We believe that this is the foundation of us living fulfilling lives. In our role as Therapeutic Mindfulness Trainers and Therapists, we see that more and more people are suffering with their mental health.
Let’s take the recent pandemic, COVID, for instance.
We started off 2020 most likely with our goals and intentions to have a good year in business. Then bam! We were all placed in a situation that we had never known before. Lockdown for many was one challenge after another that effected our mental well-being.
Business owners had to adapt and change very quickly the way they worked and possibly they are still adapting to the way things remain.
It wasn’t just business they had to juggle; it was their personal life too. People had to learn to juggle all their roles within the home, leaving them wearing various ‘hats’ all day long.
It was a stressful time for many with no support at all. This had caused so much overwhelm, leaving business owners feeling stressed which then caused high levels of anxiety.
Sure, we all go through negative experiences…. but why is it that some of us then suffer with anxiety and overwhelm more than others?
Anxiety and overwhelm is a normal and healthy part of our experiences, it connects us with our flight and fight response and keeps us safe and protected from harm, but when this effects our mental well-being and it becomes our constant state of living, then it needs to be addressed.
As business owners we may have been fearful of our businesses failing, after all the pandemic left us with the unknown. Some businesses thrived during this time, but we know lots of entrepreneurs and businesses that didn’t, or at least felt the overwhelm as they were adapting.
One of the challenges that we noticed was moving from face to face to online, for business owners that didn’t already work from home were unfamiliar with this way of running their business. So, for some this created huge anxiety, especially when faced with difficulties with different platforms and knowing how they worked. How frustrating and annoying was it when these platforms didn’t work properly as so many people across the globe were using them too.
Don’t get us started about home schooling….
The entrepreneurs that we had spoken too, were almost tipped over the edge by home schooling for so many months, they never felt equipped being a teacher, it was not their profession or passion and quickly learnt it would never be!
Being a parent and home schooling, whilst also trying to run their business and work from home, trying to run meetings, speak with clients and plan their week, for some this just seemed impossible and we found that people felt guilty not being able to give time to their children or business. They had lost how to balance everything and found it challenging to divide their home and work life while being at home.
Social networks for us entrepreneurs also had a negative impact as we were unable to socialise with our likeminded business associates, let alone friends and family. For some of us, we also had family or friends who had become ill or were already ill, and we were no longer able to see them, so this left minds full of worry and uncertainty.
However, there are two sides to every experience and now we are coming out of this tricky and challenging time we can see there have been some positive elements to this pandemic as well.
We’ve learnt new skills, skills that may have terrified us, we’ve had to come out of our comfort zone many times and learn to work in a different way. It has allowed business owners the time to create new content, take their business offline to online which may have not happened so soon or at all if it wasn’t for this pandemic, forcing everyone to adapt.
Working differently has definitely improved our overall skills and taught us that we can do things that we never considered before.
We have heard that the most positive experience (not for all) was being able to spend time with family, their unit grew closer with more quality time spent together and for some a balance had been established. Some also loved the comfort of their own home and creating their own office space without the added time of commuting. They used this time wisely to add more clients or for adding more zoom meetings with their teams.
We’ve heard and we know from our experiences that we value even more, who and what we have in our lives, this time has made us grateful for our health, if we have experienced illness and loss, we’ve been thankful that we have our family and friends around us for support. We have been thankful that we’ve made it through in business!
To conclude, as we can see COVID has bought lots of anxiety and overwhelm during this time to many business owners. We know that this still may have left long term effects just like the pandemic. Please, reach out and get support if you need it and remember that you are loved and your well-being is the most important… if you nurture this, everything else will follow. It now feels like it’s time to step up and step out, we have become comfortable in our new ways but as we are opening up its time to expand our businesses, start networking and investing in growth for our business. There are so many opportunities out there that people may start to miss because they are scared. It may just take time to learn how to readjust to post lockdown.
