What are the core overwhelming emotions that business owners experience

Business owners have to deal with many issues arising both personally and professionally on a regular basis. It can easily be seen that the amount of pressure that they put on themselves, as well as the responsibility, is a much heavier burden than most people have to manage. When it comes to diving into the overwhelming emotions they experience, we can break them down into the following core 8. This core 8 are the most common and problematic emotions for business owners, I hope that you get a better understanding of these emotions and the effect they have throughout their explanations below.

• Depression

Depression is one of the most paralyzing of emotions as it often leads entrepreneurs with nowhere to turn. They are often so used to dealing with everything alone that when this emotion crops up it can be very difficult to deal with on their own. This depression could occur through difficult circumstances in the business or even at home. However, when it is experienced on a regular basis, it can then be followed by suicidal thoughts, which as I am sure you agree is best to treat as soon as they occur. Certainly one of the deadliest emotions to be overwhelmed by, depression is something that you must get help with.

• Anxiety

This is where a business owner becomes very anxious about outcomes in the future; as opposed to depression that focuses mainly on the past. Here the pattern that often arises is that an entrepreneur may feel out of control. They may imagine the worst possible results of bankruptcy, losing their business partners, investors or even worse. The sad thing is that this leads an entrepreneur to be in a very fearful state. This frequently causes paralysis in decision making due to fear about what will happen in the future. This paralysis is often mixed with procrastination,to prolong a possible negative outcome from occurring. Anxiety when mixed with depression often causes a roller coaster of negative emotions, feelings and thoughts for entrepreneurs.

• Loneliness

You may be reading this emotion thinking: “Really? Do business owners actually feel lonely? They are surely surrounded by people all the time. How could they possible feel lonely?” Well this isn’t lonely on a connection level, as business owners have lots of people they connect with frequently on a surface level. This loneliness arises because they lack a deep relationship with most people they interact with. A deep relationship being where problems are shared, walls are taken down and vulnerability can occur, without a fear of being judged.For entrepreneurs to have even a few relationships like this is actually an incredibly rare thing to occur. You would be surprised to hear how lonely it becomes when you are at the top as they are very few friends that can relate to you on the same level. Thus, when the distractions disappear and loneliness creeps in, it causes suffering that is terribly isolating.

• Unworthiness

I had no idea how much of an issue this was until I started to speak to some successful entrepreneurs who struggled with self-sabotage.I found it very intriguing how the core issue of self-sabotage more often than not, came down to a feeling of being unworthy of success. It is sad that often the people, who strive to do the most in business, can actually be those who are feeling most undeserving of the success they are creating. This is a major issue that has to be overcome for them to have a real impact in their businesses. As long as this remains a core emotion on a regular basis, then self-sabotage will unfortunately creep in; whether they are aware of it or not.

• Pressure

There is no surprise that business owners experience a lot of pressure from themselves to deliver great results. This pressure though comes in many different forms. This can obviously be from them, but also from their family, colleagues, investors, shareholders, the government … the list is endless. Business owners always seem to have people in their lives that have high expectations of them. This can either be a source of motivation or very often a conflict that causes them to feel overwhelmed by pressure. In the most extreme cases this will lead to severe procrastination, where they feel so pressured that they will avoid doing work, for fear of failing to reach the expectations of other people. There are many ways to deal with the pressure from the business, what is most important is to find a way to deal with it that benefits you in the long term.

• Stress

Stress is a common complaint that I am sure you hear not just from friends but also undoubtedly from the people at the top. We are in a world today where it is so easy to be stressed on a consistent basis. We are more connected now than we have ever been before. There has not been a time in our history where we were more connected than we are today. Although there are many benefits, which I am sure we wouldn’t exchange, such as the ability to call people instantaneously at a click of a button, we must also note that it is a curse. The ability to have access to everyone at all times, for messages to appear on your phone before you sleep, for business to be 24/7 around the clock. This means that if entrepreneurs don’t actively design how they live, they will constantly be on call and experience a lot of stress everyday. What is incredibly important here is thinking about lifestyle design. What I mean by this is how do you design your life in a way that allows you the time to distress, relax and actually unwind from your day? The business owners who have dealt with this issue, all have time where they zone out and connect with either themselves or close friends and family.

• Sadness

Although this isn’t as common an emotion to feel, it is still very important, as it will undoubtedly arrive at some point. Most entrepreneurs tend not to struggle with this as much, as they tend to be more active about dealing with problems than dwelling on them. However, there are still entrepreneurs who will experience overwhelming bouts of sadness. This could be triggered through a variety of different factors, but ultimately the outcome will still be the same: an isolated paralysis where you will feel that you don’t know what to do in your life. This is most often triggered through a loss; either of someone or something. This loss more often than not causes the entrepreneur to question everything they are doing leading to confusion, grief and sadness. This sadness although not common, can be debilitating if it becomes overwhelming.

• Anger

The last core emotion is anger. This is one that is very common for business owners, especially the more old fashioned ones that never learnt about emotional intelligence. There are many business owners like this, that somewhat bully their employees when things don’t go to plan and often get extremely irritated with staff. They may throw things, emotionally abuse people or ultimately make rash decisions that they regret a few minutes later. This is an incredibly important emotion to become aware of and to be able to manage, especially as your company expands and more issues can occur. Remember that when things are said when you are angry, you can never take them back. I would recommend all entrepreneurs to be able to find ways to manage this emotion so that it doesn’t cause issues in your business and life.

We can see that all these 8 emotions can be incredibly overwhelming, each with they own unique effect on the entrepreneur. What is incredibly important is to be able to manage your emotional state in different circumstances, so that you can not only build a more successful business but also be fulfilled and happy in the process. If you are experiencing 1 or more of these overwhelming emotions on a consistent basis, make sure to reach out to someone that can help you take back control before it really starts to have a negative impact in your life.