Erin Thomas Wong (00:52)
Welcome back to The Life-Friendly Business podcast. I'm your host, Erin Thomas Wong, The Life-Friendly Business Mentor. And today we're talking about building emotional resilience. Running a business is not easy. On a daily basis, you might have to be making decisions that you don't feel qualified to make. We have to wear so many different hats and that we have to acknowledge the fact that we don't know everything.
we don't know what we necessarily don't know and often you know we're time poor, we're having to make decisions much faster than we would like to and also you know we've got other responsibilities going on as well and so it's it's really easy to get overwhelmed by our business and also find ourselves beating ourselves up for the decisions that we have made.
It might surprise you to hear that 60 % of small businesses fail within the first three years. It's just a testament to the fact that running a business is not an easy option, but you're still here and you're still doing it. And so what can we do to be able to build up our resilience so that when things feel really hard, when we need to overcome challenges, we have the inner strength to be able to do that.
The definition of resilience that I'm working to today is about the ability to bounce back from difficult times. And obviously this can be difficult times in your business, but it can also be difficult times in your life. And I'll always remember hearing the idea that, if we think about our stress levels as a scale of one to 10, if we are living,
on a daily basis on like a seven or an eight. When something really goes wrong, when something happens, whether it's a curve ball in our life or in our business, it's so easy for us to spill over the top. And literally that's when we burn out, that's when meltdown happens, we just can't cope. And what we need to be doing is trying to work out how to live our normal every day on
a lower point on that scale. So if we can bring ourselves down to a five or lower on a daily basis with our stress levels then we're going to have more capacity to deal with things when they go wrong.
I think a perfect example to talk about resilience is about the pandemic and how, you know, if you were running your business back then, you will have had to adapt and evolve in order to keep it going, to keep the wheels turning during COVID. And, you know, it really was a testament to the businesses that were able to keep going, that just showed the resilience that they had to be able to adapt with the different situations because
There is so much that happens that is outside of our control, but all we can do is focus on what we can control. So can you think back to times in your business where you have had to take a different tact and actually it's made your business better for it? There's so much that we can be doing as well with our own wellbeing and our own personal development to help us build this resilience so that, you know, when things go wrong, when things that are out of our control happen,
that we don't immediately think the worst. This is also about having a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. It's about recognising that things are going to change, but that that's okay and we can deal with it. I think, you know, one of the main things that we have to do as a business owner is kind of roll with the punches and work out how we can make the best of a situation. And I know that at the moment, you know, the world is a really, really difficult place and there's a lot of people in
really hard situations where they are making different decisions to what they might have done in the past and that is affecting a lot of our businesses. You know how people are spending money that is changing what they're investing in, what they feel confident to commit to and yeah we can feel really sorry for ourselves about that or we can think right what are we going to do, what can we do, what is in my control to be able to help in this.
situation. And a friend said to me recently, actually, you you're the kind of person that you really want to know what your next step is. And she's absolutely right. Like I, you know, when things are feeling really hard, all I want to do is know what I need to do next. And it's the analogy as well about the staircase, like you don't have to be able to see every step right to the top of the staircase, you just need to see your next couple of steps. And that can really help with reducing the overwhelm as well of all the decisions that we have to make in our business.
So it would be great, wouldn't it, if we could build our emotional resilience. So how can we actually do that? And I've got five things that are going to help you.
Number one, having some acceptance around the fact that things will go wrong. Things will go wrong in our life and our businesses the truth is you will make some bad decisions along the way. We all do.
And you have to remind yourself that you are making the best decision with the information you have at that time. That's all we can do. So yes, sometimes the decisions we make, we might look back and say, I wish I'd made another decision. Also, we have to have acceptance about the fact that things might take longer than we would like to. So many of us are incredibly impatient, especially when it comes to achieving those business goals. But...
know what it might take a bit longer and especially if you are also looking after family members or children at the same time. So having that acceptance of these things that things may well go wrong you might make some bad decisions along the way and it's probably going to take longer than you think. Hopefully that takes some of the pressure off you. The next thing that we need to build emotional resilience is self-awareness.
It's so important that you understand what your strengths and weaknesses are and this all comes under the self leadership stuff as well. Learning to know ourselves and also learning how to tame our inner critic because we can be our own worst enemy. And yes, I do think that we need to recognise our strengths and our weaknesses, but we don't need to beat ourselves up about our weaknesses. We actually need to make a plan to support ourselves.
with those. So once again, this comes back to what you can control and what you can't control. And what you can control is the support that you put in place to support the areas that you know, you know, maybe you could do with a bit of help in. So recognising what they are, but not using it as a stick to beat yourself with. And also recognising the signs of when you are feeling overwhelmed, overloaded, when you've taken on too much.
when you've got decision fatigue because you're making too many decisions and when actually your body is screaming that you need to have a rest. So otherwise we're going to spill over in the 10 out of 10 on our stress levels. So find out about yourself, take some time to listen to yourself, listen to your body.
So think back to times when you have got burnt out or when you have reached melting point and think back to what those signs were and make sure that you're looking out for those. I think one thing that's really hard is when we just push ourselves to be productive all of the time and be pushing through, even when there's other stuff going on that we know that we're struggling with, but we ignore the signs and that's when we reach 10 out of 10.
