Stress Management For The Busy Entrepreneur
Being an entrepreneur may have driven you out of your home and probably has caused misunderstandings and miscommunication between you and your family. While you may be too focused on making your business to become successful, you are losing your family and friends, and even yourself. Entrepreneurs have a huge burden to carry once they start putting up the business because it can demand so much time and energy that could drain them eventually. Any startup business will require long hours of work to the point of even bringing home some of the tasks for the day.
An entrepreneur is expected to be hardworking, brave and intelligent. After all, if one has a “weak heart” in facing all the trials in a business, then the business will never succeed. But sometimes, having to deal with the same things over and over can just make your brain shut down from functioning properly, thus, you lose the ability to solve problems, to rationally think and to make decisions. When this happens, it will be difficult for you to see how things really are. Does it sound familiar?
Work-related stress is costing the economy a huge amount of money in a year where there is an increase in the number of deaths each year due to workplace stress. Such health conditions are a heart attack, stroke, diabetes, anxiety, and depression. Should people work to live or live to work?
Stress in inevitable and we all react to circumstances differently. Therefore, how we
Sobel (2008), an entrepreneur is “someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. An entrepreneur is an agent of change”. Sometimes becoming a successful entrepreneur is not about whether or not you have your M.B.A, it’s about your willingness to dedicate part of your life, money, and everything else to fulfilling your dreams. As Sobel’s definition includes the word “manages”, many entrepreneurs do have an advanced degree in some form of business to provide them with the knowledge to successfully manage their company. This provides them with the ability to handle their own payroll, accounts payable and receivable, and human resources. Entrepreneurs have many risks involved when beginning their company, such as: not succeeding, running out of money, or having to relocate. These risks were more common years ago when investors were not so easy to find and money was not so loosely handed out. Today’s entrepreneurs can usually fund themselves or have plenty of support from individual or group of investors. However, no matter the monetary support you have, an entrepreneur must make their company appeal to the public or their targeted group of customers. A successful entrepreneur cannot give up when things get tough, they have to accept what happened, provide a solution, and move
At the psychological level, stressful and poor working conditions can cause continuing feelings of humiliation, insecurity and worthlessness. Not having a secure understanding of the future can cause large amounts of anxiety and futility that roots high levels of fatigue from day-to-day life, therefore making everyday coping difficult. Individuals who experience high levels of prolonged stress often attempt to relieve these pressures by adopting unhealthy coping behaviours; for example, the excessive use of alcohol, smoking, and
Introduction Stress affects millions of people. One of the most common forms of stress is that related to our careers and the workplace. In today 's economic difficulty, work related stress is even more pronounced than ever before. Everyone who has ever held a job has, felt the pressure of work-related stress. Any job can have stressful elements, even if you love what you do. According to the American Psychological Association 's (APA) annual Stress in America Survey. Only 37 percent of Americans surveyed said they were doing
Research strongly suggests that workaholism may cause serious threats to the worker’s health and can even result in death
There are numerous challenges that organizations are faced with in order for them to survive and grow. These challenges are mainly faced by people who are tasked with making decisions on a daily basis within the organizations because a majority of the challenges are human based. The employees working in an organization are likely to suffer from occupational stress depending on their work. Occupational stress comes along when an employee is faced with demands within the workplace, and they are not able to complete or carry out these demands. The failure to complete the demands placed upon them would cause the employee mental and physical strain as their body would have a physiological reaction. According to research there are various factors that contribute to stress in the workplace. These factors include isolation, extensive working hours, negative workloads, unhealthy working environments, harassment, bullying by management, and lack of motivation or advancement opportunities. The factors mentioned are not exhaustive as there might be other causes to occupational stress depending on the individual or employees.
