10 Stress-Relieving Tips for Entrepreneurs

The term entrepreneur is falsely assumed to mean luxury, fast cars, or designer clothes; however, that is far from reality. In fact, an entrepreneur’s life is full of sacrifices and defined by long working hours, hard work, and stress in order to achieve their goals.

The journey of running a successful business is tough, and the owner has to encounter some challenges that cause anxiety and stress. An entrepreneur is responsible for their daily routine, failures, and missteps that they encounter along their way. Some factors, unfortunately, beyond their control and can break their business. So it’s vital for entrepreneurs to acquire stress management to help them manage stress and push their business forward.

Therefore, the article will review stress-relieving tips that can help you turn your tension into positive energy. The insight will help you avoid ugly symptoms of stress.

What is Stress?

Stress is a mental or emotional strain that you get when you are in a demanding situation or when things become challenging. That tension can be frustrating, especially when you have to deal with upset customers, delayed deliveries, or any other issue.

Entrepreneurs are more likely to get stressed compared to the general population and more likely to adopt addictive behaviors. They also exhibit ugly symptoms when they get stressed such as weight changes, poor sleep habits, as well as health issues, among others.

Entrepreneurs don’t have to make themselves miserable in order to be successful. So as a business owner, the first step towards maintaining mental and physical health and keeping the anxiety away is to work on the source of the pressure.

So is your stress originating from your habits and attitudes towards success? Are you putting off deadlines or procrastinating? Or are your other personal obligations adding to your stress levels? This will be discussed more in the next subtitle.

The next step after identifying the source of your stress is to look for effective ways to recharge or get reinvigorated. Here are 10 stress management tips that an entrepreneur can successfully use to keep anxiety and burnout away.

Tips for Managing Entrepreneurial Stress

Identify What is Stressing You

What is the actual source of your stress? Is it tight deadlines, the struggle to find products to sell on your online shop, raise capital, manage investors’ expectations, build a talented team, or delay in landing the first sale for your new startup business?

So identify your source of stress, and break it down because unmanageable task looks simpler when broken down into smaller segments.

Next, list down how you plan to successfully tackle each issue or how you can achieve that success that seems unattainable. Continue doing the same until you cover all the issues listed down.

It’s much easier to tackle and manage smaller problems than vice versa.

Maintain a Good Exercise Routine

Exercise is rated as one of the best tactics for managing stress. That means you should exercise multiple times each week and stay consistent. So dedicate specific mornings or evenings to workouts. Still, you can engage in team sports from local sports clubs near you. But what option you opt for should be something that you love doing because you cannot find success in an activity you dread.

While hitting the gym can offer you huge health benefits and help you start your day feeling fresh and relaxed, some entrepreneurs complain that they don’t have much time to spend doing exercises. However, they can select an activity that is not demanding, such as yoga.

Actually, yoga has several health benefits than you might think. For instance, hitting the mat regularly can lower your blood pressure and heart rate, reduce stress and anxiety levels, and more.

Remember, you don’t have to be a yoga expert to enjoy these benefits. In fact, you can check out tutorials on YouTube or join a beginner’s class.

Take a Break

Starting a day with a long list of tasks can cause anxiety and stress. It might even force you to complete them as fast as possible, which might cause fatigue.

One technique of handling such a stressful situation is to take a break. Rest as much as you can before going back to continue with the tasks. This will help you clear your mind because a stressed person feels overwhelmed. So after the break, you will be more likely to complete the tasks faster than you planned or imagined.

So don’t view taking a book and cup of coffee, tuning into a podcast, walking a dog, or even conuming CBD treats from soemwhere like 25 Hour Farms as counterproductive. Just step away, and recalibrate.

You can also reach out to your friends and family and discuss how you’re feeling. This is powerful because some of them have been there, and so they understand what you’re going through.

Watch What You Eat

Your diet has a huge impact on your overall health, and it’s one thing that the majority of stressed entrepreneurs let slip.

Very early or late meetings can cause skip your breakfast or rely on fast food and delivery options that only supply junk food instead of a healthy, balanced diet.

As mentioned earlier, an entrepreneur’s life is defined by long working hours and hard work, and so you need a lot of energy, but where else can you get it if not from eating healthy food.

Think of your body as an expensive car. Would you buy cheap fuel from dingy places for your Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Range Rover, Mercedes, or Porsche? So, if you can’t do that to a car, what about your body? Watch out for what you eat, and better not be cheap, unhealthy food, or skipping meals because of meetings or tasks.

