Emotional Entrepreneurs:
Emotions & Business DO Mix, But Learn To Harness Them

Many people say emotions have no place in business. Saying emotions have a place in business, according to some, is an oxymoron. It’s an impossible thing to do. Perhaps you agree, but first, let’s see what is involved here.

What, exactly, are emotions? The dictionary defines emotion as a state of mind that arises spontaneously as opposed to any conscious effort. It’s often accompanied by changes in body functions and all of its processes, its physiology. During an emotional experience, one may get emotional feelings of joy, sorrow, reverence, hate or love. From the definition, it is easy to see why some say emotions should be excluded from all business proceedings. But this can’t be; it’s not an oxymoron, it’s an impossibility!

Why?

It is certainly necessary for one to control emotions in every situation, business or not. Out-of-control emotions may cause people to betray their real feelings in negotiations or other business situations. An overly excited entrepreneur may have a shaky voice which betrays his emotional response to some critical situation. Or, an entrepreneur may become so excited about good fortune they forget to use good judgment and make a poor emotional decision that might cost money.

Every decision to begin a new business is an ongoing emotional experience requiring extreme concentration and the ability to stay focused on the difficult project you are pursuing. When unfamiliar circumstances arise requiring unfamiliar decisions, when every plan so carefully analyzed fails miserably, when unexpected financial problems arise, with no money in sight to solve them, and when a host of other problems continue to churn all around your fledgling business, what in the world are you going to do? Your emotions are going to take over and you begin to ask yourself why in the world you ever even thought about going into this new business? You obviously made the wrong decisions, all your planning was wrong, and the only thing to do is to cut your losses, quit, and go back to whatever it was you were doing before this ill advised venture. That’s what your initial emotional response is going to be. You are overwhelmed, you never before have experienced any of these cruel events, you don’t know what to do or where to turn for held. There’s no question about it: you are emotionally instructing yourself to quit.

But what will this accomplish? You will forever have a negative aura among your friends, and everyone will think of you as a quitter who could not stand the heat and jumped out of the frying pan. You must be passionately involved in your new business. Such fierce and undying passion will create the endurance you need from your emotions to carry you through all these difficult and unexpected periods of continuing problems. They just won’t go away; your emotional stability is the only thing you can depend on to sustain you and carry you through to eventual success. To enable yourself to go through this difficult period of starting and nurturing your new business, you must develop ways to acquire the required emotional toughness and stamina to keep you on an even keel through high levels of mental, physical, and spiritual stamina.

How can we build this emotional stamina?

Listen to your intuition and trust yourself. The decisions you make at this point will be based on the best information you have, but it will be nowhere near the complete set of information any decision-maker would like. This being the case, you simply have to decide based on what you know at the time, stop doubting yourself, don’t question your decisions, and move on as best you can. As more information becomes available, adjust your decisions as needed, but never question them until they are absolutely proven to be wrong.

Realize that where you are is where you need to be at this very minute. You don’t need to be somewhere else in your fantasy life with more success, more money, and a better life. You are where you are and you need to see this is where you need to be. If you are in some other virtual location, you will never be in control of what is happening around you. It is what it is and some virtual reality is not what it is. Deal with your reality.

As a new entrepreneur, you probably initially believed yourself to be invincible, especially if you are under 30. You feel on top of your personal game and you can make no mistakes. You don’t need advice from anyone who may try and tell you what to do about anything. When a seemingly insurmountable problem appears, it begins to take all your energy, your less helpful emotions like fear, anger, and defeat begin to tug at your spiritual level, and you become discouraged. This is when you must have the emotional stamina to find and ask for the best help available to you, even if it is expensive. There are many services available to entrepreneurs in every community and on the Internet. Don’t be afraid to seek them and use them; many are free, paid for by general tax funds. You are just as entitled as anyone else; use them.

When you begin to take charge of your emotions and find ways to get information you have not had before, you need to take a little time to contemplate the small movements of progress happening to you. Congratulate yourself on the little things you have accomplished and congratulate yourself on all these little things.

The unsettled atmosphere surrounding your new venture will always generate the emotion of fear to some degree. Strange as it seems, fear may be fear of success just as much as fear of failure. If you succeed, you will have to continue facing all these problems and you will be in a continuous state of having to make difficult decisions based on incomplete data; failure is worse. You may lose a lot of money and you will be burdened always by your failure. When fear arises, acknowledge it and realize it will pass, just as fear always does; after the first lump in your throat, the feeling (the fear emotion) begins to subside and go away.

Fear causes thoughts of inadequacy like not being ready for something, needing additional supplies, lack of knowledge, or just a simple feeling of “I can’t...” These are all negative ideas that hold us back from accomplishing what we need to do. Ideas that help to overcome our fears and move us forward include affirmation that we know all that we need to know for right now, that we are ready for whatever may happen, and, most important, “I can...”

Acknowledging the Nike slogan, “Just do it!” is an excellent antidote for emotional fear. Action is an excellent way to deal with and overcome. We just need to take some action, mental or physical. Anything will help overcome fear, whether the action is mental or physical. Just make yourself do something positive that will change your negative fear emotions onto joyful success emotions.

Johann Von Goethe once said, “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Some actions that will help overcome fear are:

• Take care of your fear emotions the same way whenever they occur.
  
  
• Promise yourself you will confront and conquer your fears.
  
• Read about or otherwise learn about others who may be your role models.
  
  
• Fear often comes along with some kind of change. Practice making changes frequently, and soon fear of change will not be a regular emotion.
  
