When emotions hijack your mind (and business)

Why me?

This wasn’t a dramatic question. It was just what my mind kept returning to when I was younger.

Why do I have chronic pain every day?

Why do I have to work over 40 hours a week and study during the evenings and weekends, while my friends enjoy a normal student life?

Why is my father going to die just when I finally have him back in my life after 17 years?

None of those questions helped me. They only weighed me down. And they caused lots of emotions, which I didn’t want to feel.

So I just suppressed the whole shebang and called it a strong mindset.

Years later, I learned how emotions work and discovered how I could let them pass almost instantly.

Emotions react to the thoughts you have.

Simply put, you feel good if you believe something that brings you joy. You feel bad if you believe something that hurts you.

Let’s say you made a mistake and your customer got upset. You open your inbox and see an email with the subject line: Request for a refund.

At first, you may think:

‘This is so stupid of me, how did I mess this up?!’

You feel shame, which signals that your thought isn’t helpful. This feeling can disappear in about 90 seconds because it arrives like a wave: it rises, peaks, then fades. What makes it last is what you do next.

Often, we add another thought:

‘I still can’t believe I’m this stupid.’

That first thought was just a snowflake. But if you keep feeding it, it turns into a snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger and bigger.

If you keep repeating the unhelpful story in your mind, whether you realize it or not, you will receive feedback in the form of negative feelings. But if you pick a different story, the emotion will fade quickly.

That’s one of the beautiful things about life. You can’t control what happens to you. But you can influence how you feel because you choose what to believe.

As Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl explains:

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

And no, this isn’t easy. It’s especially hard when you lose someone you love or go through something traumatic.

If something occurs that will still matter to me in the next five years, like losing my dad, I give myself all the time I need to process it.

But if I make a mistake in my business, it often only hurts my ego, reputation, or bank account.

Then I’m strict with myself and quickly silence the dramatic voice in my head to avoid a flood of thoughts and feelings.

What happened is already bad enough. It doesn’t help if I let it ruin my mood. So I choose to believe that mistakes are part of life and that they are the fastest way to grow.

If you are reading this as a business owner, you have likely made many mistakes or will in the future.

Don’t be angry or sad; be kind to yourself (or to the one who made the mistake). Focus your energy on finding a solution and learning the lesson.

It takes practice, and I still haven’t mastered it completely because I’m just human. But I’ve discovered it’s one of the most important skills you need to run a business.

Remember that setbacks are part of the job. The suffering you add on top is not.

Enjoy your day,

Yvette