Entrepreneur Mindset: The Smart Hustler’s Guide to Growth Despite Stress

By Harmony Major, founder of Radical Growth Guru.

Entrepreneur mindset is the talk of the town in small business circles. For smart founders wanting to ditch blocks and boost growth, it’s the “it” thing to master. Indeed, without a flexible attitude and focused relentlessness toward our goals, our businesses will go the way of bulky 2-pound flip phones.

Across two decades of serving, coaching, and consulting hundreds of clients, from large companies to “mom and pop shops,” I’ve seen numerous founders falter and fail at reaching the goals they set. As a fellow fallible human, I’ve failed to hit many targets myself.

But in the majority of cases, it wasn’t due to a lack of determination, “grit,” or skill. Despite the right product, pricing, and positioning mix, droves of founders still aren’t finding the right combo of strategy and moxy to hit their most coveted targets.

Perhaps training isn’t enough to help entrepreneur mindset learn how to fight stress. It is not enough to help us grow sustainably in the high-stress situations founders regularly face. Let’s explore why.

“Entrepreneur mindset” is hardest to sustain in high-stress conditions

From managing client expectations to building happy teams, to navigating finances and more, entrepreneurial life is one big “high-stress condition.” And there’s no disputing that maintaining a resilient, reasonably positive mental state through it all is crucial for forwarding movement.

Even still, we need to understand and acknowledge two rarely-discussed factors about how an entrepreneur mindset can fight stress:

1. Our thoughts, emotions, and behavior are based on childhood experiences and patterns

Our personal mindset comes from many different places. Past experiences, ingrained teachings, the current state of health, and even genetics play a role. In fact, much of how we operate today is based on habits and patterns created in childhood. And since the entrepreneurial mindset we naturally adopt is but a product of personal mindset, we do business the same way we do everything else.

When we understand that all these factors create the present beliefs, knowledge, and thoughts we call “mindset,” we can see why creating lasting change is easier said than done.

2. Our bodies naturally default to those habitual patterns, and primal instincts, under stress

When we encounter a stressor, our body automatically gauges the level of response needed to handle it. It uses our physical senses as well as data from past experiences. Not only does this happen largely outside of our conscious awareness and control, but it’s also pretty instantaneous. If the situation is deemed threatening, dangerous, or highly stressful, certain bodily processes automatically activate to help us fight or escape.

Then, primal instincts and behaviors take over, and our thinking brain is suppressed. In other words, this state of “survival mode” physically suppresses our capacity to be rational and future-focused.

This is why, in the heat of the moment, you forget the words to that presentation although you’ve been prepping for weeks.

It’s also why, when your employee submits error-laden work for the fifth time, you literally yell first and think later.

These are the completely natural, predictable result of our thinking brain going offline when our body perceives “danger.”

What Should We Do?

One key aspect of changing our mindset is that commonly-discussed perspective change: learning to view day-to-day business happenings as less affecting.

But the lesser-known aspect is figuring out how to stop the body from automatically reacting to sales calls, public speaking, a business launch, filing taxes, self-promotion, or tricky team management situations as “dangerous.” When we do, it won’t activate that involuntary stress response that blocks us from behaving how we want.

What’s the missing link to sustaining a healthy mindset under stress? Our body

If there’s a physical “takeover” of the rational mind under stress, and perceived “stressfulness” is determined by both our physical senses and past experiences, largely without our conscious awareness… we start to understand why changing mindset is such a tall order.

Popular wisdom posits that we hack our habit cycles, or become adaptive, resilient, and positive to create an “entrepreneur mindset.”

But if it were that straightforward, you wouldn’t still be reading.

Those strategies work great in the right context. But the “right context” is a body in a receptive enough state for mindset changes to take—long-term.

Remember: The parts of our brains that help us make grounded, growth-focused decisions under pressure get suppressed under extreme pressure.

In other words, sustaining the mindset we want is easier when entrepreneurial life is calmer. To sustain change even when the “bad news” hits the fan, we have to calm our body’s stress response that overrides those thought-based changes.

Over-focusing on “mindset” can keep us in feast or famine

This is tricky. Focusing on mindset at all is a newer idea that’s been the key to many entrepreneurs’ ultimate growth. And it’s no secret: we cannot start or grow thriving, sustainable businesses without a healthy mindset.

But as you’ve seen, that’s only about half the equation.

Looking at “entrepreneur mindset” as the golden ticket is dangerous. It furthers the harmful implication that if we’d only “be disciplined enough” to “install new beliefs,” “think more positively,” and “not sweat the small stuff,” then all our small business problems would be solved.

Because what happens when we try (and try) to cultivate this mindset but keep falling short against our own standards? More self-doubt, more self-blame, lowered self-confidence, and ironically, even less achievement of the goals we so want.

Wrapping up,

While mindset shifting works for millions of entrepreneurs, there are millions more who still seek answers to how to fight stress. Perhaps those of us dissatisfied with the finality of “the mindset mantra” will follow modern science. Also, we will investigate the inexorable link between the body and mind. Then, instead of trying to exclusively use thought-based hacks to change our feelings, perspectives, and behavior, we’ll consider that we have more nerves traveling from body to brain than the other way around. And we’ll incorporate body-based solutions to foster lasting mindset change, to reach higher levels of entrepreneurial success, growth, and innovation.

Contributor:

Across two decades, Radical Growth Guru Harmony Major has helped organizations large and small boost efficiency and performance. With clients like Google and Space Foundation, certified by institutions like HubSpot and Harvard, she now runs Energetic Harmony℠ and Excellent Presence, helping small business owners transcend traumatic stress, attract better-aligned clients, and scale socio-economic impact.

Smart Hustle Resources:

How Do Entrepreneurs Manage To Go Through The Stress

6 Ways to Manage Stress Like a Pro While Running a Business

3 Easy Ways Overwhelmed Entrepreneurs Can Get Back In The Zone

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