Whatever you do, don’t lose control

If you think back over the most stressful times in your life – illness for yourself or a family member, loss of a job or major client, a death in the family – I would venture to say that there’s a common thread through all of these stressful times: Lack of control.

Because home-based entrepreneurs see themselves as pioneers, we pride ourselves on our take-charge attitudes and get-it-done approach to life. Therefore, not being in charge of what’s happening can cause us a great deal of anxiety. We want to fix things, now. When we can’t fix things, or we don’t know how to fix things, we can become very stressed and even freak out a bit.

When faced with a situation where you’re not in control, here are three ways you can maintain an even keel, despite the foul weather:

Find something you CAN control.

When the world is spinning away from you, it can feel like there’s nothing you can control. Not true! In any situation, there’s SOMETHING you can control. Let’s say your major client is having financial difficulties. You may think you are at the whim of their financial ups-and-downs, but you can start regaining a feeling of control by searching out other clients to replace this financially strapped client if they would need to part ways with you. Or you could get your own finances in order and do some proactive belt-tightening so that the loss of one client doesn’t send your world into a tailspin.
You are NOT helpless, and the sooner you find something to control, the sooner you’ll feel less anxious about the future.
Focus on the moment.

Stress comes when we stop focusing on the here and now and start ruminating over the horrible things we wish hadn’t happened yesterday, or about the horrible things we fear will happen tomorrow. If we ground ourselves in the present moment, we find we’re still alive, still functioning, and still able to make decisions. Once we lose site of that fact, though, the stress seeps in. When your thoughts start spinning out of control, gently reel them back in. Take a few deep breaths, remind yourself that you are okay, right now, and then find something productive to do in this moment to protect against what you fear.
This may be difficult for some people to do because they honestly don’t believe they can control their thoughts. It’s true that when our mind is spinning out of control, thoughts do seem to just keep popping into your head. One method health professionals use to quiet discomforted patients is with visualization and repeating positive phrases. This actually does help to quiet the mind so you can gain control, once again, of your thought processes. Once you have quieted your mind, you can choose to focus on the here and now and take back control.
Remind yourself of your expertise and experience.

Stress also comes when we are afraid we can’t handle the horrific scenarios we’ve created for ourselves when we doubt our competence. If our client goes away, then what? If the economy tanks further, then what? If our website crashes, then what? If we knew we’d be okay in the future because we have the expertise to handle these situations, the stress about the future would be a thing of the past.

One tip to combat that stress is to remind yourself of all the tough circumstances you’ve already navigated through successfully. Think about situations you went through in the past and how you handled them. While past success is no guarantee of future performance, as they say in the stock market, it still is a pretty good indication of how things will turn out.

I bet you a dollar you are not setting

priorities.

If the basics of reading and writing are learning your ABCs, the basics of work-at-home success is setting your priorities. If you don’t have a set of priorities by which to guide your business, your day, and your week, you are at the mercy of circumstance. Happenstance is for people who play the lottery; not for entrepreneurs, and definitely not for the Corporate Mom Dropout who has to juggle everything and everybody.

You sit down at the computer to begin work on your to-do list, and the emails start coming in. Instead of having a way to rate the importance and urgency of each request and item on your list, you just respond to whatever is front and center – which is usually whatever email or phone call has come in most recently. Then the end of the day comes, and you still have as many items on your to-do list as you started with. The stress starts to mount as your business goals recede farther and farther into the distance.

So what’s the solution? Setting priorities. When you have a list of goals and priorities, you have a map for your future.

My advice is to set one or two business objectives for each quarter of the year. You may choose to launch a new product the first quarter of the year, revamp your website during the second quarter, create marketing materials for the third quarter, and develop an outsourcing strategy for the fourth quarter.

The following is my favorite process for breaking down a large objective into daily, weekly, and monthly priorities:

• Start with your quarterly objective.
• Ask yourself, what would have to happen this month to achieve this objective?
• What would have to happen this week?
• What would have to happen today?

Once you have defined what needs to happen each day, week, month, and quarter, put those items on your calendar and to-do list with a big star next to them. Now you know what has to be completed every day before you start answering phone calls or emails. No matter what the rest of the day brings, you know you have completed the things that will most move your business forward.

This small routine will help reduce your stress because you’ll no longer lie in bed, wondering what the heck you accomplished that day. Instead, you will have taken concrete steps towards achieving your most important goals. (P.S. This works great with personal goals, too!).

Now that you have your priorities set for each day, week, month, and quarter, how will you know if all that work will fit into your schedule?  Let’s take a look at how you can manage those fleeting 24 hours we all have to work within. Stay tuned there is more coming…

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Great Expectations Quiz: Lucinda Cross

Posted by Nicole Feliciano on Friday, February 12, 2010

It’s baby number three for author and blogger Lucinda Cross. Lucinda’s writing (www.corporatemomdropouts.com) focuses on Moms that have left behind corporate jobs for motherhood and are in the process of reinventing themselves. Let’s check in to see if she’s squared away in other matters of motherhood!

Click here for the her answers to the quiz