Steps lead to good mental health for entrepreneurs

You jump off the cliff with your financial situation and spend endless hours growing your business.

You become an expert in sales, marketing, personnel, accounting, customer service and retention and profit and loss statement analysis. You lose sleep and acquire loans when you don’t have enough sales to pay the bills. You get stressed, never see your family and don’t have a personal life when you have too many sales calls.

When you finally decide to hire help, you’re exhausted and in poor physical health. In addition, for several years, you will probably have to pay your staff more than you make.

When it comes to problems and decision-making, you have more than your fair share.

How do you find the time to go out and get sales? Which marketing tools can you afford, and will they even work? Why does it seem you write more checks from accounts payable than deposit into accounts receivable? How do you collect money that is due to you? How do you effectively handle customer and employee problems, since each one is so unique?

Thankfully, there is a seven-step problem-solving tool that will help. Use it for each identified problem in your small business.

Step 1: Define the problem. Determine if it is a real issue, because you will only be able to resolve concrete problems.

The refute-support technique will help you ascertain if you are simply having an inaccurate thought or experiencing a legitimate problem. A thought is not the truth, but we take action based upon an assumption that the thought is a fact. This occurs because a thought will generate a feeling, which in turn causes us to perform a behavior that is not necessarily based upon the reality of the situation. Therefore, write down the thought, and then create a column for facts that support the thought and a column for facts that refute the thought. If you can refute the thought, then the issue is in your mind, and all you need to do is change the thought. If you support the thought, then you have a problem that can be improved upon.

Step 2: Decide whose problem it is. Ask yourself whose needs are not being met. If the answer is “mine,” then you are the only one who can solve the problem. Accept responsibility, because you are responsible. Refuse to blame anyone or anything. Your previous choices and decisions determined the issue you are facing.

Step 3: Brainstorm solutions. Do not censor any ideas. Be sure to list at least five. When done, you will find you already have tried the first few. The best solution is generally further down the list.

Step 4: Pick a solution. Review each item in the third step. Determine the positive and negative consequences for each solution. Then rule the idea in or out.

Step 5: Set a deadline for the solution. Turn the idea into a written goal statement with a detailed action plan. The objective will give you a sense of control and being in charge of your life and business. Perform at least one item from your action plan each day. Maintain a sense of urgency. Act as if it were impossible to fail.

Step 6: Remove the barriers that will keep you from implementing and achieving the idea selected in step four. Restart the problem solving process at Step 1 for each barrier.

Step 7: Pick a date to re-evaluate. Decide specifically when you will re-evaluate your chosen solution.

By staying solution-oriented rather than problem-oriented, you will increase your mental health, energy level, self-esteem and personal pride.

Lynne Haggerman is president/owner of Haggerman & Associates, a firm specializing in management training, retained search, outplacement and human resource consulting.[[In-content Ad]]