Owning a business can be challenging and stressful, and most certainly can take its toll. Here are a few tips for remaining happy in the workplace, inspired by Purpose Fairy’s guide to happiness:
1. Embrace Change
Change is good and sometimes necessary. Being cemented in place while the rest of the world continues to zoom by could cost you dearly in the business world. With half of the working adults in the US doubling as business owners, the ability to adapt can help your business grow and stand out.
2. Focus on the Future
Was yesterday a bad day? Forget to put the sugar in your coffee this morning? Forget about these setbacks and focus on your future. Lamenting on the past can cloud the path to a successful future. Keep your eyes forward and keep moving towards your goals.
3. Stop making Excuses
They do nothing but hold you back. Instead, focus on how to improve and grow. Acknowledge the problem and take steps towards resolving it, not towards excusing it.
4. Accept your own Mistakes
We all make them. It’s human nature. Learning to accept your mistakes can take a massive weight off your shoulders, and help better assess the situation and take steps towards fixing the problem.
5. Do it for Yourself
It’s your business. At the end of the day, you should love what you do. Yes, you want to make your customers happy, but if it’s at the cost of your own happiness, it can get pretty draining. Remember that this is your business, your vision, and it’s your happiness on the line.
6. Have No Fear
As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said: “the only thing to fear is fear itself,” and that applies to the business world as well. Fear can hold you back from doing great things, and fill you with doubt that can sabotage your dreams. Don’t let it block your path to success.
7. Realize that you’re Not Always Right
No one is perfect, and sometimes, our decisions are just wrong. Sometimes, our employees have better ideas than our own. Realizing that you don’t hold all the answers allows you to reach out in search of the right ones. And it helps everyone grow.
8. Acknowledge your Strengths
Whether you’re great at keeping track of invoices or you’re better at motivating and inspiring the troops, recognize what you’re good at. Build on your strengths in order to further yourself in business and in life.
9. Stop Placing Blame
Much like making excuses, placing blame simply hinders the process of resolving the problem. Instead of focusing your energy on assessing ‘who’, ask more productive questions like ‘why’ and ‘how’ and concentrate on resolving the issue.
10. Create your Own Expectations
Although you are serving your customers, remember this is your business. Make it everything you want it to be. Set attainable goals. Expand your horizons, and create an environment where you and your customers will both be comfortable. Remember, this is your business. What do you want it to be?
Although these are only suggestions to get you started, hopefully they will also serve as steps towards easing the stresses of everyday business life.
Happy in your business photo via Shutterstock
Lindsey
This is great, concise article. Thanks for the insight!
In conjunction with #10, don’t compare yourself to others. Just because Mark Zuckerberg was a billionaire before his 30th birthday doesn’t make you a failure for not being one.
Martin Lindeskog
Robert: I agree with your comment. You could be inspired by others, but set your own expectations!
Aira Bongco
The first one is the hardest for me. While change is inevitable, it is the hardest to do and accept. But I guess, it is something that you really must get used to as everything is not as predictable.
Ms. Aubrielle totally summed it up :). In a business passion is the key for its success, I guess in every different situation passion is always the one that fuels us to succeed. Business is serious yet enjoying to the fact that we should be serious and careful in thinking about the strategies and plans in order for the business to grow into a big and succesfull one, enjoyment comes when we see the outcome of our hard labors and the smile that we see from customers whom we served properly and passionately.
This is an excellent article. Thank you for sharing it with us. There are so many truths in there and anyone who watches any of thise “my business is in trouble” shows knows that many of these points – those business owners would fail upon.
Thank you for writing it!
Sandra Crowe
This simply shows on how to accept your mistakes and how to handle it pretty well and that is what most of us people lack, we always think that we are right even though we are actually doing the opposite of it. Even though someone is already warning us in the decisions we make but still we tend to ignore those them.