How to Manage Stress for Women Business Owners

Kris Plachy: It’s summer, you shouldn’t be stressed. It’s summer. Got stress, entrepreneur? Let’s talk about it. Here we go! Well, welcome. How are you? Are you stressed out? Why am I laughing? I’m not laughing at you. You know that I’m not laughing at you. I hope you know that I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because I feel like…What is that? Pot calling the kettle black? That old expression.

So I want to talk about stress today. I want to talk about all the different elements that go into talking about stress, because I think they’re very relevant to you, listener, those of you who are tuning in today, is that telling ourselves if we do feel stressed out that we shouldn’t, is I’m useful and unhelpful. And I think that we should be better at acknowledging what’s happening when we feel stressed, like, why is that happening? What’s going on for us? And then what can we do about it, instead of what I think a lot of us do is we just either suck it up, or we kind of let it own us.

No, I’m bringing this up, because legitimately, in a lot of our coaching calls recently, many of the women are bringing us challenges that they’re attributing a lot of stress to. There are many things happening in a lot of our lives that can contribute to that. And so I just want to tell some truth and sort of acknowledge and sort of maybe validate what you might be going through and tell you it’s going to be okay, even if it feels terrible right now, and what we can do, right?

So, stress, first of all, stress really comes from, from my perspective, being in resistance to the truth. So stress is a way that that our body and our brains respond and reply, I guess, to circumstances that we don’t want to deal with. And so stress for many of us, realizes itself presents itself differently, right, we all have a different way that we sort of experience it. So some of us might feel stress, and we withdraw, some of us feel stressed and we just work to the bone, some of us feel stress, and we eat, some of us feel stress, and we work out, some of us feel stressed, we drink bottles of wine, right?

I stand in no judgment of what happens when you feel stressed, because we all have our mechanisms that we have created, learned, sustained, and practiced for the better part of our adult lives. However, we have to, at some point, make a decision as a woman that we will either be in charge or not. We get to decide how we want to experience our circumstances. And so on the heels of this, just a couple of weeks ago, we actually put together a guide for overwhelmed entrepreneurs. It’s really short, because you’re overwhelmed, of like, “Oh, let’s create something that’s 100 pages long.” For somebody who’s overwhelmed, that’s not going to go over so well. But I really do think that I can help people, right? When you feel those moments of overwhelm, okay, like, how do you recenter? And how do you go forward? And how do you minimize the stress?

Because the more you indulge stress, whatever that behavior is, right? We feel stressed. So then we withdraw, we overwork we buffer with food, or alcohol or Netflix or shopping or whatever. And we don’t actually solve anything when we do that. And ultimately, when we’re in resistance to a circumstance that we don’t want, we have a lot of options. And I know you’ve heard me talk a lot about resistance, and resilience. And I think it’s honestly an unaddressed problem, and also an unaddressed skill that we need to teach. I think there’s a general assumption that human beings possess resilience.

And I know that we do because you can look at human beings over centuries, millennium. And we’re incredibly resilient as a species. But that doesn’t mean that circumstantially, we’ve all encountered sort of in our different generations, different experiences that have required different levels of ability to be resilient. And so, therefore, there’s a lot of people today who don’t possess that same level of resilience. And that isn’t a character flaw. It’s just that their lives haven’t been designed in a way that’s required.

And then there’s other people who, that’s all they have to do is be resilient. And they don’t even know it. They’re just living life. That’s why they found that some societies in some of the most impoverished parts of the world are actually the happiest, because they have such a different relationship with their life experience. So, I think we have to be really, really careful what we first qualify as being stressful and all those things. So let’s just break this apart a little bit.

As a woman who’s running a business, you have a lot of influx, a lot of things coming at you every day that you don’t have control over. So we have team things, we have client or customer things, we have product things, we have vendor things, we have facilities things. You name it, you put your things in a bucket, all of the potential areas of your business that will come to you. If you haven’t designed systems to address them, they come to you. And there is a truth that there is sort of a capacity for you, before you tip over in distress.

