Our brains are powerful. We force ourselves to get up each morning and be productive. We build multi-hundred thousand, to multi-hundred million dollar businesses. And sometimes more.
We work around the clock, never relenting. Never pausing. Never even taking a chance to reflect on the most important details of our lives or business.
And then eventually, after weeks, months, or years of this behavior, the wheels start to fall off the bus, and we’re left with the worst entrepreneurial burnout one can imagine.
Zero motivation. Zero drive to make money. Zero ability to execute. The zest, productivity, and ambition is all gone. Like it just left your body like a spirit does in movies where a person dies, and the clear, body shaped, translucent being floats into the abyss.
It’s quite the alarming situation. And it happens to the best of us. But – what I really want to talk about here is a kind of constant burnout. A looming influenza attacking your vitality and motivation, leaving you blocked from being your normal, awesome self.
This is not just burnout. This is a low to high level stress in your body that always exists. It results from you waking up everyday, and without question, being in GO gear all of the time. It’s highly dangerous, to your health and productivity, and it acts as a gatekeeper and barrier to your normal, powerful self.
Entrepreneurial Stress
So much of what we do, contributes to our stress. We do most of it ourselves, and most of us don’t realize it. We think we’re ok because we’re walking around, feeling energized, making decisions. When inside, we’re beaten down, in desperate need of peace, seemingly trapped.
But we’re not ok. We are in constant fight or flight mode. It is highly likely that most entrepreneurs in this walking state, have elevated levels of cortisol (a stress hormone), and other related hormones that fire off when fight or flight arrives (Epinephrine, etc). This is toxic to the body, and toxic to your brain. It leaves you blocked.
Blocked
Blocked from meaning. Blocked from enjoyment. Blocked from motivation. Blocked from life. You’re blocked from that zest you once had. Blocked from happiness. Blocked from the desire to be ambitious. Sigh – It’s a terrible place to be.
When I am in this state, I don’t even have the desire to approach fixing problems I know are building in the background. I don’t even have the ambition to repair things in my business that are broken, and heading for disaster. There could be train wrecks in the making, and I will just let everything crash and burn.
This is how you know you’re blocked. Blocked from feeling good. Blocked from giving a shit. Blocked from unblocking yourself. This is the ultimate bottom. When you can’t even muster the motivation to unblock yourself. It’s the worst place to be. The lowest of the low. And the way out actually isn’t what you think.
The way out doesn’t involve taking action. You can’t aggressively unblock yourself from being blocked by entrepreneurial burnout. The only way out, is inaction. And maybe some supplements.
Inaction – When burnout strikes
If you want to cure a burnout, one of the best ways to do so, if you have the time is to do nothing. Nothing at all. No work. No emails. No phone calls. But most importantly, no worrying. I once recovered greatly from a burnout when I had the flu. It was such an insanely powerful strand of influenza (I presume), that I could not get out of my bed for about 4 days. The only times I did were to eat, go to the bathroom, and take freezing cold showers.
I sat in bed and essentially toggled between sleeping, and watching Louie CK’s show on Netflix, episode after episode. On day 5 or so, once the majority of the severe flu symptoms had passed, I realized something remarkable. I had an intense motivation to get back to work. I was revitalized about some of the areas in my iPad repair company I haven’t felt motivated about in months. I was anxious to get back to work, a notion that was a laughable impossibility in the weeks previous.
It could be a vacation (if you have the time, ability, and money), or it could literally be sitting in your bedroom, house, or apartment for 5-7 days. But this complete downtime and negative space, is necessary. Inaction is necessary. Ceasing of worry and anxiety is necessary. You have to kill your thoughts. You have to kill them dead.
This is the main point. Yes – it is the constant workload and never ending engagement that burns you out. But at the root of that is an excessive flood of thoughts. An overload of mental activity, most of which is WORRY.
Worry – and stress levels
Worry is your worst enemy. Worry is the reaper that creeps around your home at night, waiting to axe you to a bloody death. Worry has the capacity to fully shut you down. It is the ultimate precursor to stress.
But how do we define stress in an entrepreneurial context? Simple: A brain that won’t shut down. One that’s particularly focused on problems. This is hard to avoid, because your life as a mover and shaker will always be accompanied by problems. Continued problems. They will never go away. They’re always going to be there, right around the corner, ready to make you feel like the world is coming to an end.
This stress rots you to the core. It’s a toxic evil that should be dealt with like the highest priority fire needs to be dealt with in the operations of your business. It’s this overactivity of the brain, and constant worry that you need to target. It’s stress that you have to kill.
Supplements
Supplements are a wonderful thing. Especially herbal ones. There are wise people on the planet that use a myriad of plants to solve some of the most common human ailments that plague not only business people, but people all around the world. They have discovered that the plant world holds solutions to many of our problems. And though we’ve adopted their ways here in America, we probably need to do so a bit more.
Ayurveda, and India
The Indians (from India, not the Cherokee tribe), have an acute awareness of stress related burnout, and have various herbal solutions to these problems. Some of these herbal solutions fall into the category of Ayurvedic medicines, and one of the most effective ones is called “Ashwagandha.”
I take this herb in 500MG quantities when I land myself in burnout. And it remarkably calms me down. It’s really something else. It starts to make me feel unblocked again. I can find my motivation. I can find that sense of peace that seems to elude me when I’m in the mix of things. It’s really something else.
But – the reason this herb really works for me, and many millions of other people, is because it tends to neutralize the very thing we keep coming back to, that blocks us in the first place: stress. And the anxiety that comes as a result of it.
It’s amazing to feel unblocked again. Open. Aware. Happy. Content. Even though we’re rarely happy with our progress in our businesses, and there’s always a next step up, and a thing we have to do, when you’re unblocked, open, aware and happy, you’re content. Confident in your abilities to win. Ok with whatever troubles you’re experiencing, and ultimately, at peace with everything.
Final takeaways. — Stress is a toxin. It ruins everything. When you’re feeling it coming on, or it’s hit you like a ton of bricks, it’s time to either take some time off the grid if you can manage it, or get yourself a good supplement to kill the stress. Sit in your room and eat ice cream for a few days. Be as lazy as you can be. Lie around and do nothing.
We are productive, creative, motivated, and happy, until we are not. And when we are not, we’re usually being blocked. Your mission as an entrepreneur, or productive person, is to identify when you’re blocked, and find a way to unblock yourself. Your cash, productivity, happiness, and future depend on it.