End-year is a difficult time for most small business owners. Besides preparing your store for peak season, you have to worry about end-year business goals, family time, and still plan for next year because you don’t want to start 2020 without a master plan.
All these things can pile up into stress. And nothing is wrong with stress unless it overpowers you and sends you into an endless cycle of “all worries and no action.” Yes, an entrepreneur needs just the right dose of stress to stay on their toes. But the many demands of the holiday season can make your life more stressful if you’re not ready to deal with worries.
An entire 54 percent of business owners find holiday season stressful, according to a study by the Bank of America.
Another 60 percent anticipate challenges this festive season. Stresses revolve around the following issues;
- Striking a balance between job and personal life (42 percent),
- Stirring demand among consumers (37 percent) and
- Maintaining competitive prices (36 percent).
So how can a business owner turn stress into constructive energy?
Stress is a never-ending part of our lives, and recovery is your only way out. A business owner must learn to find their feet when times are hard, get used to what they can’t change, and solve their worries.
What causes stress anyway? Indecision, overthinking about a matter, fear of the future, having too much to handle—all these can be dealt with in one way or another.
Analyze your stresses and learn their sources, then you can start dealing with them one by one. Make stress management a mini-project. Take some to time analyze your day’s stresses and how to tackle them head-on.
Pressure piles up when we accumulate matters and worry around them— than when we resolve issues reasonably and be optimistic about the outcomes.
The report by Bank of America also investigated the many ways business owners are working their way around festive season stress. Here’s what they found;
- 48 percent – Paying extra attention to stress management
- 38 percent – Taking a retreat
- 25 percent – Preparing to handle the buzz of activities in the workplace
- 29 percent – Offering staffs bonuses and festive season perks
- 28 percent – holding community charity programs
- Almost 75 percent – spending time with pals and relatives
How else do you deal with your holiday stress? You can try the above strategies to see what works for you.
In conclusion
Not all stress is bad stress. This festive season; focus on channeling all negative energy to productive work, and don’t hesitate to take a break when you’re all worked up.
Author Bio: Michael Hollis is a Detroit native who now lives in Los Angeles. He is an account executive who has helped hundreds of business owners get alternative small business loans. He’s experimented with various occupations: computer programming, dog-training, scientificating… But his favorite job is the one he’s now doing full time — providing business funding for hard-working business owners across the country.
Leave a Reply