“The reason why many businesses fail is that most business owners are not “mentally” fit to cope with the failures and challenges usually encountered when starting or growing a business. “
It is not uncommon to hear that starting – or even running – is a mentally draining one. This is by no means an exaggeration; rather, it is the true state of the process; like when you are about to start a family, starting a business also demands that you get prepared financially, physically, and mentally. But, unfortunately, the mental aspect seems to be underrated by many business owners.
How to Beat The Odds
Starting a business could be likened to gambling – you cannot always win. Have you bothered to ask yourself why the massive failure of a significant number of businesses, especially in their forming or formative years? The underlying reason is that most business owners are not “mentally” fit to cope with the failures and challenges usually encountered when starting or growing a business. Some of them already feel defeated even when they are yet to get halfway.
If you are not strong enough to cope with the stress that comes with running a business, starting a business might be a bad idea for you. Even if you have already started your business, you have no better time to prepare mentally for a successful end of the year in your business than NOW. The following mindset tips have been curated to help you prepare for and overcome challenges you may encounter as the year ends.
1. Get to love your business
It feels so easy to get turned off, especially when you are doing something that doesn’t pique your interests. How much do you love your business? Did you start it just because a friend did the same and succeeded? Or do you want to be counted in the league of business owners? To run a business successfully, your level of interest is a determining factor. If you do not love your business, you will be easily distracted by other activities that will take a toll on your business.
Infusing your business with love is a great investment that produces huge returns. The ROI can be expressed in increased motivation, customer satisfaction and retention, increased revenue, and a healthy and successful business. In simpler terms, getting to love your business gives you the motivation you require to navigate through the emotional odds that come with it, such that growth and success are achieved at the end of the year.
2. Be confident about the success
You feel your academia and certifications in business are enough to run a successful business. You might be right. Notwithstanding, it also takes good faith in yourself to execute a business idea successfully. When you started your business, you may not have the genuine confidence you require to handle the emotional roller coaster that may come your way, thus leaving your success chances in doubt.
When you are not confident, you feel intimidated easily, especially when your competitors display a high confidence level. However, most business activities – pitching your business to a potential client, product launching, critical decision-making, etc. – require confidence if you truly want to achieve success. To become confident, believe in yourself, dress well, offer the best product or service quality, follow other successful businesses for motivation, take good care of yourself by eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly, and prepare for worst-case scenarios.
As a business owner, achieving your business goal should not be doubtful; be confident that obstacles will not deter you from achieving success.
3. Engage in mental strength exercises
You may think your inability to attain the stage of adequacy regarding running your business resulted from your lack of divine willpower. You might not be right! Wrestlers require building their physical strength; thus, they engage in exercises, such as pushups, weightlifting, etc., to help their muscles resist stress and heavy impact. As a business owner, you should also train your brain to think differently, manage your emotions, and behave productively.
Since you are preparing yourself to be mentally strong, some easy and quick exercises can help you build more mental muscle. They include the following:
Practice Gratitude:
While counting your blessings improves your mental health, thinking about your woes weighs you down psychologically. To increase happiness and minimize depression, make gratitude a daily habit. Get a journal and identify the things you are grateful for. This could be feeling thankful for the weather, the food you eat, the clean water you drink, the roof over your head, among other things.
Be kind to people:
There is a way how acts of kindness to others help improve your mental strength. The joy of seeing people as beneficiaries of your kind acts will keep you developing positive attitudes. As a business owner or an entrepreneur, donate money, act as a volunteer in service to your community and humanity at large, give away items you no longer need, among other things.
Speak positively to yourself:
Your inner dialogue will either strengthen or limit you. Everyone engages in self-talk, either aloud or otherwise. During this process, whatever you tell yourself matters greatly. Think of it this way: As a guest at a house party, you make a joke in front of everyone present there, and no one laughs. What will you tell yourself afterward? Will you brood over how foolish you think you are just because no one laughed at your joke? Or will you praise yourself for attempting in the first place? The same scenario applies to running a business. People will laugh at you in a bid to frustrate your effort. When this happens, make positive affirmations. Draw inspirations from the past successes you had.
Believe in your success:
Belief in one’s abilities and skills is critical to success. When you are in doubt, you are only drawing yourself back. Avoid setting yourself up for failure when you are on a journey to success. For instance, you want to expand your services to include importing and exporting, and you already told yourself you might fail in it. But, then, failure might be certain. Get committed to telling yourself that you can do it, even if you have to make some adjustments as you work towards your goal.
Focus:
Many businesses fold up because the owners lack long-term focus. As an entrepreneur, your mind is valuable capital. The popular maxim, “Rome was not built in a day,” applies here. You don’t expect to start making money once you set up a business. All your efforts, skills, and experiences as regards your business take time to materialize. Thus, stay focused. Avoid the distraction demon that is on an unending journey to ruin your burgeoning business.
4. Prepare for failure
Many people fail because they refused to prepare for failure. Isn’t it counterintuitive to say that failure is the road to success? Of course, it isn’t! In most success stories, it is not uncommon to hear entrepreneurs, CEOs, business owners, among others, attribute their successes to failure. They have failed multiple times. Would they have acquired success if they had given up after the first failure?
The reality is that fear of failure oftentimes holds people back from even making successful trial attempts. Rather than invest their time, effort, and resources, they sit back and groan cowardly in fear of failure. It is true failure causes pessimism. However, failure often succeeds if one doesn’t give up. You may have to read about the stories of Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, etc.
Rather than accept failure, consider it an opportunity for improvement, more growth, and development, as well as a reason to make a fresh approach.
5. Don’t dwell in the past
Everyone had a bad past, which cannot be undone. So rather than hold on to your past failures or mistakes, focus on the future. For instance, when you make the wrong decision in your business operation, it is normal to express your negative feelings when the consequences come up. However, there is always a time to let go and move on.
Do not bring those bad moments each time you are happy. By so doing, you are giving them new roots, and by consequence, a new life. The negative things of your past do not deserve life. According to someone, a vehicle’s windshield is bigger than its rear-view mirror because what is ahead is greater than what is behind.
Conclusion
It is good to dream and set goals for the year. It is equally good to carry out an end-of-the-year review of how far you were able to meet your target. Commit yourself to maintain a physical and mental posture that attracts success. Would you please pay attention to habits that drain your mental strength and give them up? Engage in positive self-talk, love yourself and your business, be confident, maintain a long-term focus, view failure as a part of your success journey, and live beyond your mistakes and failures.
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