ESYB2 027 - Stress Management for Entrepreneurs
===

[00:00:00] Now let's talk about stress management for entrepreneurs because if you don't manage your stress correctly, the stress will get the better of you. Entrepreneurship is so hard over the long term. There are so many things that usually go wrong, are frustrating. If you don't manage stress, your stress can become chronic, long term, the bad kind of stress, and can hurt you.

in your decision making and in your health, which is horrible. So let's talk about how to actually use stress to benefit you. In order to do that, we have to understand the difference between good stress and bad stress. The bad stress, the stress that really is damaging, is long term persistent chronic stress.

This is stress that doesn't go away. Long term financial problems, long term relationship problems. Long term issues in your life that linger, where your body has no [00:01:00] break, and it's just constantly weighing on you, that's gonna have all sorts of bad effects. You want to get out of that stress. Now, on the other hand, there's good stress.

The short term stress. If you have stress for one day, a week, two weeks, a month, that's relatively short term. That has benefits. Under stress, your body releases adrenaline for energy, and your body, your brain focuses better. Why? Because your body is good at handling stress. Your body is made for handling stress.

Our ancestors have handled stress all the time. Don't worry about that. A little bit of stress. In fact, when they do brain scanning of people under stress, the brain scanning images of people under stress look a lot like the brain scans of people who are undergoing the emotion of excitement, exhilaration.

Why [00:02:00] is that? It's because the stress itself isn't bad. It's the amount of stress. Because think about your life without any stress and any challenges. It would be just boring. You need some stress to feel good, to feel alive, to feel challenged. So it's not the stress itself. It's the valence of this stress, which is a scientific term.

It means just how much stress there is. Because not enough stress, you're bored. A good amount of stress, you're nicely challenged and you're interested in your work. Too much stress and you feel overwhelmed. This is, this can be also in the short term. Now that you understand that, you need to find that sweet spot.

Don't put too much on your plate. Don't put too little on your plate. Manage how much of the short term stress you allow yourself to have. And anything that you have to get done that's overwhelming you, think of what you can put off for later, that's not procrastination, that's being [00:03:00] intelligent. So when you are using your body's natural stress response, more energy, better focus, very good, see that, you can use that stress response to do better work.

So how do you actually use that? One great way, an easy way, is to give yourself short deadlines within your longer project. And you might recognize this in something like Agile methodology, if you're familiar with that. Agile methodology is something that's used by software engineering teams and even marketing teams.

It's basically, let's say, you have a big project, you want to get somewhere in a year or two, and you have dozens and dozens and dozens of things to do to get there. And so you break those, break that year into sprints. Sprints are 2 4 week sprints. So, you work very intensely 2 4 weeks, [00:04:00] take a little break.

Very intense, work very intensely 2 4 weeks, take a little break, you see? And within those 2 4 weeks, you get, you create smaller subtasks, like Deadlines for today, deadlines for tomorrow, so that you're constantly not slacking. You know, when you have a deadline that's like a long time from now, you're going to put that thing off.

But if you have to do something now, today, and it has to get done, you're going to be a little bit more energized and a little bit more focused on it. That's exactly what we're channeling. Your body's natural, correct stress response that it likes. That you will feel good about your work. You will feel correctly challenged.

And so, that's the way to do it. Make a plan for your long term vision, break it up into 2 4 week sprints, and break those 2 4 week sprints into daily things you have to do. Even within the hour, what do you have to get done? Next hour, what do you [00:05:00] have to get done? You can get that intense with it. That's common, it's not unusual.

And that way, you'll have the short term stress, that's the good stress, and you're not going to have the overwhelm, because you'll know, okay, just, there's only so many things I can do now, some things I have to put off, and you'll manage the long term stress in a couple of ways. One is, With this way, you'll do better work and more work and so you'll naturally get through your work faster and you'll have a smaller to do list that's overwhelming you in the long term.

There will be few stressors and your business and your work will actually do better, meaning you'll actually have fewer stressors because the stressors typically are like, my business isn't working, so that will actually help you naturally get your business working and so that stress will melt away.

But also, through the time management, you'll only have a certain amount of work without overwhelm [00:06:00] through the time management. So this way, you're using your strength, your body's natural stress response, just the right way. You're, you're excited, your work is interesting and exciting you, it's the right amount of challenge, and you're not allowing yourself to experience the long term effect.

negative, the, the chronic stress, which is the chronic stress, that's the stress that leads to long term illness, weight gain, all the bad things you hear, that's from the chronic long term stress. So you also position you to avoid that. So that's how you use stress to grow your business and actually to have a better lifestyle.