  
• Treat yourself to any small accomplishment on a regular business. Get used to success and expect it.
  
  
• Make yourself maintain a positive attitude; negativism destroys, positivism creates.

Other things you can do to deal with the uncertainty of your growing business are to learn to say “yes” to those things you really want to do; on a continuing basis, this will build you inner confidence. And learn to say “no” to those things you do not wish to do; This is at least as important as “yes,” because failure to say “no” causes one to overload with work others should be doing or that does not need to be done. Failure to say “no” ultimately leads to wasted time and money and, perhaps, a wasted business.

One of the greatest challenges to a new entrepreneur is how to confront the emotions generated by constant change. This always means a trip into the unknown which generates some fear in most people. The very idea of change causes blood pressure to rise. In preparation for change, the eyes may widen, perhaps there will be a little crying or shaking, or a host of other possible reactions. We have discussed the fear emotion, so what sort of preparation can we make to reduce the element of fear? Proper preparation will reduce fear feelings of despair, but how do we prepare?

As we define and confront everyday happenings in our lives, we are always preparing for change, whether we realize it or not. Everything that happens to us during the daily act of living carries some element of change. It is necessary for us to keep our personal affairs in good order so they do not suddenly erupt in catastrophe while we are trying to negotiate the way through some important business situation. Some things to go on and do and tuck them out of the way are:

1. To the best of your ability, take care of known medical conditions that may exist for ourselves and our families. There is nothing you can do to avoid the possibility of an accident and injury to a child, for example, but you can take care of problems you know about. Get your doctor visits and treatment out of the way to minimize the risk that your health will deteriorate at a time that would be detrimental to you business.

2. We all need housing and transportation; these require upkeep so we can continue to use them. Be sure all maintenance and repairs are out of the way so you don’t have to worry about them while trying to get your new business going.

3. My personal experience has shown me how distracting tax issues and unpaid bills can be. You can never get these things completely out of your mind. Whatever you do, have your finances in as good order as you can; you don’t need this serious kind of emotional distress on top of everything else that is running around in your mind.

4. Family relationships are another possibly serious cause of deal-busting emotional outbursts. Something like a festering divorce can cause everything else to come to a standstill. Get these solved and out of the way as quickly as you can. You should probably wait until settlement is in sight before plunging into any new enterprise.

The element of dealing with change also means getting out of our comfort zone, the possibility of doing things we are unaccustomed to do. Even if we are not in a change situation, the mere facts of trying to do our best and living our daily lives will ever-so-slowly ease us out of our normal ways. Every time this happens, we become accustomed to new things and open new areas for achievement everywhere in our lives; these are opportunities to achieve our true potential that Abraham Mazlow calls “self-actualization.”

You can help yourself expand your comfortable space by writing your thoughts in an ongoing journal. Read your thoughts often to reinforce your instincts. It is also effective to talk to yourself about positive aspects of your daily life. Never dwell on negatives; this will totally destroy any successes you may be expecting. Never mind if people make jokes about your self-talking; you are smarter than they are and you are keeping the best counsel you can have; but always stay positive. After you have taken action, trust yourself in whatever decisions you have made. Expect them to be correct; if you think about failure, it will probably happen.

There are some places on the Internet where, for a fee, you can get counseling in how to control your emotions in a way to help you succeed in business. One place I found is The Emotional Endurance® Institute.

Let’s again consider the original concept that emotions in business constitutes an oxymoron. This cannot be true, because deep passion for what you are doing is the only way an entrepreneur can remain focused during the constant mayhem around every new venture. Imagine starting a successful business without the emotional thrill that goes along with accomplishing your goal. Your hard work brings in several very large orders and you begin to accumulate a little cash. Doesn’t this deserve some emotional rejoicing? If you don’t experience satisfying emotions when things work, how can you bear the times when plans fail?

Along with accepting joyful emotions, an entrepreneur must learn how to recognize when a decision is based on some irrational response. For example, you have pursued a business plan that repeatedly does not work, yet you continue to go along with it and lose money all along. Rather than stop and figure a better way, you doggedly hang on because you are emotionally attached to the bad plan. You must develop a sense of when to turn emotions over to logical thinking.

Just as hanging on too long is irrational, so is the other end of the spectrum where one or two setbacks cause you to terminate your plan prematurely before it has a chance to succeed. All of this can be avoided if you take the time to determine how to control your emotions. Raise your consciousness level to know when you are about to make an irrational decision based only on emotion. You must have the correct emotions to stay focused on your passion.

Having a flourishing business is not just about money. Why did you decide to become self-employed? Did you hate your job? Was there a great idea nobody else was doing? Was the commute impossible? Were you afraid of a terrorist attack in the large city where you worked? Was the cost of gasoline about to ground you? There are a lot more reasons other than money that make entrepreneurship rewarding.

As long as people run businesses, there will be emotions involved. This is no oxymoron; it just means every entrepreneur needs to understand his emotions and make every effort to control them. There have been people with very high IQs who suffered horrible brain damage that destroyed the portion of the brain that provides emotion. They were otherwise undamaged and healthy. The result of recent studies shows that people like this, in spite of very high intelligence, can no longer make good decisions without the ability to provide normal emotion.

Do you still think business emotion is an oxymoron?

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© Yank Elliott. All rights reserved worldwide.
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Yank is a home-based entrepreneur and freelance business writer living in Hurricane Alley, North Carolina, USA. His Website is http://www.alternate-choice.com and you may contact Yank at mailto:newideas@alternate-choice.com.