While the holiday season and start of a New Year can be an especially stressful time, small business owners manage an extraordinary amount of pressure all year long. But you don't need to live in a constant state of overwhelm and anxiety in order to thrive in your life and your business.
Gina Rafkind, otherwise known as the “Anxiety Busting Guru” joined me on a recent Indie Business Podcast to share her best tips for overcoming anxiety and actually using stress in your life to reduce stress in your life. Yes, Gina says, it's possible.
To listen to my 30-minute interview with Gina, and to put her tips to work in your life right away, scroll to the bottom of this page and click the play arrow. If you don't feel like listening right now, here is a high level summary of what Gina and I discussed, with time stamps in case you want to scroll forward.
- Form your business around yourself (2:30)? Before we got into the anxiety busting conversation, Gina shared a bit about her journey from a business that was bad for her to a one that is good for her. It all comes down, she says, to putting herself first. Gina recommends that you check your life and make sure that as you serve your customers, you don't forget to serve yourself too! The desire not to let other people down can be overwhelming. Still you must make sure you don't sacrifice yourself to please your customers.
- Practice conscious breathing (13:40). Here, Gina shares how to quickly (really quickly) go within yourself to notice what your body is saying to you. this is a fun exercise we do live on the show. Try it and notice the benefits! We also discuss the circuitous nature of negative feelings and how they can sabotage our progress to appropriate respond to our bodies.
- Value your values (11:47). In addition to conscious breathing, Gina says you can relieve stress and anxiety by identifying your core values and then situating your business around them. For example, as much as Gina loved her career as a hair stylist, it was not allowing her to enjoy her core value of “freedom.” Once she made this connection, she “did the hard work” (her words) of closing one business and opening a new one that she felt would provider her with freedom and work enjoyment simultaneously.
Of course Gina's not suggesting (nor am I) that if you feel excessive stress and anxiety, you should close your business and open a new one. That was right for Gina, but your journey may lead elsewhere. It all starts with putting yourself first, knowing what you want, and then creating your business around that.
About Gina Rafkind
I like to call Gina the “Anxiety-Busting Guru.” She helps women establish new paths of “being” so they can enjoy their lives more. Through guided meditations, e-books, workshops, and transformational life coaching, Gina's work helps women transform stress and anxiety into positive forces for good in their live, so they can have more fun and experience more success in buisness and in life. Follow Gina on Twitter here, and check out her website here. You can also connect with Gina at Indie Social.
How to Listen to the Show
This post contains my paraphrases of the information Gina shared. To hear it from the horse's mouth yourself, listen to the entire 30-minute show using one of these options:
- Download it on iTunes. (It usually takes a day or two for iTunes to feed the show there.)
- Click on the arrow at the bottom of this post to listen now!
- Because I have not had a chance to load all of my shows to this blog, you can listen to hundreds of interviews from 2005 to 2010, each one as relevant today as it was when I recorded it, at my Indie Business Radio site.
Question: What do you think of Gina's tips and insights? Did you try the breathing exercise on the show?
