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A couple of weeks ago, I was about 30 minutes into a first date; when the phone call came in.
Everything I own has just been thrown on the street, in the middle of a foreign country. I'm backpacking through Europe, and my Laptop, Passport, and whatever else I could fit in my backpack is in the middle of the street.
Unsure of how to get back without Apple maps, I noticed my cell phone reception stopped working. So much for rushing home quickly...
When I stop by the ATM to try to withdraw money for a hostel, I notice all of my cards were frozen, and it's 10:30 at night, in the middle of November.
I won't be sleeping in a hostel tonight.
I love traveling the world...
I look my date in the eye, tell her what just happened, we finish the next round of beers, and I ask her if she could help me find my way back with the map on her phone.
While walking back to gather my belongings, she looks up at me and says, "You don't look stressed at all. I would be freaking out in this situation."
She was right, I wasn't. I reached the point in my life where I don't feel stressed about things like this anymore; which for anyone who knew me well a number of years back, knows this is a longgggg way from where I used to be.
Since 2008, I've put myself in a lot of situations that have forced me to learn how to deal with a lot of stress.
All of a sudden, when you get experience doing that, the little things in life don't seem to stress you anymore; in comparison.
If you ever find yourself going through a very stressful situation, such as your bank account hitting the red, needing to pay rent, having to make payroll, and all that other stuff that comes with the territory of being an entrepreneur...simply by re-framing this experience as an event in your life that is training you to grow stronger and handle anything on the road to come - This mindset is sometimes it all it takes to realize that in the long run, everything will be ok.
And this gives you the confidence not to stress about it.
I'd like to share my lessons learned form my experience as it applies to stress-management in entrepreneurship.
1 - Don't Suppress Your Emotions.
When you suppress your emotions, they are still buried deep within you. It's like filling a suitcase with all the nasty things you don't want to face in life. At the beginning, it is convenient because there is room for them, and you won't have to face them down there.
But over time, they will pile up and your suitcase will transform into a pressure cooker. Out of nowhere, the pressure will build up, and if you do this for long enough, it will eventually explode.
This is what led to me being 94 miles in the middle of the wilderness of Northern Montana, with heart palpitations, face turning red, and breathing getting difficult. When I was forced to slam on my brakes on the side of a back-country road, and get out of my car because I couldn't physically drive anymore...I learned that it's not a good idea to ignore or suppress your emotions.
Glacier National Park, Montana - October 2015
The day I realized that it's not a good idea to suppress your emotions.
The Solution:
Instead, when I feel an emotion come up, I hold it at the surface, and feel the "negative" emotion. This might sound a little hippie to you, but I learned to listen to my emotions.
This emotion is happening for a reason, and its' usually pointing you in a certain direction, or holds a lesson for you to learn from it.
Other times it is simply a fear, where you don't know what will happen next - and that fear gets the best of you. In this instance, it's best to come back to the present moment, and notice that in the very moment you're feeling it - everything is OK.
(Note: This approach worked for stress in business. It probably wouldn't have fended so well when I was in real danger, such as being in the basement of a burning building, or getting shot at).
2 - Release the Emotion
Instead of stuffing the emotion down, I got trained by doctors of psychology how to release the emotions within 2 minutes. I've posted plenty of examples on different posts here on the topic, but EFT (search YouTube) and Timeline Therapy (Book by Tad James), are two of the most common techniques I use.
Timeline Therapy works for resolving emotions that are left over from past experiences. It's important to realize that many times you hold onto these emotions because you think they serve a purpose.
EFT applies to any emotions, where you can quickly release them from your body.
The important thing to remember - is that the emotions hold a lesson, and use them as and "emotional compass" to make sure you know what direction they are pointing you, before you release them.
3 - Look at the Bigger Picture/The Long Run
Have you ever felt really sick in your life?
Perhaps it's the flu, or food poisoning, or whatever - when you are going through a sickness, it feels like there is no way out. That what you're stuck in will be here forever.
But when you recover, you realize that the struggles you go through are just temporary and things will always get better.
Whenever something doesn't go as planned, or things are looking like they are going bad - instead of getting caught up in the moment, I take a step back and look at the bigger picture, realizing that I know with this path we go on as entrepreneurs, everything will be OK.
This gives me the confidence and peace that there's really no reason to stress about anything.
Objection from that last comment: "It's this stress that drives us to take action. Without it, we are complacent."
In 2013, the stress from my job pushed me to work on my business at night. Then I got complacent - and it didn't work out too well for my bank account. Then, I reached a point where I was motivated by an emotion that I wanted to feel (excitement, drive, love, etc.) - and I'm more motivated now than I was when I was driven by stress.
