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In Business and Stressed Out?

Business from day to day can be stressful, trying and down right hard at times.  You rarely hear about the entrepreneur that spent nights working on his business for years never taking holidays or going out and socializing or just having fun hitting golf balls but the truth is that there is a general misconception of what it takes to be a successful business owner is unbalanced for a lot of people.  I recently posted this on YoungEntrepreneur.com …

Remembering to Play in Business

The thing I’ve noticed lately is that a sense of play is one of those things that you can lose sight of at times in your life. You get so wrapped up in developing a business that you simply forget to play. Not sure if anyone else has noticed this or not or has a different experience but I’d love to hear about it.

Do you play video games, are you learning how to fly a plane, are you taking an acting class?

- How do you play?
- In what ways do you play?
- Do you feel that play is an important part of who you are and what you are doing?

Source: http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12773

I wasn’t sure what kind of response I’d get but in flowed opinions of varying degrees.  My favorite one was this one because I think that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially younger ones go through a fair amount of this….

This is a great subject.

I’ve been taking my B Comm undergrad for 5 years, working two and three jobs for the last two and starting my own business on top of that.

It wasn’t until I went home this summer that I realized what “all work (and stress) and no play” had done to me. Because school had ended, and two of my jobs ended (they were both school-related), I was in complete shock when I only had one job to concentrate on for the summer.

Essentially I had major insomnia for 2.5 months of the summer. It only began to disspipate after I took on a second job, just to keep my mind off of not being as busy as I was before. It could have also been the pressure of dealing with the fact that in a year I was going to be graduated and out of school. I had to literally force myself to relax for those gruelling 2.5 months. It wasn’t easy.

Being so ambitious, my attitude was basically that it was okay to almost kill myself with stress and work as it would eventually pay off later. I learned my lesson, thankfully. I’m better now.

I finally realized that in order to enjoy what you do, you have to seperate yourself from it once in a while. Even if you don’t make it a point to go out and do something for fun, at least take mental breaks when you can - watch a movie, write in a journal, or go for a run (which is what really helped me this summer - I started running).

Nobody wants you around if you’re a bag of nerves all the time. Take one day at a time

If you are working at a few jobs and paying for school and building a business you tend to neglect more social aspects of life because you don’t have much if any time to spend on anything that isn’t related to having fun.  Having fun allows people to relax and get rid of stress which is important in generating quality ideas.  The more you starve your brain of doing things like these the harder it gets to come back.  Those of you workaholics out there may ask yourselves “Why is having fun so important?” Well here are a few reasons

Taking the time to have fun allows you to know different parts of yourself better

Taking time to relax and not be such a workaholic allows you to spend time with your kids (if you have any), with good friends, or with people in general.  Do you want to be that guy that is mentioned at parties “Oh where is (put your name here)” to which the response will be “He/She is working”.

The worst thing you could do to yourself is to someday wakeup wealthy with all the free time in the world and have absolutely no friends or family to share your time with.  Most people don’t realize why they work so hard so maybe you need to ask yourself “why?” and get an answer.

I did this recently only to realize that the reasons I thought I was working so hard didn’t make much sense given my goals in life.

Luc’s Goals

• To grow a successful business
• To become wealthy over the long run
• To have a great network of friends and family and be able to spend more time with them
• To not work a job in the traditional sense
• To better understand myself and grow and learn

I ask you to write down your goals for the future.  The only thing that you need to do is be honest with yourself and understand that some things that you think you want aren’t that important.  It comes from this realization about the world…

You can always have more money, more things but you cannot have more time and you cannot buy time with the money you’ve amassed.

Luc’s Past

• Working hard for things I didn’t care about or really even want
• Having ambition to achieve great wealth without understanding why I wanted that wealth or what I’d do with it
• Spending more time working and using work as an excuse to not go out and have fun

It is never easy to break habits and it’s even harder to create new ones.  I am by no means saying “Don’t go for your dreams.”  I have some big goals for myself but I’ve put them in perspective and painted them more realistically.

Playtime is here…

Remember when you were a kid and sometimes you would just play for hours?  As you got older the idea of what was cool to play with changed and perhaps you gave up playing all together.  Well I am here to tell you that playing is not only helpful to your business efforts but it may help you to relieve some of that stress.  Do you think it’s about time you decided to incorporate a sense of play into your business?

I was reading jcCommerce the other day and there was a point in Jason’s post that I really liked…

10.  Something Stupid

 If you go in any good entrepreneur’s office / cubicle / hole-in-the-wall there will be a stupid toy of some sort.  Mine is a Nerf dart gun.  Yours might be a binary clock or a remote-controlled battle tank. 

 

Whatever it is, keep something stupid in your office and play with it when the mood strikes you. Its stress relief, and lord knows there’s enough stress when starting a business.

Source: jcCommerce Blog 

Business is not a race towards a finish line.  You will never reach that imaginary finish line because it is only as real as the effort you put into it which is why you’ve got to celebrate your successes in your life, both professionally and personally.  If you already have instituted some sort of play feel free to share it with the rest of us.

Lucas

Learning to “play” again