Deciding to become an entrepreneur is a career choice that has many benefits but can also come with a heavy workload and lots of stress. Being responsible for an entire business and your finances can quickly become overwhelming and can cause stress.
Managing stress is extremely important when it comes to being an entrepreneur. If you’re not careful about making sure you keep your stress levels down, it could seriously wear on both your physical and mental health and take a toll on your business and personal life, too.
Some entrepreneurs might find stress management to be a difficult habit to start because of the high workload and busy schedules they often have. However, there are options for stress relieving activities that won’t take too much time out of your day.
Make Sure You Exercise Throughout Your Day With a Sedentary Career
Staying active is an extremely important stress relieving activity for everyone to engage in, regardless of how much free time you have on your hands. Exercise has been proven to release endorphins, which lowers stress levels. Professionals recommend at least thirty minutes of exercise per day.
One exercise you could incorporate into your schedule easily is walking. If you’re on a phone call where you don’t need to be sitting at a desk or anywhere in particular, go walk outside or around your house.
This will be an easy way to engage in physical activity without taking time out of work. If you can’t do physical activity while working, set aside planned time to exercise even if you have to break up thirty minutes throughout your day.
For example, you could spend ten minutes in the morning walking or jogging, another ten minutes in the afternoon biking or swimming, and another ten minutes at night dancing or doing yoga.
You can do it while listening to a podcast or even while dictating the content of your lead magnet on your smart phone. Some online entrepreneurs even invest in a treadmill desk, where they can walk while working.
Bring More Joy to Your Day Through Laughter
It may sound too good to be true, but laughter is a great, time efficient way to lower stress levels on a busy schedule. Laughing and smiling releases endorphins and lowers cortisol, therefore relieving stress.
There are many comedy videos and skits on platforms like YouTube. Streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO Max also have comedy movies on them.
Try watching something funny in the morning or before bed to start or end your day in a better mood and with less stress. If your schedule allows for it, you can also watch shorter comedy clips in between work.
Remember That Your Food Choices Can Have an Effect on Your Stress Levels
Another easy, time efficient way to effectively reduce stress is to change up your diet. Maintaining a healthy diet has been proven to reduce the effect that stress has on your body.
Making healthy, home cooked meals multiple times every day may not be optimal when it comes to running a business and having such a busy schedule. To help reduce time spent on cooking, try meal prepping.
Meal prepping is where you make multiple meals before you need them. So if you have a day off, or a day when you have more free time than usual, spend time preparing food for the upcoming days or week and package it in reusable containers.
Preparing your meals ahead of time is time efficient and can also keep you from caving in and eating unhealthy foods that take no time to prepare, like processed ones packed with calories.
Chicken, rice, and vegetables are common ingredients in meal prepping recipes. You can even set up a crockpot meal to cook throughout the day while you’re working, so that you’re not relying on takeout when your busy workload is complete.
There are also things in your diet that may cause an increase in your cortisol levels. Make sure you make an effort to cut stress-causing foods and drinks out of your diet. These include alcohol, caffeine, processed meats, and foods with high levels of sugar.
Listen to Some Music to Boost Your Mood
Putting on music in the background while you work is a simple, quick, and effective way to reduce stress levels. Music, especially calming music like classical, has been shown to lower stress.
Music can relieve stress by lowering the heart rate and reducing the amount of stress hormones such as cortisol released by the brain. Listening to music also releases endorphins, which improves your mood and decreases stress levels.
Hearing calming tunes and slow tempos can actually cause your muscles and your mind to relax, making you feel soothed and stress free throughout your day. Faster songs can make you feel more focused.
Dancing to music you love is also a great way to relieve stress if you have a busy schedule. Even if it’s just a few songs, the combination of listening to music and exercise will release endorphins and lower cortisol.
How Asking For Help Can Make Your Life Easier
Running a business online, while trying to deal with other responsibilities like cleaning, taking care of your kids if you have any, cooking, and more can be far too overwhelming for many.
Allow yourself to ask your spouse, other family members, or even close friends for help with certain tasks. If you have kids who are old enough, ask them to help with chores like dishes, laundry, picking up clutter, and even yard work.
Asking for help is also useful in terms of your business. There may be a project that you’ve been working on that you’re really struggling with. Don’t be afraid to reach out to some other entrepreneurs for advice that could really benefit your company.
Relax Your Mind and Eliminate Stress Through Meditation
Getting into a meditative state is where you clear your mind from any thoughts and feel the present moment. You’re supposed to focus on your breathing and what you feel around you.
During meditation, you simply cut out any thoughts from your mind. This brings a state of relaxation and can help you relieve stress by not focusing on whatever it is that is stressing you out.