And I enjoy the work that I do.
So yeah, there's a chance if you release the negative emotions, it can lead to complacency - but on the other side of there - there's a point where you find the other motivation. I wish I could explain in detail how to find it, but I reached that point just recently and haven't really connected the dots enough to outline that part of it yet.
4 - Channel Your Emotions
For those of you reading this who don't want to release the emotion through the techniques I listed before, find an outlet to get the emotion out of your body.
You see most business owners fall into this category.
Put it into your work, go to the gym, etc. Some type of useful outlet to put it out there.
I put a lot of my emotions into my writing.
5 - Release Attachments & Trust in the Process
They say disappointment is the difference between expectation and experience.
So if you expect a certain result, and you are attached to that one outcome - anything that doesn't go according to plan usually triggered that stress and anxiety within me.
But after gaining some experience, I began to realize that we should't resist the things that happen to us, but accept them as a normal part of the process.
I set my goals, I take these actions, and I trust in the process, that the actions I'm taking will lead me there.
You can't always win every battle, but you can win the war.
6 - A Positive Re-Frame
Everything I talked about so far is dealing with the emotional.
In this one, I talk about the mental. We live in a world of meaningless energy - where nothing outside of us has a meaning. There are no good or bad, right or wrong - the meaning we attach to events is what creates the reaction we have to them.
When my car broke down after I quit my job - I reframed it into a positive - I work harder on my business because of it, and I make more money than I would if it didn't. My revenue increased the following month.
You can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond do it.
Your brain attaches meaning to events, and that meaning triggers emotions.
By putting a positive reframe on "negative", events, this positive outlook on life has helped me through a lot.
In the end, I took the tram 30 minutes across the city, lived with my Tinder date for a few days - ate two pizzas, and drank 3 bottles of wine, realizing that when you look beyond the thing that might cause you stress - good times are waiting for you right around the corner.
Wine, Pizza, and getting things sorted out before traveling to my next destination in Europe: The Netherlands.
This is my outlook on life that does not get me stressed or feeling anxious with my business.
Everything I own has just been thrown on the street, in the middle of a foreign country. I'm backpacking through Europe, and my Laptop, Passport, and whatever else I could fit in my backpack is in the middle of the street.
Unsure of how to get back without Apple maps, I noticed my cell phone reception stopped working. So much for rushing home quickly...
When I stop by the ATM to try to withdraw money for a hostel, I notice all of my cards were frozen, and it's 10:30 at night, in the middle of November.
I won't be sleeping in a hostel tonight.
I love traveling the world...
I look my date in the eye, tell her what just happened, we finish the next round of beers, and I ask her if she could help me find my way back with the map on her phone.
While walking back to gather my belongings, she looks up at me and says, "You don't look stressed at all. I would be freaking out in this situation."
She was right, I wasn't. I reached the point in my life where I don't feel stressed about things like this anymore; which for anyone who knew me well a number of years back, knows this is a longgggg way from where I used to be.
Since 2008, I've put myself in a lot of situations that have forced me to learn how to deal with a lot of stress.
- Speeding towards an active shooter in a police car,
- Trapped in a burning basement as a firefighter,
- Had multiple people's lives in my hands as and EMT.
- Spend a winter in and out of doctor's offices for heart palpitations when my first company went under,
- And now I find myself, in the streets, with no money or cell phone service, in a foreign country.
All of a sudden, when you get experience doing that, the little things in life don't seem to stress you anymore; in comparison.
If you ever find yourself going through a very stressful situation, such as your bank account hitting the red, needing to pay rent, having to make payroll, and all that other stuff that comes with the territory of being an entrepreneur...simply by re-framing this experience as an event in your life that is training you to grow stronger and handle anything on the road to come - This mindset is sometimes it all it takes to realize that in the long run, everything will be ok.
And this gives you the confidence not to stress about it.
I'd like to share my lessons learned form my experience as it applies to stress-management in entrepreneurship.
1 - Don't Suppress Your Emotions.
When you suppress your emotions, they are still buried deep within you. It's like filling a suitcase with all the nasty things you don't want to face in life. At the beginning, it is convenient because there is room for them, and you won't have to face them down there.
But over time, they will pile up and your suitcase will transform into a pressure cooker. Out of nowhere, the pressure will build up, and if you do this for long enough, it will eventually explode.
This is what led to me being 94 miles in the middle of the wilderness of Northern Montana, with heart palpitations, face turning red, and breathing getting difficult. When I was forced to slam on my brakes on the side of a back-country road, and get out of my car because I couldn't physically drive anymore...I learned that it's not a good idea to ignore or suppress your emotions.
