Entrepreneurs and Mental Health: How to manage your mindset
Intro
If you are an entrepreneur, your mental health is more important than your profits.
It may seem like a bold statement, but let me give you a quick example of why that's the case.
Last year I purchased a coaching program to help us get more organic traffic to our website. The founder was crushing it! The business went from zero revenue to over 100k a month in less than 120 days.
They were onboarding multiple high-ticket clients each week. They were hiring new team members on an ongoing basis, and their numbers looked fantastic.
Then, suddenly, we stopped seeing the founder on our weekly calls. Finally, after a few weeks, he came back, but he was definitely not as involved as he was before.
And finally, he decided to step out altogether due to severe burnout.
I'm not writing this to complain about his product. In fact, we got amazing results from the service, and we would have recommended it to our network if he was still around.
I'm bringing this up to show you how important your mental health is.
Play the Long Game
The hustle mentality may get you to your first 7-figure venture. But it won't let you keep it. If your goal is to make money so you can take a few pictures with a Lambo, or spend a season in Dubai, go right ahead.
But if you want to build a sustainable system that will support you and your family financially for a lifetime, you must play the long game.
Most people understand the difference between running a marathon and sprinting for a 100 m race. So why can't they translate that wisdom into their everyday work habits?
Entrepreneurship Gets Glamourized
The primary reason is that the final fruits of entrepreneurship are flashy and attractive, and they are available to anyone willing to put in the work.
Couple that with phony social media content focused on immediate results instead of steady growth, and you can see why most people dive in with the wrong expectations.
The beauty of entrepreneurship is that it doesn't care about your age, gender, skin color, degrees (or lack thereof), or body size.
But that's also true for failure.
The markets don't care about how badly you want to win or how much money you have invested. So if your offer is not fit to survive, it'll get tossed to the side.
Unlike professional sports, there's no cap on how many people can earn millions in business.
And unlike the performing arts, you don't need to be outgoing, extremely talented, or good-looking to make the cut. No casting agent is gatekeeping you from success.
The promise of entrepreneurship is that you'll get rich as long as you provide an equal or greater amount of value to the market you're serving.
And since we live in the internet era, you can provide unlimited value right from your home.
"So you're telling me that I can become filthy rich, fairly fast, from my bed, without talking to people, AND without putting pants on? Sign me up!"
And so the struggle begins. On one end, everything seems so simple and linear, but on the other, there's always so much to do!
You start building your site; then you realize you need a funnel.
But what do you do with a funnel if you have no traffic? You better learn ads now!
And what about sales, video content, customer service, product fulfillment, graphics, social media management, podcasting, blogging, and SEO?
That's how the average entrepreneur gets into the mental health rabbit hole: "If I only work a bit harder, I'll start seeing results."
If you follow me, you probably heard me say at least once that "life is not a zero-sum game in the short term."
You must be willing to work for nothing. And you must endure countless failures.
Warren Buffet put it simply when he said, "No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time.
You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant."
Manage Expectations
If you are struggling with your mental health. The first step is to manage your expectation about what's supposed to happen.
Posting on social media daily for three months won't guarantee you thousands of followers.
Likewise, launching three new products on Amazon doesn't mean you'll hit the jackpot.
On the other hand, if you shift your focus from the results to the process, you'll finally start working to provide value to someone else. And that's where the magic happens.
You'll start working for the pleasure of doing so, and that alone will cause you to feel fulfilled.
I wake up every morning at 5:00 am and write, on average, 750 words per day.
I love waking up before everyone else, making a black coffee, and sitting at my desk with my laptop.
Of course, I also like when my posts go viral, and we get lots of organic traffic to our site, but those are just the final fruits of a very pleasant process.
Read this: Making Good Decisions: A foolproof system
Stay in the moment.
Another important thing you can do to avoid anxiety and stress is to stay in the moment.
The hard truth is that when you keep thinking about what you are supposed to do in the future, you are taking away focus and energy from what you are doing right now.
That doesn't mean that you should never think about the future. After all, who is going to do the planning and strategizing?
But that should be something that you do at a specific moment.
After that, you move on and start acting on the plan you made.
Think about swimmers! They are underwater most of the time and focus all their energy on the strokes.
Then, once in a while, they may look up to ensure they are on track and possibly adjust their course.
If you practice this skill, you'll find yourself thinking less and doing more, which is the recipe for getting ahead in life!
My coach Craig always says, "action beats anxiety!."
If you have time to ruminate and get lost in your head, you have time to refine your work or even practice self-care.
You'll still have some ups and downs, but you'll catch yourself much faster, and you will default to the present moment to cope with those uncomfortable feelings.
Learn how to distinguish what's in your control from what's not
Another big problem affecting entrepreneurs is that they try to take care of everything when they should only focus on those tasks they have control over.
Example
Let's say you just posted a Reel on Instagram and worked hard on the video, the caption, the hashtags, and the cover image.
But now that the Reel is live, you find yourself checking out the analytics every hour, even though you know the Reel is going to do its course.
At that point, checking the stats will not improve your performance, yet, you feel the need to get back on that page.
Instead, find out if there's anything else you can do to improve the results and do that!
For example, you could share the Reel with your network or start engaging with your audience so they will go to your page and engage with you.
Sometimes, though, there's nothing you can do about it, and you should just let go of the final result and move on to something more productive.
Conclusion
Entrepreneurship is not for everyone, but that doesn't mean that it needs to be a stressful experience for those that decide to embark on it.
Every second that goes by, you make a choice.
You play out different scenarios in your mind, and you stress yourself out about possible negative outcomes, or
you separate what's in your control from what's not, and you stay in the moment while working on it.
When you choose option two and couple that with the ability to manage your expectations, you will live your entrepreneurial journey with excitement and purpose.