if your breath is shallow or high in the chest, or if you catch yourself not breathing for a few seconds (it happens quite often!).

More than all the biological factors of the breath, what it really brings is the new in essence form. Undoubtedly there is more than nutrients, water, oxygen and heartbeat that sustains you. If you think about the longterm effects of stress, you realize that it sticks to your organs, muscles and mind long after the stimulus that created the stress is gone. When you breathe with awareness, you also replace old stuck energies of all kinds with freshness, and each conscious breath becomes a house-cleansing.

Five-minute Breathing

Recommended for daily use at your monitor, 3 times a day for 5 minutes each time.

  • Turn off your monitor & sound, as well as cell phone. Turn away from your monitor if you like.
  • Sit comfortably in your chair with your spine erect but not rigid.
  • Keep your feet flat on the floor, legs uncrossed.
  • Hands are comfortably in your lap.
  • Get a sense of your posture & purpose. This is your time.
  • Tune into your body. Simply observe your body’s natural breath, without changing it.
  • Get to know your breath, how your body breathes, and all the sensations and feelings associated with it.
  • Gradually deepen your breath and make it slower and longer.
  • Direct your diaphragm to expand slowly, inhaling slowly, making sure the breath starts in the abdomen and fills the lungs from the bottom up.
  • Consciously direct on the exhalation, making sure to exhale slowly and all the way down.
  • Continue breathing like this for the rest of the five minutes.
  • You may reach a calm, heightened sense of awareness.
  • After practicing daily for a while, breathing may become minimal toward the end of the allotted time.

When done, take a moment to feel your presence in the room, open your eyes and continue with your day.

Thanks, Pamir. I’m feeling better already!

–ME “Liz” Strauss