Causes, Consequences, and Resolution of Stress- Stressed-Out Entrepreneurs

 

Hey, everybody. Today I want to talk about the stressed-out entrepreneur. The reason I put that together is that if you are an entrepreneur, you have had stress in your life, or you may be going through stress. We joke around how every entrepreneur gets a bowl of crap when they walk into their office, and they have to eat when they start the day! That’s a joke.

Being an entrepreneur is fulfilling. It’s exciting. It’s awesome and rewarding. I believe the best expression of who you are is the business you create and run. It’s like an art. It’s how you create something that will outlast you and continue to serve after you’re gone. It’s a worthy endeavor. Besides all of the economy, most of it is based on small business. Small businesses should do well if we want the economy to do well.

What Causes Stress in Entrepreneurs

Unfortunately, we all get stressed out. When I say that, you know what I mean. You’ve got to deal with management and legal issues, hiring, firing, and budgeting. Plus, you got cash flow projections. You’ve got marketing, sales and management, and operations. You gotta be thinking about how do I scale the business and product development and research. You probably get stressed listening to this. I’m a business owner, and I can tell you that will stress you out. So you go, “Okay, so what does that have to do with my business?”

I want to tell you that if you’re stressed out, worried about things, and concerned about things, you’re going to lose two essential things. One is logical thinking, and the other is creativity. I think as a business owner, you’re going to need those things. Would you agree? Logical thinking and creativity.

How Stress Affects Your Health?

So how do we improve logical thinking? Let me tell you how you lose it. The minute you’re stressed, your body goes into fight or flight. Fight or flight means your pupils dilate, and blood leaves your face. That’s why people get scared and pale. You look like you just saw a ghost, right? They gasp and hold their breath. They don’t breathe properly. The oxygen levels get affected, adrenaline gets released, heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up, cortisol goes up, and cholesterol goes up in your body. If you have high cholesterol, then this is a recipe for disaster. High blood pressure, high pulse rate, high cholesterol- your digestion will stop. That’s why athletes who are about to run a race throw up because there’s no digestion when you’re in fight or flight.

Also, people with chronic stress are always constipated. Their digestion slows down, and the immune system shuts down as well. That’s why people who are under a lot of stress get sick a lot. You look at college students. They take their final exams, and the next day they have a sinus infection. Their summer vacation is supposed to start, and they’re sick. For business owners, your kids are ready to go on vacation. You try to do twice the work you do the week before to get ready, so you can go on vacation. You know that bowl of crap is going to be waiting for you when you get back. You’re going to have a lot of work to deal with when you get back.

So you do all this extra work. You sleep less, you work harder and longer. You put more energy and effort into your business the week before you go on vacation. You get to vacation, and if your ability to handle the stress wasn’t high enough, you get sick. The immune system and digestion shut down.

What is Neocortex?

The biggest thing I want you to remember that shuts down is the Neocortex. It is the part of the brain that does all the critical thinking. All that logical thinking the problem solving happens in the Neocortex. The minute your body enters fight or flight, you’re ready to go fight someone or run away. The blood leaves the Neocortex and goes to the primitive centers of your brain—the part of the brain that worries about food, fighting, running away, and sex. So, you can’t think right.

Imagine there is a student who is about to take a final exam. This final exam is an exam that their life depends on, their future depends on. Their ability to get into grad school depends on this. For the job that they really dream about, they have to pass a test. If you’re in the financial world, it’s your series six or series seven or your CPA test.

Did you have something big? Or the MCAT, they get into medical school. It’s a big test.

You’ve been studying for days and stayed up all night studying. You’re stressed, worried about your test. But you’ve been studying. So you’re ready.

You’re walking into the classroom, and as you step into the room where the test is, you trip. You don’t fall, but you almost fall. Your heart kind of races when you almost fall. You do that, gasp, “Oh my gosh, my life just flashed before my eyes.” If you’re ever going up and downstairs, you trip. You’re like, “Oh, man! I almost felt it. That it was scary.”

