This morning I woke up with a huge amount of anxiety but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. And Marc from my team has been on me about writing my Letter’s from Lindsey soooo, today, we are going to talk about anxiety. But not just an anxiety, the anxiety that you get when owning or managing a business. It is a different type of anxiety. It’s not like an employee who has their own set of worries:
- How do I make more money?
- Am I going to have a job if the economy goes through a downturn?
- What does my boss think of me?
- Am I doing a good job?
- Should I go find a different job?
No, instead of these worries, I have found that business leaders have anxiety of a different kind:
- Is there enough money in the bank for payroll this week?
- How am I going to keep paying these high salaries?
- If Sally Sue leaves, will we be ok?
- If I have to let people go, what does that mean for their family?
- Where is our next client coming from?
- How do I be a better leader?
- How do I get Billy Joe to actually do his job?
- What benefits do I offer? Do these people even care about these benefits or am I just spending money?
The list goes on and the worry/anxiety can sometimes be unsurmountable. Am I the only one that feels this way? Surely not.
As I work with business owners, the burden is heavy and the anxiety is usually high.
So how do we deal with this? What do you do?
I found a few antidotes:
- Get into a peer group. There are a lot of them out there. Vistage, YPO, EO, Convene. You can even get into an industry specific peer group.
- Getting into these groups will give you an outlet to show you that you aren’t special with your concerns and worries. You can learn from other business leaders on what they do, what they have failed at before, and how to dust your pants off when you fall and try again.
- Take your Clarity Breaks.
- This is crucial. As I work with leaders of organizations, the resounding excuses for not doing a clarity break is because they do not have enough time. Wake up call…you make time for what you think is important. And if you are not doing clarity breaks regularly, you are doing your business a disservice. Don’t know what a clarity break is? Shoot me one mail and I will send you some details.
- Exersize
- As I have gotten older, I have realized 2 things. I love to eat. And I love to eat a lot. If I don’t exercise in some capacity, then I will not appreciate the results. This past lent, I took on the practice of regular exercise and the benefits have not only been a healthy waist line, but also less anxiety. I have found that if I go more than 2 days without getting my heart rate up, then the anxiety comes over me like I have been hit by a freight train.
Now that you have a few of my antidotes, I am curious, how do you deal with business leadership anxiety? Do you worry about other things than what are in my list above? I would love to chat with you and compare notes. We can all learn from each other and I need a lot of help in this part of my life. I would love a bit of your time if you have it to give. Shoot me an email at: Lindsey@theitcrowd.com and we can get something on the books.
Until next time! 💜
