Episode 189: How to Run Your Business When Life Happens
What do we do as business owners when personal life gets challenging? From CEO fatigue and burnout, helping aging parents, diagnoses, and relationship challenges you didn’t see coming to people struggling to get off the couch… how do you get through those moments?
I'm going to assert if you have started a business at this time on the planet, you're probably pretty sensitive. You're sensitive to the needs of others. You understand there are problems this world needs to solve. You are out to help solve them in your own way, using your talents, your experience, and your expertise.
If you're doing that, and you're giving and giving and giving, and you get hit with personal life things... what do you do?
Coping when life happens
The great news is: you aren't the first person to go through this. I think what you need to do is be honest about what you're going through to you. You need to do is be honest about what you're going through to those who love you, to those who are in your personal life, who are standing shoulder to shoulder in this journey of life and the shared humanity that we all have.
Our shared humanity actually strengthens when we do that. When we show up with that level of vulnerability in our business because things got hard, we are giving permission to everyone in our orbit to do the same for them when it happens to them, and then they're not slamming doors.
No one can do this life thing on their own. That is a myth. It's not possible. We were talking about this in the Abundance Academy, and I love this analogy, it's kind of like trying to shove a beach ball under water. You can't do that. It just smacks you in the face, try to push it down and it'll smack you in the face again.
Acknowledge your emotions
When you're trying to run your business, and you get hit with a very strong human emotion, the most powerful thing you can do with the emotion is to acknowledge that it's there. Feelings are cyclical. We don't get mad if we have to pee more than once a day, but we get upset if we're sad more than once a day.
We need to recognize we don't have to be afraid of our feelings. We can be with them, and the more that we're with them, the faster they can move. If you try to not pee it gets painful. Just deal with the fact that you're sad, deal with the fact that you're angry.
If you say to yourself, “Oh my gosh, I'm so angry,” as opposed to slamming doors and expecting everyone else to figure out what's going on. It's okay to sit down and say I'm so angry. I'm scared. If I express this, I'm going to hurt people.
How courageous. How honest. You can do that with yourself first, so you can then go express the anger you're feeling, but express it in a way that is positive and can move things forward.
This might look like “I'm really upset right now. I'm processing a lot. What I'm going to ask is that I'm not in the team meeting this week, or what I'm going to ask is that I set up the agenda, and you guys handle it.”
These conversations also need to be with your staff, your team, and maybe your family members.
As a business owner, you don't have to tell everybody all the details of what you’re going through, but what you can say is “I've got something going on. I'm going to be handling it. It's really challenging me. I'm going to need extra support from you and the business.”
That is a five-second conversation and it can change your life.
How to produce when you're feeling stuck
Now let's talk about you. We've dealt with the tactical stuff. Emotions were acknowledged. You’ve turned to the team. You've got support. There were starting to rearrange things to make sure we as humans are getting what we needed while we run businesses. And then there's the creative, generative, awesome part of you that might get a little bit stuck when personal issues happen.
When life happens, you might benefit from sharing your experience. It’s powerful. Or you might find you shut down. The spectrum on this is wide and there are no wrong answers for who you are in these moments.
If your creativity gets shut down for a hot second, it's okay, it's going to come back.
Let's say it's something creative you need to produce. Maybe you have something coming up and there's copy that needs to be written or a blog post or a social media post or a video or a podcast episode. These things need to get created and there is a timeline.
What I would love for you to do -- and I promise this takes 10 minutes -- I would love for you to remember one thing that brings you joy. Just one. It can be your favorite cup of coffee, or it can be that dark chocolate you keep hidden above the laundry room that nobody knows about. It could be a song that makes you so happy.
It could be outside. I love to go lean against trees. That's one of mine. I just love that it feels so simple and grounding, and it reminds me there's so much available to all of us even when we're struggling. Do something that brings you that level of joy for 10 minutes.
Honor your humanity
You are a human being, and these moments of intense emotion, these moments of unexpected crises, upset anger, they're going to happen. I hope you keep this episode by your side for the next time you feel like you can't do it, you feel scared, you feel like you’re going to go off the rails, or your business is going to tank because you're going through something as a person.
You can honor your humanity and love yourself through this and find the support that you need and share with your team. Then, very gently and with a lot of love and joy, move forward on the projects that need your attention. Let's remove the hustle. Let's connect back to your heart and remember that you are human on this journey, and you deserve all the love and support that you need.
