How Entrepreneurs Can Master Resilience and Protect Their Mental Health Burnout isn't the badge of honor it used to be. Resilient founders learn how to stay clear-headed, creating and calm to keep their business — and sanity — intact.
By Greg Cucino Edited by Chelsea Brown
Key Takeaways
- Founders who protect their mental health and adapt under pressure are the ones who endure and thrive.
- Reframe setbacks as learning opportunities, practice mindfulness, build a support network, set boundaries and make time for recovery.
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It's an almost daily occurrence: It's 2:37 a.m., and while staring at your laptop, you're wondering to yourself if your current coffee consumption has changed course and has gone from a habit to a full-blown personality trait. The investor call tomorrow looms heavily, and your inbox has become a minefield while your "to-do" list has begun to grow to the point it's developing its own gravitational pull.
Have you guessed it yet? Yep, welcome to being an entrepreneur, where the highs are exhilarating but infrequent, and the lows are humbling and an almost daily occurrence, now to where the pressure is relentless.
Being an entrepreneur isn't for everyone. Building a business is hard, but it's a privilege and an adventure with great rewards that requires a strong, sustainable mental fortitude to last the emotional marathons — because there's no sprinting a marathon. Those founders who "make it" aren't just labeled as talented or lucky; rather, they're resilient. These founders have found the secret sauce; they've learned through the ups and downs that protecting their mental health, adapting under extreme pressures and keeping going is absurdly tough.
Related: 5 Practical Strategies Founders Can Use to Improve Their Mental Health
Pressure, resilience and the entrepreneur's mind
Entrepreneurship inherently comes with its own stress profile. Financial uncertainty is consistently identified as one of the most stressful burdens an entrepreneur deals with, especially early on. Couple that with the ongoing leadership isolation effect and the reality that your decisions could potentially make-or-break the company, piles on. Add in one more layer called "hustle culture," and you've now somehow turned isolation and exhaustion into a competitive sport, complete with its own LinkedIn medals to showcase, "Sleeps Less Than You."
Resilience in this aspect isn't just a word; it's the definition of not ignoring stress or toughing it out until you absolutely break. It's feeling like Mike Tyson going 13 rounds, taking the punch, adapting and continuing to push forward without losing sight of the ultimate goal and bigger picture. The American Psychological Association continually correlates resilience to making better decisions, higher performance and more effective leadership — all of which are non-negotiables for an entrepreneur trying to stabilize and survive turbulence.
Related: 7 Ways Successful Entrepreneurs Deal With Stress and Pressure
Building resilience through mental health practices
Here's the good thing, though: Resilience is learned. It's a skill that can be picked up and trained for in the same way some professional runners train for a big 10K — only the running mainly takes place mentally in your head (and occasionally between back-to-back meetings).
1. Mindset shifts:
Remember that setbacks as an entrepreneur aren't career-ending; they're really just expensive learning opportunities, sort of like paying tuition for a real-life MBA you didn't realize you've signed up for. The challenges you take on and reframing them into data points versus failures can be all you need for a momentum builder that keeps the panic at bay.
2. Mind-body maintenance:
Remembering that your brain is an essential part of your body is crucial; treating it accordingly goes a long way. Be sure to build in exercise, even if just a simple walk, mindfulness and rhythmic breathing techniques can help regulate stress and improve cognitive ability. Numerous neuroscience studies showcase how regular mindfulness practice has the ability to reshape the brain, shaping it to handle curveballs more effectively, practice it, live it and turn it into a routine.
3. Support networks:
This should be as clear as day. Find the Alfred to your Batman. Having a person there you trust to help support your path. Whether it's a mentor, peer group or personal coach, it can make the difference in putting things into perspective, solving problems faster and just reminding you that you're not alone in the trenches.
4. Boundaries and recovery:
Thinking downtime is laziness is a waste of your energy; it's preventive maintenance that you should embrace. Would you run your car engine 24/7, low on oil? Of course not, unless you like paying for repair bills. Your brain is no different. Ensuring you schedule whitespace, dedicated time to reflect on your current state, use it to create something non-business related or just zone out staring at a wall without guilt — it's what you need it to be.
Resilience as a competitive edge
As an entrepreneur, the pressure is inevitable from various angles. The way you accept it, face it and come through with a response when it arrives doesn't have to add to your stress, especially on a Monday right before a critical investor pitch. Those entrepreneurs who endure and thrive are not the ones who are tallying the most hours in the day; they're the ones who have understood that mental health isn't just "self-care" and have built systems to protect their mental health and solidify their resilience.
So take it by the horns, treat your mental health like your financials, monitoring them, investing in them and pivoting before a small problem becomes a major crisis. Because with this game, being resilient isn't just about being able to survive the storm; it's the ability to dance in the rain, and preferably with a cup of coffee that now isn't doubling as your personality.