Business corporations are instituted for the primary purpose of economic gain. Often, as the pressure to show impressive profits in each financial quarter increases, it is the workforce who are put under undue stress. Ranging from unreasonably high productivity standards, to sub-standard and hazardous work environments, workers face several potential risks to their mental and physical health. The paradox lies in the fact that an unhealthy and burnt-out workforce is less productive than that which is relaxed and
Entrepreneurs are risk takers in the market. They are willing to gamble their hard work for a business that may fail or succeed. Many fail to keep their business alive, however; others are lucky to compete and survive in the market. Entrepreneurs like Maribel Galsim, owner of Maribel’s Daycare, were successful in their business. Maribel’s Daycare was successful because of hard work, patience, and being adaptable.
Studies have suggested work stress levels peak at age 50-55 years (Work Stress Peaks During Middle Age, 2015). Stress is usually handled by one of two ways – effective coping which leads to healthy lifestyle choices and stress response which usually leads to negative health factors (Depp & Jeste, 2010) like smoking, sleeping less, drinking more alcohol and developing poor nutrition habits. Stress is also found to enable developing of illnesses like Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease and diabetes (Alzheimer's Society, 2015).
The race of getting up at the same time every day, fighting rush hour traffic on the drive to and from the office, doing the same job at the same place day after day and having little time to spend with family can become a grater. By becoming an entrepreneur, you may have the luxury of creating a flexible work schedule that allows you to attend to many other things by schedule. If you choose a business venture that allows you to work at home, you can avoid the work going back and forth altogether.
According to WebMD (2012), Forty percent of U.S. workers admit to experiencing office stress, and one-quarter say work is the biggest source of stress in their lives.
It is evident that the relationship between work stress and mental health has been established by numerous research studies. As discussed in Koesky (1993), the fact that all jobs involve some degree of stress makes it all the more alarming as to the level of stress experienced by individuals working in the human services. That is, given that these individuals are heavily involved in the lives of others, they often develop mental health symptoms that are characteristic of work-related stressors. In fact, “This involvement, which requires caring commitment and empathic responding, places workers at risk for a special type of strain commonly referred to as 'burnout'” (Koesky, 1993, p. 319).
The reason that I chose this article is because it directly affects my life. My wife, who works in an Emergency 911 Call Center, is currently experiencing issues that were discussed in the article. In the article, it states that if an employee fails to maintain good health due to increased demand at work and work stress they will eventually become physically and emotionally worn out (Zhong et al., 2009). With the employee becoming worn out their job satisfaction will suffer and it will adversely affect the organization (Zhong et al., 2009). The main goal of modern organizational management is to increase the employee’s motivation and their capabilities so that it maximizes job satisfaction and their performance in the organization (Pfeffer,
We spend much of daily lives working. In fact, Americans spend about eight-times as many hours working as they do eating and drinking (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013). Approximately seven in ten Americans report that they experience symptoms of stress (Anderson, Belar, Breckler, Nordal, Ballard, Bufka, Bossolo & Bethune, 2013). Stress is elicited by a variety of psychological stimulus associated with our jobs, our residences, our social interactions, and the activities we engage in (p. 249, Franken, 2007). Many Americans live with the burden of an unsatisfying job as well as a stressful workplace. An online survey of 1,848 people in the United States, conducted by the American Psychological Association, found that 74 percent of
Starting a business is the latest trend. Just take a look at Instagram. Several profiles have the caption ‘Entrepreneur’. At this very moment, there is someone, somewhere working on an idea, a business plan or launching a startup. Entrepreneurship is on the rise like never before. The flexibility and independence that comes with being one’s own boss is attractive and worth taking the leap in starting a business. However, most people don’t know that being an entrepreneur is a grueling journey that can be very lonely and stressful at times. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), 50% of businesses fail during the first year. Starting a business can be a scary task, but the
Stress is a common issue that faces every human being in different times. Stress can be caused by many factors, but one of the main reasons is work which is called occupational stress or work-related stress. Job stress does not only affect the employees’ performance within an organization, but also it affects their general health. Stress has become a challenge for employers now because high level stress results in low productivity, increased absenteeism and other problems like alcoholism, drug abuse and hypertension (Ahmad, Mohamed. 2017). It became a major problem for employers especially in developing countries where they don’t realize the importance of work-life balance and the impact of stress on the productivity level and the job