While I love the opportunities that entrepreneurship provides, the reality is it’s an incredibly challenging environment.
The long hours, stress, politics, uncertainty, and risk, can quickly overwhelm even the most resilient operators—especially early in your career. That’s why it’s so important to understand how to build the right mindset to overcome the challenges you’ll face as an entrepreneur.
I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at this, but I wasn’t always this way. As a young entrepreneur, I would often get overwhelmed, and unfortunately, that had a negative impact on my business. It also showed up in my personal life. Especially at home, because that’s where we tend to let our guard down the most.
But I kept going, and along the way, I was fortunate to discover several strategies to better manage my emotions and keep the feelings of overwhelm at bay. And while that has helped me to build a multimillion dollar company, I want to be clear about something—it’s never going to be all rainbows and puppies. Entrepreneurship is a tough battle every day. That will never go away.
Instead, you will reframe your thinking, and in the process, become more resilient in a way that helps you to understand what you’re truly capable of and feel more comfortable even when the weight of the world is on your shoulders.
Remember that your track record of surviving challenges is 100%
Take a minute to think about all of the challenges you’ve overcome so far—especially your biggest ones.
Now acknowledge the fact that you’re still here, alive and running your business today.
That’s no small feat. Millions of companies go out of business every year, yet you’ve survived despite everything life has thrown at you.
That’s significant.
Treat every challenge like an opportunity
This may sound overly simplistic or even over optimistic, but hear me out…
First of all—this is the life you chose, so you have to take the good with the bad. Think about it like this; would it make a lot of sense for a football player to complain about getting tackled? Of course not! He’d be laughed off the field, and rightfully so.
But it’s bigger than just accepting the challenges.
You need to embrace them.
By treating a challenge as an opportunity to improve, to learn, and to prove yourself, you reframe your thinking. Instead of seeing yourself as a helpless victim, you’ll see yourself as someone who is empowered to solve the problems others retreat from. And in doing that, you’ll also demonstrate to others that you are, which further reinforces your own self image.
The effects of this compound exponentially.
Practice gratitude
Look, you’re going to have your bad days. Everyone does.
But you have a choice—you can either dwell on the negative and spiral downward, or you can focus on what you’re grateful for and climb back up the mountain.
And this doesn’t mean you need to be some kind of emotionless cyborg. Feel the feelings. Be sad, or pissed, or scared, or whatever you’re feeling, but put a time limit on it. Maybe it’s five minutes. Maybe it’s 24 hours. Once the time is up, you’re done having a pity party.
But both during that time as well as daily, invest some time thinking about all the things you’re grateful for. The more specific the better.
Try to come up with at least 20, but ideally, I like to aim for 50-100. It might be tough at first, but the more you do it, the more natural it will become and the ideas will start flowing.
I recommend starting each day by reading this list, and then anytime you’re facing a challenge, or you just suffered a loss, or you have to make a big decision, read them again.
This is like armor for your mind because it’s nearly impossible to be in a negative mood when you’re actively thinking about all the things you’re grateful for.
You can handle as much as you believe you can
Most entrepreneurs want to climb to the next level, but what trips many up is that they believe the next level will be easier.
It’s not.
Literally nothing works that way.
The higher you climb, the harder things will get. But if you work on your mindset just as hard as you work on your business, you’ll be prepared to handle whatever life throws at you.
You’ve got this!