It is no surprise that business owners face tremendous stress on a nearly daily basis as you’re constantly making important decisions that impact not just you, but your business and all who have a stake in it.

 Stress puts you into what psychologists call the “fight-and-flight” response, which puts your entire body under duress, affecting everything from your appetite to your blood pressure, and not in a good way. It also makes you sleep and remember poorly, and worse, causes you to go into tunnel vision and more likely to make more impulsive or reactionary decisions, rather than well thought-out ones.

 But fret not. Psychologists have long studied how to combat the stress and improve your ability to thrive under it.

Meditation and Mindfulness

Though often used interchangeably, meditation and mindfulness are really distinct. While mindfulness describes a state of being aware of the present surroundings and your present thoughts, emotions, and bodily feelings, meditation is really a practice that would lead you to become mindful.

Some of the most common types of meditation include body scan, mindfulness, and loving-kindness. What we want to focus here, for your benefits, is mindfulness meditation. 

 Bear with me.

 Mindfulness meditation emphasizes on the noticing, without furthering or reacting to or responding to your own thoughts. Remember a time when you are, say, busy talking to a friend, having an engaging conversation, and your phone rings? Likely, you’ll let this call pass and refocus on the conversation, while thinking, “I’ll call back when this cools down a bit, might be something important.” Mindfulness meditation is to making these moments intentional.

 For instance, if you are  stressed out, you might have some negative thoughts about yourself or your business, and you might react instinctively to these thoughts with negative emotions and self-defeating behaviours, such as procrastination or self-distraction. With mindfulness meditation, you learn to notice these thoughts and look at them as if they are objects you hold in your mind. You will learn to let them pass through your mind and revisit them later when your feelings have cooled.

That sounds cool, right? But how does mindfulness help you as a business owner?

Mindfulness Benefits

Psychologists have found that mindfulness is associated with less emotional reactivity, increased concentration, enhanced cognitive capacity, reduced stress, and less brooding and more solution-focused thinking when facing challenges or negative outcomes. Basically, mindfulness will help you remain composed and calm when the pressure is on, so that you can use your best thinking to make the best decisions for your business

Needless to say, mindfulness isn’t learned overnight. Rather, it has to become part of your life to be effective when it counts. But don’t worry, just 10 minutes a day can take your an edge away.

 Start mindfulness practice today by listening to our free guided mediation made specifically for stressed out business owners.