Therapy for Business Owners – How Therapy Can Help You Become a Better Business Owner 

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You’re the leader.

Your employees and team do more than look up to you. They tend to mimic your attitude and mindset.

Are you calm under pressure? Do you appear confident, composed, and organized? Creative and daring?

Are you able to step outside yourself to consider other points of view? How well do you communicate your ideas?

Therapy can help you with all of those aspects of running your business and more.

As a business owner myself and having consulted for numerous small business owners, I’ll share the lessons I’ve learned along with insider tips to boost your business success by mastering your thoughts and emotions through therapy.

I’ve been helping small businesses grow for over a decade. Don’t miss my new thoughts on business leadership. Get my free email newsletter:

7 Ways Therapy Can Help You Become a Better Business Owner 

Therapy helps business owners by reducing stress, boosting confidence, and improving decision-making. 

Your work with a therapist will enhance your communication, encourage better work-life balance, and prevent burnout by promoting self-awareness. 

The breakthroughs you discover with your therapist can greatly impact your business success. As the leader of your organization, your people get their cues from you. You can move from anxious to steady and from exhausted to energized.

Therapy is a tool to harness the power of your mind and emotions. This can lead you to shattering previous plateaus and self-limiting beliefs.

Ultimately, this is how to make more money.

Reduce Stress 

Excess stress can lead to poor decisions, make us snappy and short-tempered in our communication, and sap our energy.

Approximately 75% of entrepreneurs have expressed concern about their mental wellness. And 56% of business owners have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, or health problems related to stress, according to a report by Grand Canyon University. 1

I can tell you firsthand that owning a business can take a toll on a person’s mental health. Therapy provides a space for business owners like us to talk about stress.

By engaging in therapy for business owners, you’ll learn coping strategies, such as mindfulness, to deal with whatever is weighing on you. With a good therapist, you’ll learn to stay focused on the present and worry less about the future. 

Remember, preparing for the future is good business. But worrying about the future only causes anxiety. And you might unwittingly transmit that anxiety across your organization, lessening your team’s belief in the company’s vision.

Boost Confidence 

Confidence is a key leadership trait. You need confidence to inspire your workers and your clientele. 

Therapy is a powerful tool for boosting your confidence. You’ll learn about yourself. What are your strengths? You’ll continue to celebrate and wield your strengths to help your business thrive. And your weaknesses? You’ll be better equipped to manage them. Maintaining your confidence is necessary to being a leader and growing a successful business. 

Whether you’re running one of the best business ideas for women or readying your online business for sale, you need confidence to believe in yourself during the tough times. That’s what keeps you from quitting.

Improve Decision-Making Skills

When you’re running a business, you face tough choices that can feel overwhelming, such as: Who should you hire? Who should you let go? Which products deserve more marketing attention? Which products need to be discontinued?

Therapy can help business owners improve their decision-making skills by teaching them strategies to maintain a clear and focused mind. 

Harvard Business School lists decisiveness – making decisions and standing by them – as one of the top traits of successful business owners. 2

Many therapists teach mindfulness, which keeps you focused on the present instead of stressing about the future. By being more present, you’re more in tune with your instincts and intuition, ultimately allowing you to make the best possible decisions for your business.

Enhance Communication 

Excellent communication can increase your earnings and improve employee morale and productivity.

Owning a business means you’re constantly engaging with employees, partners, and clients, which means clear communication is essential for keeping everything in harmony.

Your therapist might use methods like Interpersonal Therapy (IPT), which is a tool to help you improve your relationships with others. This not only helps create a better work environment but also makes you a better leader.

Therapy also gives you the chance to examine your communication style. Are you treating your employees in a way that makes them want to bring their best selves to work? By engaging in therapy for business owners, you’re on your way to building stronger relationships with your employees, which can ultimately improve your business’s overall performance. 

Create a Work-Life Balance 

Only amateurs don’t take timeouts. 

You might notice that professional athletes use their timeouts each game to rest. 

Depending on the sport, they also take a break at halftime or at other intervals. There’s an offseason where athletes may work on certain skills, but they certainly take a mental break from the pressure of high-stakes games.

The hustle-and-grind culture is great for productivity, but it can take a toll on us business owners.

Are you getting the time off that you need? Are you making enough time for your relationships outside of work? Have you scheduled a vacation? With therapy, you can prioritize yourself and ensure that your work doesn’t consume every part of your life.

By working with a therapist, you can build a routine that addresses both your own mental health and well-being, as well as your business’s success. For example, therapy can help you learn how to say no as well as how to delegate tasks. It’s also likely your therapist will encourage you to take time off for some well-earned rest and relaxation. Maintaining a balance between work and play is essential for staying productive and avoiding burnout.

Prevent Burnout 

Self-care is a popular topic today. But when you’re a business owner, sometimes self-care gets put on the back burner. Instead, you find yourself working around the clock and even feeling guilty about taking time for yourself.

Burnout usually starts small, with feelings like constant fatigue, irritability, or losing interest in your work. Therapy can be an excellent way for business owners to catch those signs of burnout early before they affect their performance.

Therapy for business owners will help you avoid burnout because you’ll be more aware of how you’re feeling from moment to moment. 

With increased self-awareness, you’ll be able to anticipate when you are on the verge of feeling burned out. Also, your therapist will guide you through setting boundaries to keep your work from overwhelming the rest of your life.

Achieve Goals 

When you’re elbow-deep into the day-to-day operations of running a business, it can be difficult to see the bigger picture.

A therapist will work with you to help you see what is most important in your life. From there, you can make goals, big and small, and break them down into actionable steps. In therapy, you also have accountability, which can encourage you to stay motivated. Ultimately, these goals serve to drive your business forward.

Post-Game Report 

Therapy can help business owners with both their entrepreneurial vision as well as executing on the mission. 

Specifically, your therapy sessions can help you achieve your goals without succumbing to burnout, improve your communication skills, increase confidence, reduce stress, and more.

Most importantly, therapy can unlock realizations about yourself that allow you to reach the next level of success in your business. And that’s pretty dope.

Related:

Sources:

1 – https://www.gcu.edu/blog/business-management/pros-and-cons-being-entrepreneur

2 – https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/characteristics-of-successful-entrepreneurs

3 – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414693/