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Taking Being a Business Owner to Heart

January 22, 2014 by Thomas Leave a Comment

Stress in the workplace can take its toll on your health.

As a small business owner, lowering your stress level is vital to your health.  It is also crucial to your performance and ability to work effectively over the long haul.

Follow along as we look at the effects of being a business owner and what you can do to turn things around.

As Big of a Threat ‘As Smoking or Not Exercising’

This characterization from the University of Maryland Medical Center describes the body of research studies that look at job-related stress.  The threat of job-related stress to health is comparable to smoking or not exercising, it proclaims.

The document also states that nearly half of all American workers say that their jobs are “very stressful.”

While some of the biggest job-related stressors don’t affect business owners, such as having no control over one’s responsibilities, lack of job security, and others – these factors still affect owners in other ways, such as making sure the business has enough work/clients.  Other stressors still apply to business owners, such as too much time away from home and family and pay concerns.

One of the most important effects of stress is that of the heart.

A recent study analyzed data from thousands of responders, and it found that those who believed that stress significantly affected their health had twice the risk of coronary heart disease.

It highlighted some other staggering claims of stress and heart health, including a statistic that women in highly stressful jobs are 40 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack.

All of the data suggests that stress can have a significant impact not only on your heart – but your overall stress. Bottom line, the risks are great.

Ways to Overcome Stress

It might not be possible to completely eliminate stress.  But by paying attention to it inside and outside of your work environment, you can certainly alleviate its effects and help both your career and your health.

Here are some ideas that can help you work on overcoming stress:

• Delegate –  It’s OK to let some of the responsibilities go to ease the burden on yourself.  This is a key step to growing the business as well.  Put together a plan for easing the workload to lessen the stress and improve the efficiency of your business.

• Go over your processes, technology, and how your business runs –  Examine inefficiencies that can be improved upon to eliminate unnecessary time, resources, and steps.

• Don’t underestimate the value of a good support system – Talk to family and friends on a regular basis, and don’t be afraid to ask for help – regardless of the situation.

The issue could be that you have too many priorities, responsibilities, and that the overall workload is simply too much.  It may be time to hire an additional person or find a way to help balance it all.

Take a long, hard look at the situation to see if you can get to the heart of the matter.

Photo credit: under30ceo.com

About the Author: Joyce Morse covers an array of subjects, among which include marketing, small business and social media.

Filed Under: Business Life Tagged With: bc, business owner, health, heart, stress

How Do You Stay Connected to Yourself?

November 26, 2010 by Liz Leave a Comment

When Your Head Says Yes, But Your Heart Says No

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When we’re born, our hearts are fully wired to our brains. I’m sure of that. We cry when we’re hungry. We cry when we’re mad. Then we learn about things like “good behavior,” and “inside voices.” Then our brains start thinking about where, when, and how to follow our feelings and when, where, and how to over-rule them.

Figuring out the which is what and where is a complicated burden, so for many of us it becomes easier to choose one — usually the brain — as the default. How many times have you heard someone say, “Use your head. What were you thinking?” Or we might choose a brain default for business and a heart default for social situations.

Seriously, that’s a dis-connection. It’s as if we turn off part of our input and output systems most of the time we’re living.

Inner conflict like that can leave us with no certain direction and huge pent up emotion.
It’s hard to take action when you don’t where you’re going.

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What if we re-connected ourselves to rewire our brains to our hearts — our thoughts to our feelings? It’s not such an outrageous idea. Getting out of our heads to consider situations often gives us perspective into the other people we’re seeing, how they might be feeling, even when to listen.

Being too much in our heads puts our focus on the work not the people doing it, on the product or service not the people who will use it. Being too much in our hearts gets us lost in a labyrinth of feelings without the ability to see clarity of logical reasoning.

But together head and heart can fill out the picture with meaning.

When you’re overthinking, ask yourself what makes me feel this is so important?
When you’re filled with huge feelings, ask yourself why you’re so emotionally invested?
Then check in with your hands and your feet to see which direction they seem to be recommending.

Don’t respond or react until you’ve rewired, reconnected, and rebalanced your view of the situation.

How do you stay connected to yourself?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Filed Under: Motivation, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, connection, direction, head, heart, integration, LinkedIn

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