And for me, that is definitely true. And very, very true, as we get to a certain time of the day. I don’t function very well, after 2 o’clock every day. I’m completely unemployable. I say that a lot, I could not go back to a regular job, because I really can’t do much after about 2:30, my brain just doesn’t function very well. And I almost feel guilty, because I think that’s been that way. Even when I was working in a job-job, I think I kind of was very useless in the latter part of the day. And if I had to do more in that time of day, I was incredibly stressed about it, right? So I was in resistance to it, and I was arguing with it.

So there’s the business and all those pieces, and we have life, regardless of what your life looks like. You have kids, you have a partner, you have a house, you have a place to live, you have a car, you have family, you have parents, you have siblings, you have neighbors, you have friends of friends, of friends, you have things, you have people, you have lots of people in your life. And if you’re like most women I know, you’re kind of in the middle of it, you’re in the center of it. You have a lot of assumed responsibility, maybe assigned, that you took on passively. But you’re working through it. And same things happen.

We’ve been joking all week here around my life where you know, we had just had a bathroom flood, which turned into a ceiling flood, which now that’s all handled, but now we have to have the repair of the house part, which who’s responsible for that? I am, not because nobody else is taking responsibility, but because I want it to be a certain way. I’m honest with myself about that. I know what I want. But I didn’t ask for that. I didn’t plan for that. So I had the opportunity again, daily to sort of interact with that and the way that I choose.

And that’s just your business in your family. That’s just your business and the people in your life that doesn’t include yourself, the thoughts you think, the stories you tell yourself every day, the way you talk to yourself, the way you tell yourself the story of who you are. All of it is on all the time. And are you paying attention? Are you speaking to yourself as someone who loves you would? Or are you speaking to yourself as someone who’s disappointed in you would, frustrated with you, knows you’re capable of more?

That inner dialogue that you entertain, is really ultimately the source that we have to talk to. And that inner dialogue is either promoting your ability to be resilient and capable and to move through moments of things that happen that you didn’t expect or want. Or that inner dialogue is promoting your ineptitude, your lack of skill, and I don’t care who you are, we can always find it. We we could find that we are beautiful, we could find that we are ugly, we could find that we are loving, we could find that we are mean, we could find that we are generous, we could find that we are selfish, you could find either. But as you tell that story about who you are, I want you to look at what that does to how you feel emotionally and physically.

So we walk around through our lives with businesses and families and ourselves. And because what I know about most women who start businesses is you are no shrinking violet. You know how capable you are. You take on a lot. And so you find yourself, I’m sure like so many of my clients do, with issues like employees not showing up to work. Employees who you thought would last forever, moving. Babies are getting made. And then women have to go on pregnancy leave. We have people who don’t do their jobs. I’ve had a lot of clients just recently have people quit; lots of quitters. And I don’t mean quitters, like they’re giving up, but just people leaving, transitioning, want to do something new. And when it happens in a big bunch, it can feel so overwhelming and stressful. And so when we were watching, like, it’s just this cadence kind of happening in the world, right?

Even in my friendships, I’m noticing people just really, like, really? Come on, there’s got to be another…Like, really? So when all of that happens, I asked myself too, what do I want to do here? Do I want to assume a victim position to my life? Or do I want to assume an owner position to my life? And I can take on either pretty readily. And I do this for a living, but I can assume either very easily. But I know that when I use my lens of the owner of my life, I’m so much more productive, resolved, capable, quick, focused, committed, determined, frankly, happier.

Gary Vee says all the time, “The root of all happiness is absolute total and complete accountability.” That once we just assume responsibility and accountability for everything in our lives, our circumstances, our feelings, our relationships, if we just take full accountability for every place that we are in our life, and we no longer blame anything outside of our control, that is the secret to happiness, according to Gary Vee.

