You thought passion, hard work and business acumen would be enough to carry you through your journey as an exceptional, successful business owner. 

What you didn’t realise was the toll that the mental and physical stress of running your own business, the constant juggling, multi-tasking, managing staff and keeping your family happy would have on your well-being. You are worn out. Your passion has dimmed. You struggle to see the wood for the trees. 

You are heading for a crash if you do not take measures to get on top of the sleepless night, lack of energy, depression, anxiety and panic attacks and feeling stuck on life’s treadmill.

So, what’s actually going on? 

1 You’ve lost the awareness and control of your physical body

After working long hours for years, you don’t seem to have enough energy to keep you going. You need coffee to kickstart the morning and a few more cups to get through the afternoon dip. You grab quick bites to eat when you rush to the next appointment. How you’ve been living your life has led to overweight, poor sleep and a lack of energy. You seem to have become sluggish, less efficient, and are spending more time at work and fewer hours with your family. 

Take care of your body as if you are taking care of your business

You simply need to take care of your body as you’ve been taking care of your business. You studied how your business works, set out a plan, monitor the resource input and evaluate the outcomes. But you’ve never studied how your body works. It is simple to correct the imbalance once you collect the “data”, you can make good decisions about what changes need to occur. Data can include you’ve been feeding your mental, physical and emotional body, such as food, drink, exercise, “Me Time”, watching and reading feeds media, your thoughts, your conversations with others and yourself, emotions experienced throughout the day.

Lilian came to see me about poor sleep and lack of energy. She was not rested and would wake up feeling tired and couldn’t function. She often felt more tired after lunch and couldn’t focus. 

I suggested that she keep track of her daily habits for 7 days. When we analysed her record, she realised just how much things had changed gradually down a slippery slope.  I helped Lilian see that her body has a way of memorising her habits by establishing neurological connections.  This is to make it easier for her to carry out some of the routine tasks without putting much conscious thought or effort into it. She thought she was doing something “temporarily”, but once it was longer than 90 days, her body already memorised it. She then fall into an automatic unconscious pattern. 

The solution for Lillian was simple. By the end of the first week, for Lilian it was clear that from the data she collected, what her destructive habitual pattern was.  She then made a few changes and now she’s back on track with the level of energy required for her to run her business and take care of her family.

She says: “My sleep issues were affecting my energy and performance terribly, as I did not wake up refreshed and it used to take some time to kick off in the mornings. Now that I am able to fall asleep easily, I feel better in the mornings with clarity and focus, and therefore I am able to get more things done.”  

She has been more present with her staff and listens with full attention to their complaints and deals with any issues in their infancy head-on before they become major problems and have financial implications. She is working more effectively and efficiently, which means that she can finish work at a reasonable hour and have time to relax before another busy day. 

Enthusiasm alone is insufficient to sustain your energy levels for staying in the game. You also need to look after yourself in the same way that you look after your business. 

2 You allowed your emotional body to take over and head for a meltdown

Many business women are juggling work and family with endless demands on them from their family relationships to business concerns such as the cash flow, staff issues and unsurmountable challenges, which can lead to stress and, if untreated, could lead to mental, emotional and physical meltdown. 

How to interrupt the old thinking-feeling runway and refocus

When presented with a stressor, you need to learn to step away from your first impulse. You need to let the body’s “Danger alert” feeling pass to make the right call, based on a calm view of all the data. In short, you need to learn the ‘Power of Pause’.

Victoria runs a Chinese restaurant. She has had outbursts of emotion while at work. She would get agitated if something was moved to a different place in the kitchen. She has become more rigid and difficult to work with, causing high staff turnover and increased recruitment budget. She felt overwhelmed, and struggled to solve all the challenges facing her. She felt like she was losing control and was powerless.

I explained to Victoria that she needs to count to 5 when she finds herself in a stressful situation. She can interrupt this with a single word, such as ‘Pause’.  This will give her time to recollect her thoughts and re-focus on what outcome she really wants from the situation. This will also interrupt the automatic reactive response and give her the answers she needs from a higher perspective. 

