Emotional turmoil part deux

Last week, we were talking about handling emotional turmoil as entrepreneurs.

It was inspired by this tweet from David Cancel, founder of Drift:

The hardest thing for an entrepreneur is not what you think.

No one ever talks about it but this will make or break you.

People? Process? Product?

Nope.

It's dealing with the emotional turmoil. Managing the emotional rollercoaster is the hardest skill you must master.

I told you my number one technique for dealing with emotional turmoil, and I promised to share my second most important technique today.

Here we go.

It is to question your thoughts.

See, the thing that gets us into emotional turmoil in the first place is the story we tell ourselves.

Maybe it's a story about you being a failure. I told myself that story for many years.

Maybe it's a story about impending doom. Things are going to hell. That'll make you feel fear alright.

Maybe it's a story about being wrong. That'll make you feel anger and sadness.

Or a story about having made a terrible mistake.

All of these stories are just interpretations of reality.

We can't know any of this.

What does it even mean to be a "failure"? Is it even possible for a human being to be a "failure"? I've never heard of a dog that considered itself a "failure". We don't tend to think of our babies as being failures. At what age does someone acquire the capacity to become a "failure" and what does it even mean? It's all non-sense.

What about impending doom? Well, how can you know what'll happen tomorrow? Nobody knows for sure. Even if what you think will happen actually happens, can you know for sure that'll be a bad thing in the long run? Can you know for sure you won't be okay if that happens? You can't.

But when we believe those stories, we feel terrible.

Keep believing it, and you'll keep feeling terrible.

Question your thoughts and beliefs, and you'll find freedom and joy.

Freedom to just be.

And the joy of just being.

Put these two techniques together, and this "emotional rollercoaster" has been dismantled for good.

You'll still feel stuff (and thank God for that, our feelings are what makes the whole thing worth doing), but you'll be able to enjoy the ride.

You're now officially a MASTER ENTREPRENEUR.

Here. This is your certificate.

Feel free to hang it on your wall.