Get Adequate Sleep

Business leaders have a tendency to work late because of their huge workload or covering irrational people who are less focused on the company mission. The fear of letting down other people can force business owners to spend evening hours completing tasks or researching how they will handle certain issues the following morning rather than sleeping. Sadly such dedication can only help you achieve short-term goals; however, you want to build your business for the long term.

Getting adequate sleep is the only remedy to long-term success. Sleep helps your body and mind recovery from the day’s beating and gives you the energy for the next day. This is especially true when coupled with a healthy diet.

Switching off your devices and getting in bed early in the night will help you get high-quality sleep. It will also help you wake up early, get time to go to the gym, eat your breakfast, and arrive in the office early and feel relaxed.

Get an Engaging Hobby

Getting out of that office is a wonderful way of giving your mind a break. However, stepping outside to do something you love, such as engaging in a hobby, will absorb your attention.

Imagine what recess did to you when you were young; that is precisely what a hobby will do during a busy week. This is an opportunity to play, have fun, or a lighthearted moment. It’s a chance to engage with other people outside work.

Some hobbies include cycling, kayaking, fishing, swimming, hiking, painting, playing golf, taking dance lessons, learning a new language, cooking classes, or yoga classes.

Delegate What You Can

Invest in your staff so that they can help handle certain tasks. Your work as a business owner is to concentrate on huge tasks and the bigger picture but simple tasks.

You will achieve that when you hire exceptional members of your staff and pay them well. Hiring an average talent to reduce cost will keep you doing most of the work because you’re not comfortable with their abilities.

Further, allow the talents to do the work you hired them for instead of micromanaging every detail, which will cause you to spread yourself too thin in your business. This will help your team to be creative and innovative. You will be surprised their approach to certain problems is entirely different from yours, which can save you some money and time.

Additionally, the extra time you get after subtracting time-consuming tasks from your plate helps you focus on important things or engage in a hobby which is crucial in stress management.

Set Boundaries

Start your day or week with a list of everything that you need to do and prioritize them based on their importance. Next, list those tasks that you can delegate and those that you can postpone because although they should be done, they are less important or not urgent. You will realize that the to-do list that was long and stressful comprises even tasks that are not very serious or urgent.

Still, you can have a not-to-do list. These are tasks that you can say NO to them. Set a rule where you can say NO to jobs and even customers.

Take a lesson from Warren Buffet, who said, “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say NO to almost everything.”

Such a guiding principle will help you stop worrying about everything, even if you’re an entrepreneur. The set of rules will help you establish boundaries that will help you handle different responsibilities, such as those that concern your health, finances, family, and business.

Still, it will help you accept tasks that you can handle at a given time, put yourself first and have some extra time to cook a nice meal for yourself or interact with your family and friend, which are excellent stress management tactics.

Connect With Other Entrepreneurs

Connecting with link-minded people helps you vent about the issue and get helpful feedback because they are in a similar situation or that they encountered and overcame such a problem earlier.

Knowing that you’re not alone helps you put things into perspective. Such business leaders can also offer support in the form of mentorship or coaching, thus allowing you to see the bigger picture. Further, a good mentor will provide the empathy and validation that you need when you feel overwhelmed. Also, the support group will push you to the next level instead of letting you handle the stressful situations alone.

Avoid Taking Loans from Family and Friends

Actualizing an idea requires time, skills, money, and more. So you need capital to start and grow your business. The source of this capital can be your savings, bank loan, investor, or borrowing from family and friends.

Already running a business is stressful and adding the worry of leaving your family and friends broke when the business venture failures can be overwhelming.

On the other hand, some family members may complain about the stake in the company you gave them, especially when the business succeeds. That means they will want a bigger share in that success while others may want their money back, and it might not be readily available, which can cause strain in the family.

If possible, avoid taking loans from family or friends because this can be problematic and stressful. Yet, you need them when you get overwhelmed with worries and anxiety, as discussed above.

Getting an external investor or bank loan if you can provide an asset as security can be less problematic when the business fails than when the loan is from a family member.

Conclusion

The article has given you 10 stress-relieving tips that you can use as an entrepreneur. The bottom line is to avoid doing it all by yourself because that is what is contributing to your stress.

Therefore don’t make yourself miserable in order to be branded successful. Instead, identify what stresses you, exercise, take a break, eat healthily, get enough sleep, engage in a hobby, delegate, set boundaries, step outside and connect with like-minded business leaders and avoid unnecessary loans from your family and friends.

Your to-do list for each day should be realistic and well-balanced. That means avoid anything that is not important for that day and engage your team in running the business. You can’t succeed alone, and also it is an excellent stress management tactic.