I love entrepreneurship. The flexibility. Doing what you love. Being in control of your destiny (if you will).
But I also understand how difficult and draining it can be.
Just the other day I was talking with a business coach when they told me they had had a heavy week. “It seems like every single one of my clients are having a hard time and are stressed out right now,” they said. Which led us to an interesting conversation around what’s happening in the business world and how this coach and their clients aren’t alone.
Being a patterns guy, I’m seeing the same theme of suffering across the board.
And it’s one that I talk to my own clients about all the time:
Stressing about the stress around money.
You have probably experienced this too — stressing about having the money in May to pay the bills in August.
And when you don’t, feeling like maybe it’s time to give up, close down, and throw the towel in.
As business owners, it can be super easy to fall into this cycle. We’re constantly looking at cash flow and projecting where we’ll be in the next 6, 9 or 12 months (and even more).
Only most of us don’t usually have that in our bank account today.
And when we don’t, our brain starts trying to figure out how to make TODAY’S money stretch that 6, 9, or 12 months (and beyond).
This type of unconscious fear-forecasting is dangerous, triggering emotions around money that can be terrifying, debilitating and, most importantly, not helpful.
Because they paralyze the very efforts we might take to create the outcomes we are looking for down the road.
Here is a truth not many in business coaching are willing to own:
When we focus too much on the future, it limits what we are willing and capable of doing right now.
Take sports, for example. (I love ice hockey and have been playing as a defenseman since I was 14).
For me to keep the other team from scoring, I have to focus on my next shift on the ice. I can’t be worried about how I’m going to play in the 3rd period when we’re only halfway through the 1st.
Same goes in our business. Creating extra stress around what will or won’t happen months down the road will never help us achieve the results we’re going after. Instead, it causes us to make mistakes and choices that don’t align with the end goal.
If we are going to not just keep our doors open but HAVE JOY in our businesses as we leave legacy and impact…
We MUST trust the process and not deviate from it. We must focus on THIS period and not some future one that we think will determine the outcome of our game.
Less pivoting and more processing the emotion.
As we get good at doing that, we’ll stress less, make more money, and empower ourselves to show up and serve the way we want to serve.
