More than 65% of businesses fail within the first ten years. Facts like these can bring a lot of stress into a business owner’s life. Unfortunately, you may be so focused on doing everything you can to stay afloat that your stress levels keep rising until you feel out of control.
But don’t worry. You can take concrete steps today to reduce your stress as a business owner and get back to being yourself. Keep reading to learn more.
Know What’s Stressing You Out
In order to fix a problem, you first need to get specific about what it actually is. That’s why it’s important to begin by assessing what it is that’s actually stressing you out.
Maybe you’re worried about day-to-day operations. Or, perhaps you have anxiety about whether or not your business will succeed long term.
It’s good to sit down and list everything that stresses you out as a business owner. Then, armed with this list, you can start identifying the best opportunities that you have to take action and reduce your stress.
For example, if you’re worried about day-to-day operations, maybe hiring a new employee makes sense. Or, if you’re anxious about your company’s long-term future, perhaps putting together a concrete business plan with measurables that get you where you want to go in a step-by-step manner would be helpful.
Manage Your Risks
Many business owners spend their time worrying about worst-case scenarios like employee injuries, unexpected closures, and property damage.
These things happen, so it’s important to be prepared for them. But if you’re prepared for all of these situations with a good liability insurance plan, you won’t need to worry about them anymore.
That’s why getting business insurance is a great idea. It won’t just help you mitigate your business risks. It’ll also help you reduce the number of things you have to worry about throughout the week.
Give Yourself a Pat on the Back
It’s also worth taking a moment sometimes to appreciate the things that are working for your business. Doing so is a good way to balance out the stress with some positivity in your life.
Some research shows being positive helps reduce stress, and it’s a technique that’s at least worth trying as you work hard to mitigate stress as a business owner.
There’s a secondary benefit to this practice as well.
When you take time to appreciate the parts of your business that are working, you start identifying the traits that those things have. You might be able to apply some of these to other areas of the business to improve them and reduce your stress in the process.
For example, you might realize that you do a really good job of making your team feel like a family. There might be lessons in that, which could be applied to how you market your business to customers.
Learn How to Delegate and Say No
Many business owners try to do it all themselves. It’s good to be productive and do as much as possible throughout the day, but at a certain point, you have to ask yourself whether you’re stretched too thin to be effective.
That’s why important to both learn how to delegate responsibilities to other team members and say no when necessary.
For example, you might get invited to local business owner meetings after-hours during the week. If you’ve just had an extremely stressful day, there’s no shame in not going to those types of meetings, even if you might get some benefit from doing so.
It’s also important to remember that you hired your employees for a reason. They’re more than capable and can help you take care of many of your responsibilities. Use them as much as you can, and you could see your stress levels start to drop significantly as they assume more of your responsibilities.
Schedule Downtime
It’s also a good practice to get into the habit of scheduling some breaks for yourself. Those can be during the day and at different times of the year.
For example, you might commit to quitting work for the day at a certain time each evening. You might also commit to giving yourself at least a few days off several times throughout the year.
Having breaks like this can help you recharge and feel less stressed when you get back to work.
Pay Closer Attention to Your Emotions
Finally, try to pay closer attention to your emotions throughout the day. Notice when you feel most stressed and what you’re doing when those feelings emerge.
If you bring this type of awareness to your stress, it will be much easier to identify and resolve your triggers so that they can’t continue impeding your life as a business owner moving forward.
