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How to Process and keep in check complex emotions as a small business owner
“If you want to master your life, you have to learn to organize your feelings. By becoming aware of them, you can trace them back to the thought process that prompted them, and from there you can decide whether or not the idea is an actual threat or concern, or a fabrication of your reptilian mind just trying to keep you alive.”
― The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
There are so many successful business owners and entrepreneurs who show how successful they are. They are trying to sell you their formula and roadmap for success. Just do it, just set the goals, just show up, just do the hard work, stop procrastinating, just be happy, and earn 6 figures. Most of us fall for these formulas and roadmaps, because we want a simple answer for complex problems, we would like to have a quick fix, a magic formula without the pain of everyday complex work. We’re so afraid to feel lost, not knowing where to move, and not having all the answers right away. But the truth is that if you choose to carve your own authentic path in most cases you will be lost. And it’s totally OKAY!
The question is what will you do when you feel anxiety, stress, pressure, sadness, fear, grief, and rage in your everyday life when at the same time you try to build your business? Will you be able to respond to these emotions properly and move ahead despite them, or will you be lost in your thoughts, and feelings, feel stuck and paralyzed, and live in fear?
Will you learn to surf the waves when they appear? And they will appear, I can guarantee you that.
ALLOW THESE FEELINGS TO PASS THROUGH
You’re not supposed to feel happy all the time. You’re not supposed to be positive all the time. Your mental, and emotional psychological intelligence is determined not by being able to feel positive all the time, but by your possibility to process complex emotions of sadness, anxiety, fear or guilt.
When you don’t allow these emotions or think that something is wrong with you because you feel this way you get stuck on these emotions. You bury them inside of you, and everything becomes a trigger.
It’s okay to cry when something sad happens, it’s okay to feel lost and not know what your next step will be, it’s okay to feel angry when you see injustice, it’s okay to be afraid when you do something you have never done before, it’s okay fail and move on. It’s important to learn to respond properly to these feelings, instead of just reacting to them automatically.
Be aware of these emotions, allow them, and acknowledge that they are there and that they will be a part of your everyday life. But you can choose don’t be stuck on them and move forward.
TAKE EVERYTHING OUT OF YOUR HEAD
If you feel really stuck in your thoughts, feelings and fears try to talk to somebody about it. Often everything looks so much more complicated in our heads. It can be a good friend, a coach, a mental health specialist, or even you. You can journal about the way you feel, and talk your ideas out as if you were speaking with somebody else.
Often taking everything out of your head makes everything simpler, and helps to see the situation in a more objective way and move on, instead of being stuck on your emotions and thoughts for a long time. It can help you to cope with the resistance you feel inside as well.
TAKE THE TIME YOU NEED
You don’t need to have all the answers right away. Sometimes it’s a hard pillow to swallow as we want everything to work from the first time, fast, and get instant gratification. But growth and transformation happen in small steps. You expand your comfort zone and you need some time to get used to it.
Often if you rush changes, even if it’s positive changes, you are more likely to come back to where you started. We are human as beings who didn’t develop by searching for happiness, but by searching for comfort, a familiarity which helped us to survive as species.
If you desperately need instant gratification every single day, set a small simple goal to take action every single day. You will surprise when you will be in one year if you stick to it.
PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR TRIGGERS
When we are triggered by something we tend to feel sad and get defensive. Although, in many cases, triggers can be a very helpful tool that can help to improve our lives. Triggers are not random, often they are the signals that try to attract our attention to some part of our lives that need healing or progress.
So when something triggers you it’s a very bad idea to ignore it and just get upset. You just need to stop taking everything personally, dig deeper inside, uncover these issues, process them, learn from them, and adapt your behaviour for the future.
It will improve the quality of your everyday life a lot!
STOP TRYING TO AVOID DISCOMFORT
As I mentioned before when you try to grow, try to do things you have never done before, learn something you have never been taught before, and unlearn toxic behavioural patterns that were normal for you as a child you will feel discomfort.
Discomfort is not there to punish you, it’s just trying to show you that there is something more for you, that you deserve better, and that you are able to change. So instead of complaining that everything is hard and bad and that the world is trying to punish you, you can choose to listen, learn, and start changing your life.
The only thing that is preventing you from changing and living your dream life is your mind.
“We have to use our minds to practice discernment. We have to use our supreme intelligence to decide where we want to go, who we want to be, and then we have to allow our bodies to adjust over time. We cannot live being governed by how we feel. Our emotions are temporary and not always reflective of reality.”
― The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
THE PRESENT MOMENT IS EVERYTHING YOU HAVE
There is never a time when your life “isn’t this moment”.
If you feel depressed, you live in the past, if you feel anxious you live in the future. But what about the present? Do you do your best now with what you have? Or do you spend your days waiting for a perfect moment, worrying about tomorrow, and blaming yourself for the past?
Remember that your future will be determined by what do you TODAY, NOW, IN THIS MOMENT, but not by what you wish you could have done or by thinking about what you can do.
You don’t need to learn more, you don’t need to do more research, and you don’t need to have a degree, to be more professional. You’re already enough, and you have everything you need now at this moment to get you where you would like to be. Believe that you will be able to figure everything out on your way. But commit to taking action even if you feel lost, even if you don’t know where it leads you. Accept the fact that you will suck in the beginning, but the path is made by walking, not by thinking about it.
In several years when you look back, you will be surprised by the person you became.
PRACTICE MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION
It’s very easy to leave your mind wandering, to create the worst-case scenario in your head, and leave invasive thoughts to take over. It happens effortlessly, thoughts just appear, and you cannot know what you will think the next minute.
So let me remind you this – you’re not your thoughts, you are not your feelings. So the best thing that you can do for yourself is to stop identifying yourself with them and stop believing this annoying voice in your head that says that you’re not good enough and that you will never make it. This voice would like to keep you small, protect you, and make you safe and comfortable.
Although, nothing can be achieved if you search for comfort all the time. So every time you start to feel anxious and feel less of yourself, try to be mindful that you do it, recognize that it’s there, don’t resist, breathe, pay attention to the sensation in your body and choose to move on and stick to what you’re doing.
Always have a plan, and commit to taking action. It can baby steps forward, don’t push yourself too hard. Having a plan will help to keep your invasive thoughts at bay.
Meditation was a huge game-changer for me and my mental health in general. It’s a daily practice when you stop doing and instead start being. You take your time to see the moment as it is. You recognize that nothing needs to happen for this moment to be complete.
Meditation gives you the possibility to observe your thoughts and your feeling without judgment. You cannot stop waves (thoughts) from appearing, but you can learn to surf these waves.
Before you conquer yourself, you cannot conquer the world.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you would like to master your life, build a business you have already wanted, and run it with joy, you have to learn to organize, process, be aware of, and keep in check your feelings and thoughts. I would say that it’s one of the most important skills you will ever acquire if you want to have an extraordinary life.
Everybody speaks about how-to, tips and tricks, and things you need to do to build a business, but few people speak about who you need to become if you would like to make everything work, and the painful transformation you need to come through.
Following tips and tricks, following somebody’s else roadmap won’t help you to build the business of your dreams. Because if you are anxious, if you are overwhelmed if you procrastinate, search for perfection, hide, don’t take action, compare, pressure yourself too much, and then feel guilty because you are ”not successful enough”, or ”not as successful as somebody else” you will be stuck.
So commit to working on your mind at the same time you work on your business. It’s the most important thing that you will transform you, your life, your business.