After 4 weeks of working on the Power of Pause, Victoria has stopped her self-destructive reactive response.  She’s able to focus on the ultimate outcome she wants, such as keeping an executive chef who wants to continue working in her restaurant, which has made savings on recurring recruitment costs. The actions she’s taking, the words she’s chosen to speak demonstrate small steps in the right direction and giving her the outcome she wants.

Furthermore, with the renewed meaning to why she’s running her business, which is to raise the population’s awareness of nutrition through good food, she manages the same number of responsibilities and challenges with a much calmer demeanour.  She now makes decisions without her emotions. She can prioritise better and is able to set boundaries when there are occasions when she needs to say no. 

In order to make good quality business decisions and have sustainable progress, female business owners must take care of their mental and emotional wellbeing in order to stay in the game. They must learn to master their emotion body in stressful situations and make business decisions without emotion.  They simply need to apply the “Power of Pause” by shifting their focus on where they want to go, seeking what’s within their control and taking conscious action towards the right direction. 

3 You were so caught up in the day-to-day running of the business and failed to innovate.

Many female business owners work hard in their business for years, surround themselves with detailed mundane day-to-day management. Since they are too close to their business, it gets harder to see the wood for the trees. They become tired, worn down, overwhelmed and struggle to come up with fresh, out-of-the-box ideas, take their business in a new direction or find ways to work more on their business.

An easy but effective way to clear space in your mind for new ideas is to clear space in your environment. 

Our environment influences how we think and feel. A cluttered space often reflects a cluttered mind. A great example is Beverley. She tried various things in her business for the past 10 years without a breakthrough.  She felt she had no idea where to take her business next. She would be reaching 55 on her next birthday and was feeling that this might be her last opportunity before retirement. The business she had run for the past 30 years provided some comfort, a good living and private school education for the kids. However, she didn’t want to settle just for a good life. She wanted to expand and to live an extraordinary life.

What soon became transparent following our working together was that her office was very cluttered with the accumulated paperwork of 30 years. I suggested that this was weighing down on her and making it difficult for her to think about the future. I recommended that she did an extensive declutter of her office space and archive everything that no longer related to her present situation. I also suggested that she make some simple changes to her office environment, painting the walls a calming shade of green, moving her desk slightly away from the window, sitting facing inwards towards the entrance of the office and adding some indoor plants.

After she put my suggestions in place, she said she immediately felt differently. She felt a new type of energy she hadn’t felt in years in work environment that allowed her mind to think more freely and clearly, and come up with solutions that she hadn’t dreamed about. 

She immediately saw and took advantage of an opportunity that was right there within two months that has enabled her company to expand into 3 different countries in Europe and Asia with international representation. Little tweaks have given her the leverage to expand her business to a larger scale for the first time in 30 years. She said: “It all makes perfect sense now. Thanks for the wonderful insight.” 

It may just be a coincidence that Beverley could see a new way to take her business to the next level once she’d cleared her environment. However, there is much anecdotal evidence that changing your environment can have a positive effect on your mood and performance. Even large corporations such as Nike, Intel and Coca-Cola use Feng Shui principles to enhance their office environments to boost wellbeing and hence productivity.

This is why when I meet a person in business reporting that their ideas don’t come to them as easily or clearly as they once did, I often highlight the fact of their mental block could be caused by their cluttered environment. Check out your office space, get things cleared up. I would expect that you get the result too. Our environment is a reflection of who we are. If we want the mental space to think clearly and come up with new, innovative ideas, we need to create an environment to allow balance, harmony and flow.  

[Conclusion] 

At the beginning of your business journey, everyone feels the passion and the drive. However, over time, enthusiasm and business skills alone are insufficient to take your business to the next level and to sustain you on your enduring business journey.

You need to take care of your mental, physical and emotional body in the same way as you would take care of your business. You can develop a constructive routine that supports your business growth, and assists you to stay focused on your business goals and to make razor sharp decisions that leads to a great return on your invested capital, happy staff, increased revenue and cash flow.  

I am passionate about helping female business owners go through this phase of their life. If you like a bit of customised advice on how to revitalise your business or yourself within it, just schedule a 30-minute zoom call so that I get to understand your unique situation better.