Consequences of Stress

Well, look, they were already in stress. They were already in fight or flight. Suddenly, they shoot far into that fight or flight and forget everything they studied. All of a sudden, they don’t know what they want to say. It’s like the person has to get up on stage to speak. They’ve prepared their speech, memorized it, and they know what they’re going to say. They get up on stage, realize there’s a crowd that is watching, and they get nervous. They forget their speech. They didn’t really forget it. It’s because blood left the Neocortex and went to the primitive centers of the brain.

As a business owner, are there times where you have to make important decisions? Are there times where you have to be logical? Are there times you have to solve problems? You’re also stressed because you’re worried about finances. If that customer doesn’t pay, I can’t pay the vendor, and now we’re in trouble. We have to go deep into our line of credit. Oh, the line is max already. Where are we going to get the money? How are we going to meet payroll this month? Those are stresses.

I’ve been there. I know what it feels like. They will shoot you into fight or flight. But you can’t get there because you won’t be able to think logically. You will not be able to solve your problems properly, that’s number one. Number two, you need to be creative as a business owner.

This is the world of disruptions. Right now, every industry needs to be disrupted. Disruption means you come up with what Steve Jobs did with the iPhone, right? Disrupts the industry, Changes it completely. Everything we thought about cell phones all of a sudden disappears. You got a disrupter; that’s what’s going to grow unique to disrupt your industry. To come up with what needs to be disruptive, you need to be creative. When you’re stressed, you can’t be creative.

I do know one thing that improves creativity and reduces the stress response. When I tell you this, you’re going to say, “Oh, yeah, you’re just saying that because of who you are and what you do for a living.” Yeah, you guessed it, it’s chiropractic.

Chiropractic Adjustments Increases Creativity- The Study
But listen, forget that I’m a chiropractor and don’t even worry about coming to us as a patient. That’s not what I’m talking about. In fact, most of the people listening to this are in different parts of the world who don’t even know where my office is. But understand and realize. Studies have been done that say when the body is in fight or flight, sometimes an adjustment to the spine can balance your nervous system. It calms you down and brings you back to what we call rested repair, or the parasympathetic nervous system.

The study was done where they gave people a pencil and said, write down as many things as you can think of using this pencil for except writing and erasing. So it said aside from those what you can use it for, just to test creativity. They had all these people. I can use it as a hairpin. I can use it to poke a hole in something. I can use it as a weapon. I can think of whatever you can think of using a pencil for. They wrote a list.

Then the second group of people. They gave them an adjustment. They found an area in their spine that might have been restricted or misaligned and gave them the adjustment. After the adjustment, those people wrote a list, and creativity was like double. Double the creativity to the people who hadn’t been adjusted.

How to De-stress?

Stress can really mess with you. It can suppress and depress your ability to make money and grow your business. You have to find a way to de-stress. I’m going to do more videos about this specifically geared towards the stressed-out entrepreneur. If that’s you, make sure you follow us. Make sure you subscribe to the channel and share the video with other entrepreneurs because I want you to succeed. Why I want you to succeed is because I want to succeed. I want every entrepreneur to succeed because the tide will raise the economy, and we’ll all benefit from it.

This has been a crazy year. Everybody has been stressed out and worried. It’s counterproductive. It’s not going to solve your problems. It’s not going to serve you if you’re stressed out.

Remember, you’re going to forget things that you already know and think about. Let’s figure out a way. The first thing I want you to do is to find a good chiropractor near you. Get your spine analyzed, get it checked. If there’s a need for an adjustment, get that adjustment so you can improve your ability to handle stress and increase your creativity. It will also improve your immune system and digestion. It’ll improve your breathing and everything.

The last thing I want to tell you is just because your business is stressing you out, make sure you don’t take it out on your family. When you come home, forget about it. Be there for your family, love them, treat them.

There’s a book out there that says “Treat Me Like Your Customer.” It was written by the wife of an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur was really good to all his customers because he wanted the business. When he would bring stress home and be mean to his wife and his family. Treat your family like they’re your best customer. Wow them, impress them. Be there for them and show them love. Thanks for listening, and come back for the next video. I’ll talk to you soon.