Anxiety's impact on work and business

How does underlying anxiety affect our business as business owners and entrepreneurs?  It's a tricky subject, but here's what to do about it.

It may not seem like it on the outside, but many small and medium business owners, and entrepreneurs, can suffer from anxiety as much as anyone else.  We just put on a really good front, so we seem cool, calm and collected.  

That's not just when we are with our staff or customer facing.  We go to conferences, trade shows, association meetings, and the like, and there we all are, beaming all over our faces, seemingly rock solid, even if business is slow.  The economy is tanking, no-one is spending money any more, our revenue streams are drying up, or we are having to navigate the latest huge challenge (AI anyone?).  We all look as if we are taking it in our stride.  But are we?

Very often this is a well-practised facade, and we've all done it from time to time.  If you head into work, or open your laptop, with your heart thumping in your mouth, and your stomach tied in knots, know that you are not alone.  And it's not your fault.

You may be the boss, but that doesn't make you feel serene and secure.  In fact, it can be quite the opposite.

According to Simply Business, 59% of small business owners report experiencing anxiety. According to Mental Health UK, 64% of small business owners reported experiencing anxiety.  Furthermore, 80% reported overall experience of mental ill heath, with gender differentiation logging 87% of female business owners, and 77% of male business owners.  

As for entrepreneurs (there's not always a clear, functioning distinction between business owner and entrepreneur), Founder Report's mental health statistics for entrepreneurs makes scary reading.  87.7% of entrepreneurs are said to struggle with at least one mental health issue.  

If you are experiencing anxiety at work, you are not alone!

Anxiety can have a huge effect on us running our business, and building our place in the market.  For those of you who have never considered what business owners are juggling with on a daily basis, let's have a look at some of the challenges.

When we run a business, whether it's a one-woman band or we have upwards of fifty salaries to pay, one thing is certain.  Our outgoings are usually fixed (like salaries), and always relentless.  In contrast, a regular income to meet those outgoings is never guaranteed, as it depends on the market, changes, challenges, and trends in society, the economy, the cost of our supplies, inflation, tax changes, and a whole host of other factors.  You get the idea **.  To navigate this we need to keep a cool head, plan, evaluate, and respond.  All that is made even more tricky, when we are battling anxiety as well.

We may have a cracking product or service, and deliver it immaculately, but there are many financial and logistical, compliance, marketing and distribution hurdles to leap, before we can exchange our product or service for money, to pay all those relentless bills, month on month.  Never mind running a team.

We just have to be on our toes all the time, keeping a watchful eye on political events, the economy, social trends, technological innovations, the legal landscape, and ecological considerations.  There may be opportunities, but there are likely to be threats as well.  **

Just imagine the rollercoaster ride for the plastic straw manufacturers in the US over the last few years:  Social trends, based on ecological considerations, triggering political decisions, resulting in legal ramifications, wiping out an entire business in one fell swoop **.  And then reversing.  Whatever you think of plastic straws (I'm glad they have been banned, not that they have been unbanned), it's a hard time for the businesses selling them.  I hope they have managed to diversify safely into a more ecologically sound product range.

** These are all completely solvable with good business strategy, but in this blog post I'm just looking at the issue of how and why we manage our mental health in the face of these challenges.  

Add to that the business imperative of move, move, move.  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that in business we are either moving forwards, or backwards.  We are either growing or shrinking.  Our sales, our leads, our margins, and our profit are either increasing or decreasing at any one time.  We cannot sit back and coast.  If, however, we suffer from anxiety, or from the panic that is exacerbated by overwhelm, we want nothing more than to hide and hope for the best.  

For surfing the wave of constant overwhelm, the Too much! Too intense! Too fast! effect on our nervous systems, we need a robust nervous system setting, that allows us to surf without going under.  

So what is this background anxiety, and why are we experiencing it?  

It has to do with the fact that our brains, in their unconscious mode, want to keep us safe.  We sometimes talk about a 'survival brain', although it is not a separate brain at all.  It is more a survival mode we slip into, more or less urgently, whenever our brains detect a threat.  It's a natural reaction to threat.

Our brains detect threat when there is something new ('new' is by definition a threat to our survival brain), or unpredictable.  They are sure there is threat when there is overwhelm in the form of too much, too intense, or too fast.  Given that a lot of running a business, or being an entrepreneur is exactly that - new, unpredictable, and often all at once, intense and happening very fast, our brains will be detecting threat and responding with anxiety (or fear, or panic, or physical symptoms) constantly.

In addition, the intensity, and sometimes the way in which we react to threat, is determined by our personal experiences of threat.  See it like this:  

Natural reaction to threat + personal experience of threat = current reactiveness to potential threat.

That means that when you go into work in the morning, or open your laptop, and you don't know what the day will bring, you will react.  Or, say you are implementing a new, improved process, or you are looking at your customer satisfaction feedback, or your latest KPIs, all of which can be intense, both your natural reaction to new challenges (probably seeing them as a threat), and your personal experience of challenge, will determine your anxiety levels.  The more anxiety we experience, and the more intense it is, the less we can work out what to do or which decisions to make.  

When excitement ramps up into anxiety, we need to take action.

There are two things we can do about this.  Firstly (and obviously), reduce the challenges in business.  Plan well, take into account everything you can, make sure your margins are good enough to provide profit.  All this is business strategy, and a story for another day.  But it is really important.

Secondly, we can regulate our nervous system responses so our survival brain knows that it is safe.  Nervous system regulation is a body matter - have you ever been able to think your way out of anxiety?  That's because the brain in survival mode does not do words or concepts.  We have to work at the level of the brain in survival mode, which means movement, using our five senses, and tracking internal sensations.  It's much simpler than it sounds.  

Try these.  They are very simple, and you can't get them wrong.

• Breathe out for slightly longer than you breathe in.  Don't change your breathing, even if it is very fast, or very slow.  Just breathe out for slightly longer than you breathe in.  Maybe by half a second or a second.  Do this for at least a minute.  This changes our blood chemistry, bringing down our heart rate.
• If you are seated, lean back against the back of your chair.  If you are standing, lean against something solid, like a wall or a desk.  Do this for at least one minute.  This brings us back to something familiar, which we feel with our bodies.
• Look at something small in your surroundings, either near by or in middle distance.  Look at the colour, shape, texture, material, the way the light is reflected off it.  This decreases the amount of information you are taking in, whilst keeping you alert, and decreases overwhelm.
• When you have done any of the above, you could add this.  Find five green/red/blue/square/round/triangular/shiny/rough/soft things in the room.  Name them to yourself as you find them.  E.g. 'round clock'.  This gets your rational (word and meaning making) part of the brain cooperating with your five senses, if it has temporarily gone on strike or shut down. 

I really hope this helps.  Please do remember this about anxiety:

• Anxiety is a normal and natural reaction
• Your anxiety is shaped by this natural reaction and your personal experiences
• It is not your fault if you are experiencing anxiety
• Good business strategy helps with decreasing anxiety
• You can reduce your underlying anxiety and even neutralise it by changing your brain's unconscious reactions and giving it a sense of safety.  Start with the exercises in this blog post.

There's much more immediate help in the programme  Physical Sensations of Stress, and there's a free cheat sheet here.  Just let me know where to send it and you can download it for free. 

Let me know how you get on.