It’s a rare person in small business who doesn’t feel stressed.

Let’s face it, as small business owners we have all the right ingredients to make us super-stressed. We’re more exposed to the reality of uncertainty. We have less predictability than someone who is employed. And we quite often don’t have the support of someone we can bounce ideas off or who will pick up the slack when we’re not ‘on’.

We’re not really built to be dealing with these stressors on a daily basis. We were designed in cave man days where almost nothing happened all the time. We mostly lolled about, dining on sumptuous local produce, and having hippy-commune style sex. We were only beset by the occasional sabre-tooth tiger attack or the more frequent stress of falling down after imbibing too much of the juice of fermented berries.

Life was predictable, fairly certain and we had the support of the tribe if we needed to make big decisions like ‘should I wear my bear fur over my left or right shoulder?’

Here are your 2 Solutions:

1. Get Help. Luckily, these days you can hire yourself a Business Coach to help you manage these stressors. And I highly recommend you do.
2. Another thing you can do to deal with stress is change the way you look at it. Despite everything you’ve read or heard saying that stress is bad, there is new research that suggests that stress is rather helpful. We perform better at an optimal level of stress (not too much, not too little). Our concentration improves, we can stay more focused on tasks, and we can get more done in less time.

One way we can keep it at an optimal level is to see it in a different light.

If we perceive that stress is helping our performance, it helps. If we see stress as our body preparing us to face the challenges ahead then our body will go into a state of courage rather than stress. And if we can get excited about how our business is stretching us and helping us grow we can feel excited rather than stressed.

If you want to feel more in control of your business and therefore your stress, hire a Small Fish Business Coach. The faster you do it, the better your business will be and the earlier I can retire to a life of sex, sumptuous eating and serious lolling.