Over the past 20+ years of entrepreneurship, I’ve been wrong many times.
Most of the time, my mistakes were fairly low stakes - no one dies when you forget your extra camera battery at a photoshoot, after all.
But I’ve also had my fair share of shame-inducing moments, times when I wished I had an invisibility coat to quickly put on so I would never have to show my face around my peers again.
You already know that we all make mistakes, but I wonder, do you have a strategy for how you find your way back from rough business waters? Most people don’t. Most hope to simply avoid mistakes altogether and never consider how they will handle it when things go wrong.
But you should. Because things will go wrong.
No one is guaranteed a smooth ride. Strategy is what will minimize those bumps so that you can keep your business sailing and avoid having to get a fake identity in Mexico.
Finding your anchor points in turbulent Business Times.
Step 1: Breathe Deeply.
That might sound trite by study after study has shown that breathing deeply genuinely helps to reduce our stress levels. According to stress.com, “Deep breathing increases the supply of oxygen to your brain and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes a state of calmness. Breathing techniques help you feel connected to your body—it brings your awareness away from the worries in your head and quiets your mind.”
Breathing deeply helps you to stop the panic cycle that might be happening in your head after a mistake has been made. Instead of feeling like running from the problem, it helps to anchor you in your body, so that you can handle the issue with greater clarity and from a place that is proactive, not reactive. That’s particularly important if you are inclined to react with a lot of emotion right away.
Step 2: Remember who you are.
For a lot of us, our work often feels like our identity. It isn’t.
Work is something you output. The value of your existence is not simply about that output; you are worth so much more than what you produce or the role you fulfil.
Sure, you may have made a monumental mistake -the mother of all mistakes. But very rarely are mistakes in business life-defining moments. We think they are because we tend to only remember extreme examples of when the proverbial *ahem hit the fan.
Remembering your value as a human, wife, mother, sister, friend, chess champion, volunteer organizer, etc. will help hold things in perspective in turbulent business times.
Step 3: Let small things be small things and big things be big things.
If the situation is really that critical, acknowledge that. It does you no good to downplay critical issues, nor does it help to dramatize smaller issues. Knowing this difference and reacting with the appropriate level of action is a key part of finding your anchor points. If it pushes emotional buttons too much, you may overreact and make the situation worse. If you fail to recognize something severe, you may harm your reputation permanently. Neither one of those outcomes is desirable.
Instead, carefully weigh out the issue. Who is actually affected and how big is that effect? What emotions might be out of alignment with the actual issue? Are you (or someone else) reacting from a place of defensiveness?
In business, you will encounter hard times. But what you do from there can make all the difference in the outcome. So the next time your business hits turbulent times, remember to use these easy strategies to find your anchor points to pull you through.