No one can ever say that having a home based business is boring! Between quieting barking dogs, refereeing your children’s fights, and answering the phone and the doorbell, it can sometimes be hard to get anything done — no matter how well you visualize, set goals, and plan your day.

And it can be equally easy to be too hard on ourselves, blame ourselves for not being more organized, focused or motivated. But that just increases the pressure — it doesn’t solve anything!

What works for me is to stop, take a breath, and put things into perspective. I have three “mantras” that help get me back in balance when I’m feeling stressed, overwhelmed and just plain tired:

1. If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t moving fast enough. I don’t know if I’m typical, but I certainly know I’m not alone in wanting to always present a professional, polished image to the world. Whether it’s an important email message, a change to my website, or a new article, I want it to be perfect. It’s often hard to stop tweaking and improving, and just let go. And yet that’s exactly what will help me succeed faster.Everyone makes mistakes — your clients and colleagues included — and they are likely to be much more forgiving of your mistakes than you will. Set a time limit, and when that time is up, stop tweaking and move on!
2. It doesn’t *have* to be done today. Most of my deadlines are self-imposed — and most of the time, no one else cares! So you don’t get your newsletter out today or even this week — trust me, your equally-busy subscribers may not even notice if it’s late.A stressed mind doesn’t function as clearly as a relaxed one — so why not take off the pressure by letting a project slip a few days.
3. It will get done when it is supposed to get done. It’s amazing how when I finally get around to doing a task or project I’ve procrastinated about for a while, something else aligns that makes the work easier and sometimes gives a better result than if I’d done it earlier. Or an opportunity arises to get someone else to do it, or even just drop it altogether in favor of a different project that’s more exciting and fun.I find this mantra to be especially helpful when I’ve delegated a task and it doesn’t get done on time (aka on my schedule). I make that schedule myself — and I have the power to change the schedule. A stressed VA doesn’t work any better than a stressed “you”. So relax, let her know it’s ok, and both of you will feel more energized as a result.

I hope you find these tips helpful. Do you have other tips for reducing the stress of self employment? Please share them in the comments area below.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 9:32 am and is filed under Solo Entrepreneur Challenges, Solo Entrepreneur Mindset, Self Employed Work Habits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.