Meditation won’t take too much time out of your day, either. Some people prefer to meditate for half an hour, while some can still get extreme stress relief from only five to ten minutes of meditation between tasks.
Studies have shown that meditation has many benefits to mental health and that it’s an effective technique in relieving stress. Meditation is proven to increase attentiveness and also improve regulation of emotions.
If you struggle with keeping thoughts about your stressors out of your mind, look into guided meditation. Guided meditation is where you are instructed to focus on certain things while in a meditative state.
The instructors who guide the meditation may tell you to imagine yourself in a certain relaxing setting, such as a beach or a forest. They also usually ask you to imagine how this setting would sound, smell, or feel as well.
This method of meditation is just as effective as other methods, and is great for those who struggle to focus on thinking about nothing. You can find many different guided meditations online that will suit your needs for time and topic.
Allow Yourself to Take Breaks to Recover
When running your own business, you may almost always be focusing on or thinking about work. It may seem to you like your company will fail unless you’re spending all of your time working.
Hard work and focus is crucial in terms of running your own business, but constantly being wrapped up in stressful situations will deteriorate your mental health and could possibly cause your business to suffer because of it.
The best thing you can do to avoid becoming mentally overloaded with work is to take breaks. Giving your mind time to rest while you are working will help your stress levels go down, and will help you regenerate energy and focus.
Taking breaks has been shown to improve people’s performance throughout the day. This means you’ll be able to work more efficiently and create quality content for your business.
Studies have also shown that taking breaks throughout your day decreases the amount of time you need to recover at the end of the day. This is great for those who are too busy to get a full good night’s rest.
The Impact Sleep Has on Your Body and Mind
Getting a good night’s sleep is one of the easiest, most beneficial things you can do for your mental health. Staying on a good sleep schedule is a great way to reduce stress and improve your overall well-being.
Being on a sleep schedule has been shown to improve focus, creativity, performance, overall mood, and productivity. It’s also linked to helping physical health by preventing issues like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
A solid good night’s sleep requires about seven hours of rest. This is a pretty attainable goal for most people, but some entrepreneurs with extra busy schedules or high stress levels may struggle to reach this goal.
If you have a lot of work to tackle, you may think that sleeping for a shorter amount of time will benefit your business in the long run. Many people see getting a good night’s sleep as inconvenient because they could be working during the hours that they’re resting.
However, this approach will deteriorate your mental and physical health. Since sleep is important for brain function, it will also take a toll on the quality of the work you are doing and the products you are putting out to your customers.
When you lack proper sleep, your brain won’t function as well, causing you to zone out and get distracted easier than you would if you were properly rested. This is why rest is so crucial in being an entrepreneur.
How Taking Care of an Animal Can Improve Your Life
Owning and being around pets has been shown to be a great way for anyone to reduce stress. Being with animals is proven to reduce cortisol levels and increase oxytocin levels.
If you work at home and are more available to take care of a pet, try looking at cats and dogs to accompany you at home. Petting a dog has been proven to significantly decrease stress levels.
Dogs need lots of physical activity to keep them happy and healthy. Walking your dog would be a great way to incorporate exercise, another form of stress relief, into spending time with your pet.
Getting a fish is a great alternative to those who may be too busy for a higher-maintenance pet like a cat or a dog since they don’t require as much attention and playtime as other animals do.
If you do decide to get a pet, make sure you will have enough time and energy to properly take care of it. The last thing you would want to do is get an animal that would only cause you more stress on top of everything else.
Even if getting a pet is way out of your comfort zone, you can still benefit from interacting with animals. For example, in your free time, try volunteering at an animal shelter.
How You Can Use Aromatherapy to Relieve Both Physical and Mental Stress
Aromatherapy is a stress-relieving practice where you use products that contain essential oils to improve your physical and mental health, as well as your overall well-being.
There are many different types of aromatherapy products you can choose from such as lotions, diffusers, candles, and room mists. You can find these products in a wide variety of scents.
Essential oils are the key components in aromatherapy. Each type of oil has a different effect and benefit. Oils like lavender, chamomile, lemon, and rose have been shown to help you physically and mentally relax, boost your mood, and even reduce headaches.
This form of stress relief is great for busy entrepreneurs because it doesn’t require much time or effort. Lighting a candle in the morning or turning on your diffuser will allow you to relieve stress throughout your day without having to waste time away from work.
While being a work at home entrepreneur brings on a lot of burdens that can make you feel stressed, it also allows you a wonderful opportunity to be able to alleviate that stress in unique ways that you wouldn’t be capable of doing if you were in a corporate office workspace.
For example, in an office, you might have coworkers complaining if you used a scent in your aromatherapy they didn’t like, or if they could hear your music. Your boss may not appreciate you taking breaks he or she didn’t authorize whenever you felt like it.
