Crystal Palace Local

“The lonely road to success for Business Owners...”

Finally building your own business and becoming self employed is the goal for many people. No more boss to tell you what to do... In principle, this is the best that can happen to you. You have an idea and you are confident that it is going to work. You are good and the idea is genius.

In reality, you start to feel the pressure when money is not coming in anymore. You realise that each month, you have to make your own money and that the security of a salary coming into your account is gone. You have to start being the conductor of the orchestra: being the sales person, the handyman, the accountant, the layer, the marketing director and many more roles...

You work all the time because you cannot switch off and from early morning to late at night, you are in your bubble: you check emails all the time, you think about new avenues, new ideas and your mind is busy 24/7.

Slowly but surely, you start shooting down your social life and dinners with friends become less frequent. You don’t really take the time to call your best mates and work even more. The stress is building up and you put in more hours. You do not give yourself the option of failure and of learning from it. When you realise that it is not going to be a great success story, you start being disappointed in yourself. Perhaps you blame the period, the economic situation and the crisis and sleep into the victim role.

Your level of stress is growing and you don’t really want to talk about it. You don’t want to show that it is difficult and you don’t want to bore your friends and family with your difficulties. Stress is isolating you in a very lonely bubble. I see so many people being so hard on themselves and getting into a negative spiral which of course brings more difficulties and ultimately increase chances of failure. Your actual result is a constant feedback about what to change and how to adjust. What does not work is a great insight to understand what could work. It is not because you are not good enough, because you are incompetent or because you only get what you deserve. It is additional information about what you could change and try to make it work.

What can you do? Is there any solution to make it better?

Life is a long learning journey. Each day is giving us new opportunities to learn and discover ourselves in a new light. Being self employed is definitely a strong one and it is almost a spiritual experience where you have to face your limits and sometimes your limitations. You cannot escape the mirror in front of you, telling you that you cannot do enough, you cannot do well enough, you cannot, you cannot, you cannot...

One of the keys for success is to treat yourself with love and compassion. The only way to succeed is to become your best friend and to give yourself the opportunity to learn and get better. The encouragements are crucial in order to help with motivation and get the energy to start a new day with a renewed mindset for success. Your mindset is conditioning your day and the results that you are getting. The more positive you are, the more positive outcomes you generate. As long as you stay open to feedback and ready to adjust and grow, you have good chances to make a success.

If you focus on what does not work, on how bad it is, on creating the image of what is will be when you will fail, you are programming yourself for the worse. Take the information and stay focus on the positive outcome. It is crucial!

You can change the way you live each and every day and change your perception of the situation which can bring you back to the success mindset and to a positive spiral.

Start planning a nice dinner with friends, go out next week-end, go for a nice walk in the park, take a break: allow yourself to regenerate and refresh. Start a new area and shift your thoughts to positive ones, where success is only a question of time. Don’t stay on your own, talk to your friends, ask your clients for feedback and listen openly to what people have to say. It is not about everything or nothing. It is about evolution and openness to change and to adjust constantly. It is one of the most interesting journeys of a life time and being your own boss will change you and make you grow more that you could have imagined.

Do not give up but open up.

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