Stress and Anxiety Tips for Entrepreneurs

Being an entrepreneur brings its own type of stress. You’ll work long hours with little — or no — promise of a reward. Add financial worries and uncertainty, and it can become even more difficult to cope. If you’re suffering under the burden of anxiety, your business will likely suffer too. To increase your odds of success, learn how to better manage your stress.

Add exercise to your daily routine. Physical activity gets your endorphins going, lifting your mood. It stops the fight-or-flight response in its tracks. By exercising, you’ll reduce the physical damage that sustained anxiety does to your body. You’ll also boost your brain activity. A 2014 study from Stanford found that walking improved both divergent and convergent thinking.

Divergent thinking helps you to generate new, innovative ideas. Convergent thinking helps with problem-solving. If you’re in a difficult entrepreneurial position, getting some exercise could help you come up with a solution.

Try journaling. You don’t need to pour out your emotions, though venting can be helpful too. Instead, simply write down the current issues causing you stress. Writing it out gives you a high-level view of the situation. With distance, you’ll be more objective. Look at what you’ve written and make a plan to change what you can. If you can’t change something, practice acceptance.

Add mindfulness to your life. Whether it’s through yoga, walking, or meditation, mindfulness, these can all reduce stress. For more than a thousand years, people have meditated to find a state of calm. Mindfulness meditation is about being in the moment. You allow yourself to experience every thought, sensation, and breath. You then accept those thoughts and feelings without judgment. Experience it, let it go, then allow yourself to experience the next moment.

Various studies show that mindfulness fights anxiety, depression, and stress. It even strengthens the immune system and reduces pain. Since entrepreneurship often requires long hours of work, keeping your immune system strong is imperative.

Take better care of yourself. It might be tempting to fuel yourself up with coffee, skip sleep, and subsist on questionable food. However, lack of sleep impairs your cognitive processes. You won’t think as clearly when making important decisions. Sleepiness also makes it difficult to regulate emotions like anxiety. Prioritize your health.

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This article was originally published on HerrickLipton.net

The Relationship Benefits of Having Personal Power

According to a recent study performed on 181 couples between 18 and 73 years old, the secret to a happy relationship is when both partners have high levels of personal power. German researchers asked each couple questions, including their sexuality, fascination with each other, and trust to determine their relationship quality.

In addition, they asked the participants about their experiences with positional power and subjective power. Subjective power comes from one’s perception of themselves, whereas positional power comes from external measures, such as financial capabilities and educational achievements.

What Were the Findings?

The results determined that when a person’s sense of personal power was high, they were significantly more satisfied in a relationship. Catherine O’Brien, a therapist, added that power indicates that partners feel understood and also understand one another. Also, they both participate in decision-making.

Catherine also said that people with high personal power know their strengths, rarely seek approval and are self-sufficient, therefore building healthy relationships.

Usefulness and Limitations of the Study

The research provided limited results because of the broad range of the couples’ relationship timeline and their ages. For example, a month-old commitment and a 52-year one look different because the first one has less conflict. Also, the study focused on heterosexual couples hence the findings may be contrasting for more diverse couples.

According to Emily Altman, the CEO of The Couples Workshop, gay relationships get affected by factors such as gender roles, culture, and social environments. If the relationships survive and thrive even with social hurdles, the couples build resilience, hence personal power in the process.

Tiny daily choices, including what to eat for dinner and where could cause a power imbalance, leading to stress, so when couples support their partners in minor decisions, they develop a higher sense of personal power.

More ways to increase levels of personal power include:

• Healthy conflict resolution
• Being straightforward with one’s opinions and ideas
• Finding a supportive community
• Asking for help when needed
• Acknowledging one’s value
• Taking individual recharging and reflection time

In healthy couples, differences in education, financial capabilities, and other objective power indicators do not affect them. Their influence on each other and confidence in their value keep them happier for longer.

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This article was originally published on HerrickLipton.net

Learning to Forgive: Tips on How

Forgiveness is a healing process. Research suggests that practicing forgiveness leads to less stress, lower levels of depression, better self-esteem, and more satisfaction in life. Though it’s beneficial, it’s not easy, especially if the hurt runs deep. If you want to forgive, you must do the work to move past your resentment and pain.

Decide to forgive. Make a commitment to the process. Keep in mind that forgiving doesn’t necessarily mean keeping someone in your life. You can forgive a toxic person without remaining in a relationship with him or her.

Process your emotions in positive ways. You’re allowed to be hurt. However, if you’re serious about forgiving the person who hurt you, you must move beyond the desire to hurt them back. Rather than lashing out or turning your pain inward on yourself, find healthy ways to cope. Talk to a therapist. Start an art journal. Take up a sport that gets your endorphins pumping.

Use the REACH method of forgiveness. REACH stands for recall, emphasize, altruism, commit, and hold. Recall means thinking objectively about what hurt you. Don’t block your emotions, but don’t dwell on them either. Emphasis requires you to see things from the other person’s perspective. Note that this doesn’t mean downplaying their negative actions.

For altruism, you acknowledge that forgiveness is a gift you’re giving to the other person — and that it’s a gift that others have given to you. Commit means making a firm decision to forgive. Write your intention down somewhere concrete. No one has to see it but you. Next, hold firm to your forgiveness. Forgiving someone isn’t always an immediate thing; it can take time, and you might experience negative emotions for a while. This step means that you’ll remember your desire to forgive when those negative feelings arise.

Remember the positives. No one is all bad or all good. The person who hurt you has flaws, but they also have positive attributes. What are they? Take some time to think about or even write down their good traits. What made you care about them in the beginning? When negative feelings begin to surface, replace those thoughts with positive memories.

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This article was originally published on HerrickLipton.com

What to Know About Imposter Syndrome

It is human nature to experience self-doubt in certain situations. Many people suffer from a more extreme version of this known as imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome is a state where a person has constant doubt of their ability to do certain things. These could be anything from performing a task, handling a situation, sustaining relationships with others, and more. The syndrome brings internal self-doubt resulting in fear and worry of others as being incapable or being found out as a  fraud. Anyone can have imposter syndrome, although it is common in overachievers.

People with imposter syndrome often don’t realize what they’re struggling with. Imposter syndrome manifests what may feel like normal feelings and reactions to certain situations. However, the more self-doubt they experience, the more they plunge deeper into believing in their apparent belief that they may fail in something expected of them.

Imposter Syndrome in Friendships

A person may experience imposter syndrome in everyday relationships with friends and family. They may feel inadequate to their friends, prompting them to believe they cannot be who their friendship circles expect them to be. As a result, such people have low self-esteem and tend to have a different persona when with other people. It is dangerous as they continue to feel like an imposter, prompting them to withdraw from friendships altogether.

Some people suffer from social anxiety, but this does not necessarily mean that they have imposter syndrome. There is a slight difference between the two, but social anxiety is temporary, and these individuals may not experience these feelings away from a social setting. People with social anxiety have a lot of self-doubt in social settings, but they don’t necessarily fear failure.

In workplace settings, people with imposter syndrome may lack confidence at work and constantly fear being seen as incapable. As if this is not enough, even when they succeed, they might still worry that other people may not find them deserving of this success and accomplishment.

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

There is no easy way to overcome imposter syndrome, and it requires a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy, positive affirmations, and conscious effort to replace negative thoughts with positive alternatives.

One of the best ways to do this is to identify their strengths and unique qualities and capitalize on them. Being conscious about these helps grow confidence which gives reassurance when feelings of self-doubt begin to manifest.

In extreme cases, a person may seek professional help if the negative thoughts persist.

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