A little bit of stress can help you stay focused, energetic, and able to meet new challenges in the workplace. It’s what keeps you on your toes during a presentation or alert to preventing accidents or costly mistakes. In this blog, we’ve put together our top tips for managing stress when you’re a business owner.
The workplace can too often seem like an emotional roller coaster. Long hours, tight deadlines and ever-increasing demands can leave you feeling overwhelmed. When stress exceeds your ability to cope, it stops being helpful. It will start to cause damage to your mind and body, which in turn can affect your business.
If stress on the job is interfering with your work performance, health, or personal life, it’s time to take action. No matter what you do for a living, there are plenty of things you can do to reduce your overall stress levels and regain a sense of control.
Identify what’s going right
When building your business, it can be easy to focus on what is going wrong. You can become stressed when you’re looking at all the things that need more funding, are behind schedule or need to be fixed.
You can improve on the way you deal with stress by reminding yourself of all the good points about your business. Listing your accomplishments and all the things that you’ve achieved so far in your business will increase positivity. Even the smallest of accomplishments should be listed. Make sure you put this list in a place where you can see it, that way, when you become stressed, you can look at your list. Always remember to take a moment to remind yourself of all the things that have gone right.
Look at what’s going wrong
You need to identify what needs to be improved within your business. This could be that you need funding to move forward or that you need to outsource tasks to free up your time. It’s important to look at the negatives so that you can turn them into positives.
So it’s not so overwhelming, pick out a few things that cause you stress and deal with them in bitesize chunks. This way the task doesn’t seem so overwhelming and can be easily managed. Dealing with one problem at a time will cause less stress to you and your business.
Delegate
This is not an easy one, but if you can delegate it will make life easier for you. As a business owner, starting with just yourself, it can be hard to let go of certain tasks. But this is why you hired staff! Delegating everyday tasks to your staff frees up your time to concentrate on moving the business forward.
Outsourcing tasks could be another option. If you’re struggling with your marketing or keeping up with social media. Hiring an expert in marketing or social media can help grow your business and take the stress off your shoulders. Letting you get on with the important things.
Learn to say no
When you start your business, you may not have the luxury of opportunities flying through the door, so you say yes to everything. Although as time goes on you can focus on the opportunity and ask yourself ‘Will this help me get there?’. You can then make an informed decision about whether to say yes or no.
Saying no can be really tough. It’s important to remember your value and that you have limited time. Don’t think you might offend the other person. You can showcase to that person that when you decide to do something, you value what you are doing and you’re doing it on your terms.
Also, saying no is key to setting boundaries. When you don’t set boundaries you end up feeling taken advantage of, burned out and stressed. You can end up as a people pleaser which in turn can create more than you have time for.
Take breaks and time off
Managing stress when you’re a business owner can be tough at times. You can get bogged down, work 24/7 and end up taking no time for yourself. It’s important to take time out for yourself to recharge. Even something as simple as blocking days out in your diary to make sure you take that well earned time off.
Stepping away to recharge can often lead to better business planning and put things into perspective. After all, if you look after yourself, you can look after your business. Even something as simple as taking a lunch break, going for a walk or meeting a friend can all help clear your mind.
If you need help to prioritise your tasks or you need to outsource your accounts/tax give us a call.