Glacier National Park, Montana - October 2015
The day I realized that it's not a good idea to suppress your emotions.
The Solution:
Instead, when I feel an emotion come up, I hold it at the surface, and feel the "negative" emotion. This might sound a little hippie to you, but I learned to listen to my emotions.
This emotion is happening for a reason, and its' usually pointing you in a certain direction, or holds a lesson for you to learn from it.
Other times it is simply a fear, where you don't know what will happen next - and that fear gets the best of you. In this instance, it's best to come back to the present moment, and notice that in the very moment you're feeling it - everything is OK.
(Note: This approach worked for stress in business. It probably wouldn't have fended so well when I was in real danger, such as being in the basement of a burning building, or getting shot at).
2 - Release the Emotion
Instead of stuffing the emotion down, I got trained by doctors of psychology how to release the emotions within 2 minutes. I've posted plenty of examples on different posts here on the topic, but EFT (search YouTube) and Timeline Therapy (Book by Tad James), are two of the most common techniques I use.
Timeline Therapy works for resolving emotions that are left over from past experiences. It's important to realize that many times you hold onto these emotions because you think they serve a purpose.
- If your business partners screwed you over and you lost a lot of money - you'll feel those emotional blockages coming up when it comes to someone proposing to be a business partner.
- If you lost a lot of money on a Facebook advertising campaign and went homeless because of it - those emotions are there, preventing you from starting another Facebook ad campaign in the future.
EFT applies to any emotions, where you can quickly release them from your body.
The important thing to remember - is that the emotions hold a lesson, and use them as and "emotional compass" to make sure you know what direction they are pointing you, before you release them.
3 - Look at the Bigger Picture/The Long Run
Have you ever felt really sick in your life?
Perhaps it's the flu, or food poisoning, or whatever - when you are going through a sickness, it feels like there is no way out. That what you're stuck in will be here forever.
But when you recover, you realize that the struggles you go through are just temporary and things will always get better.
Whenever something doesn't go as planned, or things are looking like they are going bad - instead of getting caught up in the moment, I take a step back and look at the bigger picture, realizing that I know with this path we go on as entrepreneurs, everything will be OK.
This gives me the confidence and peace that there's really no reason to stress about anything.
Objection from that last comment: "It's this stress that drives us to take action. Without it, we are complacent."
In 2013, the stress from my job pushed me to work on my business at night. Then I got complacent - and it didn't work out too well for my bank account. Then, I reached a point where I was motivated by an emotion that I wanted to feel (excitement, drive, love, etc.) - and I'm more motivated now than I was when I was driven by stress.
And I enjoy the work that I do.
So yeah, there's a chance if you release the negative emotions, it can lead to complacency - but on the other side of there - there's a point where you find the other motivation. I wish I could explain in detail how to find it, but I reached that point just recently and haven't really connected the dots enough to outline that part of it yet.
4 - Channel Your Emotions
For those of you reading this who don't want to release the emotion through the techniques I listed before, find an outlet to get the emotion out of your body.
You see most business owners fall into this category.
Put it into your work, go to the gym, etc. Some type of useful outlet to put it out there.
I put a lot of my emotions into my writing.
5 - Release Attachments & Trust in the Process
They say disappointment is the difference between expectation and experience.
So if you expect a certain result, and you are attached to that one outcome - anything that doesn't go according to plan usually triggered that stress and anxiety within me.
But after gaining some experience, I began to realize that we should't resist the things that happen to us, but accept them as a normal part of the process.
I set my goals, I take these actions, and I trust in the process, that the actions I'm taking will lead me there.
You can't always win every battle, but you can win the war.
6 - A Positive Re-Frame
Everything I talked about so far is dealing with the emotional.
In this one, I talk about the mental. We live in a world of meaningless energy - where nothing outside of us has a meaning. There are no good or bad, right or wrong - the meaning we attach to events is what creates the reaction we have to them.
When my car broke down after I quit my job - I reframed it into a positive - I work harder on my business because of it, and I make more money than I would if it didn't. My revenue increased the following month.
You can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond do it.
Your brain attaches meaning to events, and that meaning triggers emotions.
By putting a positive reframe on "negative", events, this positive outlook on life has helped me through a lot.
In the end, I took the tram 30 minutes across the city, lived with my Tinder date for a few days - ate two pizzas, and drank 3 bottles of wine, realizing that when you look beyond the thing that might cause you stress - good times are waiting for you right around the corner.
Wine, Pizza, and getting things sorted out before traveling to my next destination in Europe: The Netherlands.
This is my outlook on life that does not get me stressed or feeling anxious with my business.
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