And I really, really believed him. Because as soon as I stepped into a victim role, “I can’t believe I have to deal with the bathroom. I can’t believe this happened to me. I can’t believe this happened in my relationship with so and so.” Then I start to get into victim and blame. And guess what, I have no authority, I have no control. As a woman who runs her own successful business, you are an owner, literally. But does your brain match that when it comes to unplanned unexpected moments, decisions and circumstances? So anywhere in your life that you’re looking at it and you’re saying, okay, here over here, I’m taking total responsibility and accountability over here. I would like to blame everybody and their brother for the problem. I’m willing to bet that’s where you feel the most powerless, and therefore, the most stressed, when you entertain that. That trigger that emotion, and maybe even that physical response.

So as we transition and if you saw the title of this said, you know, how to manage stress as an entrepreneur. My first recommendation is tell yourself the truth, focus on what is real, and not what you wish, either was or wasn’t. What do I mean by that? I wish I was this, I wish he was this. I wish they were this. Or I wish this hadn’t happened. I wish this wasn’t this way. I wish she wasn’t like that. Wherever you have that kind of language in your mind, you are provoking stress.

Instead, we say, here’s what happened. She said this. Sure, I really would have preferred she not say that, but she did. So here is what I will do. Here’s what happened: my bathroom flooded, I would really have preferred that didn’t happen, but it did. So here’s what I will do. And as soon as I step into accountability, and control and power and authority, I drop the story that makes me feel burdened, angry, resentful, and I focus instead on what I’m capable of. And I would invite you to ask yourself to do the same, because stress is kind of like mold on a piece of fruit.

So, you know when you… I just learned this, I’m 52 years old. I just learned this from my assistant just in the last year. I didn’t realize that if you put bananas next to avocados, it ripens avocados really fast and they die, they get bad really, really quickly. I didn’t realize that. And the same thing is true with fruit, right? If you have a piece of fruit that’s moldy and it’s next to more fruit, it will mold whatever it touches.

Yeah, that’s what I think about with stress. When you entertain thoughts that make you feel stressed. You are growing mold in your life experience, that stress then touches everything. It’s hard to see that you can be powerful and empowered, when you are telling yourself stories of weakness, helplessness, and powerlessness. I don’t think the two can coexist. And in the truth, in the facts of a circumstance, there is no story. It’s just the truth, this is what happened, I get to decide when I want to make it mean, I get to decide what I want to make it mean.

So if you’d like a little help—I know that there can be moments where this really does feel daunting. And you need just to be reminded, like, how do I step out of my own brain here, I’ve got a little guide here for you. I think I mentioned it, it is on our website, but you could go directly to it by going to <a href="http://www.krisplacy.com/overwhelmed">www.krisplacy.com/overwhelmed</a>, and you’ll have access to our very quick guide. And we’re also going to share little tips every day.

And again, my goal is to keep this short for you, because I know you don’t have a lot of capacity. We’re also going to share a video of me coaching a client through her own stress and overwhelm, so you can kind of see me go through those steps directly. But I hope that through this podcast, you’ve heard two things you’ve heard, first of all, that I understand and that you are not alone. And that it is normal and human to want to tap out like Naked and Afraid. Do you watch that show? They’re like, “Okay, that’s enough. I’m out. I want some clothes in a meal, some clothes and a dinner, and some bug bite cream.” It’s okay, little time on the couch. That’s fine.

But let’s tell ourselves the truth, though. It’s not all this that’s happening. It’s making you do that. It’s the way that you’re making it mean something in your brain. And then tomorrow, we’ll just decide that we’re going to choose to think about this a little differently. We’re going to choose to think about this as someone who loves you. We’re going to use words that a loving friend or family member would use to talk to you, and we’re going to talk to ourselves and say okay, so yeah, it happened and that sucks, but what are you going to do about it? What’s the next best step? How do we go forward from here? And we do that. And that’s where our attention and our energy goes. And that’s where the solutions are, okay? <a href="http://www.krisplacy.com/overwhelmed">www.krisplacy.com/overwhelmed</a>, head on over and get yourself your own little special guide. And thank you for tuning in today. I’ll talk to you again soon.
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