Pressure & Stress = Difficult Decisions = Stress & Pressure
The life of anyone running their own business.
Yesterday I was at an event for business owners and within an hour of arriving, I’d had guys tell me about acrimoniously splitting up a family business, the pitfalls of working with friends, the risk/reward of scaling to meet demand, the pressure to make payroll in the bad months and the physical/mental exhaustion of maximising sales and delivery in the good times.
It’s relentless.
And yet, almost no one stops to think about what’s really directing their thinking and creating their emotional state.
Why do some decisions feel risky but others don’t? Why do you lean into one part of the business and avoid another?
What happens between your ears is upstream of everything else - lead generation, sales, hiring or strategy - because it drives all of it.
Earlier this week, I went for therapy. In just one session, I came face-to-face with the part of me that believed nothing I did was ever good enough.
Prior to the session, my way of dealing this part of me was to intellectualise it as an emergent psychological property for a hierarchical mammal. Or to hate it and wish I wasn't so hard on myself.
I now know that that part of me had a job to do. It showed up about 10 years ago when I’d burned out, left a career, and had to start again.
I needed drive. I needed to find an edge. And it gave it to me.
But what serves you at one stage of life can quietly start to work against you in the next.
At that event yesterday, someone said to me:
“You’re really happy, aren’t you? You seem at ease with who you are.”
I don’t fight that part of me that thinks nothing is good enough anymore. I understand it. I respect what it gave me but I know that I don’t need it anymore.
Most entrepreneurs are still being driven by patterns they needed years ago. Patterns that helped them survive. Build. Prove something.
But those self same patterns are now creating fear, doubt or friction in how they operate.
The work isn’t to ignore or push past those parts of you. It’s to recognise them, and decide whether they still belong in the life and business you’re building now.
Ask yourself, “What part of me is driving this, and do I still need it?”
