11 Activities for Managing Your Stress
Stress is a part of business
Small business ownership can often be a challenging experience.
The pressure of self-driven motivation, balancing leadership and multiple roles, delegating tasks for optimal performance, and sacrificing your time and stability to grow a vision can be enough to overfill anyone’s capacity.
In April, Stress Awareness month reminds us to examine our stress and its impact on our well-being. Since stress is a built-in part of small business growth, stress management should be a built-in part of small business ownership.
Stress management habits, and stress evaluation if applied correctly can save you and your business. The following is a list of ideas to use in your life on a regular basis to keep stress at bay.
- Find/make space and be creative in it
- Spend time in the quiet, only focus on steady breathing
- Budget and understand your finances better if financial stress is constant
- Walk/kickbox/dance/air drums…whatever, just move around how you can!
- Listen and talk with a friend
- Read a book in the sun (wear sunscreen!)
- Do a small house project making an inspiring space for your Daily Grind or your Time to Unwind.
- Make a list of your stressors –if you can take anything off your plate, do it.
- Take a community class to learn a new skill or refreshes a familiar one
- Watch/listen to calming videos/audios (maybe with a bubble bath or on a massage table?)
- Read or watch something that makes you laugh
What does stress look like?
Stress can be a nasty thing. From wrecking performance and affecting your mood there is plenty of damage that can be done if you leave it unchecked.
A constant surge of stress hormones can lead to bodily harm in the form of:
- Sleeplessness
- Muscle/body aches and pains
- Declined immunity
- Digestive issues
- Difficulty concentrating
- Energy deficiency
- Low self-esteem
Too many creative minds and dedicated impact-makers experience these on a regular or semi-regular basis. If you count yourself among them, then take a step back and identify the source.
Doing so can save you from that stress compounding and you from risking everything you work to maintain.
Stress is a built-in part of small business growth, stress management should be a built-in part of small business ownership.
-Max Paine
Don’t make excuses – prioritize stress management
Sometimes little can be done without medical help or therapy intervention in stressful life situations like illness or grief. In these cases you should prioritize your health as much as possible.
However, many of the business owners I speak with attribute their stress to work-life imbalance and inability to spread financial resources effectively. Both issues may take a while to sort out, but you can start on correcting them right away.
In our “hustle till you drop” culture, it can be easy to attribute a filled up calendar with success. But making a schedule that makes no time for your well-being is like sitting on the edge of a high branch while you saw at the base; it’s not going to work out so well for you in the end when you’ve got to climb back up with broken bones.
If there are high-stress situations in the near distance, be ready by starting these stress management habits in your daily practice.
What is your favorite way to keep stress from unraveling you? Let us know in the comments!