And you know, when things are feeling really, really difficult and maybe you're wondering whether to carry on with your business, maybe you're still not earning what you need to earn and you're thinking, do I just give this up? You know, we can all feel that sense of real despair and having a sense of purpose here and tapping into that will really help you.
to get that inner strength to keep going. So try and remind yourself why you're doing this in the first place. Why did you start your business? Hopefully it came from a place of passion and you're able to tap back into that. What gap did you see? What pain point or area did you see people struggling with and you thought, do you know what, I can help them with this. What's your mission? What change do you want to be to the world?
try and reconnect with your sense of purpose and you know, recognise as well that everything that you're going through now actually will help you in the long run because every lesson we learn, we're able to then, implement it and pass it on to the people that we're working with. So it is a journey, isn't it?
life is a journey and we are learning things every single day that might help someone else who's two steps behind us. So recognise that even if you're feeling like things are really really hard at the moment that everything you're going through is going to be able to help someone else or you're going to be able to strengthen your business because of it. So this is once again about looking on the bright side
And being able to tap back into your why will help you more when you're thinking about what your strategy is here. Why are you doing what you're doing and what can you do to make sure that you are achieving what you want to achieve and having the impact that you want.
Number four is about learning to be flexible. I am a little bit of a control freak. I like to know what's going on. I like to make sure that everything's done in a certain way. And you could say that it took me quite a while to learn how to be flexible. And I remember my mum with this analogy about the willow tree and she said, you have to learn to bend like a willow tree. And that was really hard to
take on board, but it really has made me more resilient. the idea being that if a normal tree is in a storm and it's being battered by the winds, it might snap, you know, depending on how wide the trunk is, the tree might snap. Whereas with a willow tree, the tree is designed to bend with the wind. And that's what we need to be trying to learn to do. And this also comes into play when you have kids as well,
because we want things doing in a certain way and they might not be doing it in the way that we want to and so we have to learn to be flexible and to adapt and like I say you know things are going to be happening every week that are out of our control so how can we bend like a willow tree in order to accommodate for that and also how can we be prepared to tweak the things that we're doing so that
it fits with the changing times and the changing environments that
in.
recognising that there are going to be setbacks and that that is just all part of the journey. you know really releasing that control that we like to have and learning how to be flexible. And then the last thing to build our emotional resilience is to protect your energy and I talk about this a lot with the life-friendly business approach because
You are your biggest asset when you are a solopreneur or a small business owner and we have to be looking after ourselves so well and we have to protect our mental energy. And the fact is, is that we only have capacity for so much and when we're not feeling great, that capacity shrinks. So that's why when you're more resilient, you are able to deal with things a lot better. So everything we're talking about today is about how you can
get yourself in a state where you are able to deal with the challenges that come with being a business owner and make it through with your sanity as well. So you must enforce your boundaries. Your boundaries are there to protect your energy and your wellbeing. So stop saying yes to everything. Be much more intentional about what you're saying yes to.
Recognise that every time you say yes to something, you're also saying no to something else. So we have to be careful with this because we are so good at being people pleasers. We want to help people. Also, when we're doing something in our zone of genius, it feels easy to us and it's so easy to say, I don't mind going over and above. I don't mind doing that call for free because, you know, it's easy for me. But the more we do that, the more we over schedule.
and find ourselves in this place of overwhelm and then it knocks us over to a 10 out of 10. So the way that we make sure that doesn't happen is by scheduling realistically, being really intentional with what we're saying yes to and you know, recognising that we can't always be in a perpetual harvest. And that comes from Kate Northrup's book Do Less. She talks about the fact that farmers know that they need to leave the soil to lay fallow.
so that they have a bumper crop. But yet we expect ourselves to be continually in a bumper harvest season year round. And it's just crazy. And so we need to recognize that we do need to be allowing time for rejuvenation, for rest, for all those things so that we can really be at the top of our game. So this stuff is not fluffy.
This is really important that we're doing it because all of these things will help us show up in our businesses in the way we want to and be the best business owner we can be and create the best business that we want to create. And the last thing I'd say about building emotional resilience is really being careful with who you are spending your time with. We all know what it's like when you have people in your life who actually make you feel crap about yourself. Sometimes it's harder to...
get away from them if they're family or close friends, but really be intentional with that and surround yourself with people who light you up, people who lift you up, people who inspire you, people who champion you. And you know, that's why this community, the Life-Friendly Business community and The Cocoon, my membership, that's why I created it, to provide that place for you and all you need to do is lean in and...
accept that and enjoy having those people around you who are like-minded because times can get really tricky when you're a business owner and having a space where you can talk openly and without fear of judgment and just be really honest about the stuff that's coming up for you like that is invaluable and having that support knowing that you've got that support will make you more resilient.
So if you would like to ask me any questions about The Cocoon, please do reach out. I will put the link in the show notes and I would love you to come in and join us and see what it's like. The sisterhood is off the charts in there and there's a whole range of different types of business owners at all different stages of their journey as well.
Adopting a life-friendly approach to your business will help make you more resilient as a business owner. And the five things that you can do to help build that resilience is acceptance of what you can and can't control, self-awareness, recognising in yourself what the warning signs are, number three, having a sense of purpose and really reminding yourself why you're doing what you're doing, number four, being flexible and learning to bend like a willow tree.
And number five, protecting your energies and setting those boundaries.
Really hope that you've enjoyed this episode. Please do share with a friend who might need to hear it or tag me on social at @lifefriendlybiz. I'll see you next time.
