Putting on your suit and your panty hose felt like putting on armor. I remember a colleague actually describing it in those terms so it’s not just poetic license.

Both men and women felt they had to leave their true personalities and opinions at home in order to succeed.

The problem is they spent so much time and energy at work that many of them couldn’t find their true selves when they came home and ended up feeling disconnected. Life became flat outside of work where adrenaline ran high.

Why am I reminiscing about the bad old days?

Because once in a while, it’s important to observe what we do to make sure we don’t fall in the most common traps.

Most of us became entrepreneurs because we wanted to be ourselves and do our own thing. But are we really?

Entrepreneurs also feel the need to put up a good front, and we are often more isolated than we were when we could brainstorm with our peers or debrief with our staff.

So periodically ask yourself:

• Is my business allowing me to be myself?
• Can I turn to at least one trusted source of advice that’s competent and without bias?
• Do I like who I am at work?
• Am I in touch with who I am outside of work?
• Do I like my life?

Yes, challenging times can create a more demanding work life, but that doesn’t mean life has to be joyless.

When you think of it, those times make it more essential than ever that life be about more than just making money.

If you don’t know where to start, consider working with a coach that understands both business and personal issues.

I’m one of them if you like what you see here.

That’s pretty obvious. What’s less obvious is what to do about it.

Most of us feel like there is little we can realistically do in our current circumstances.

We’ll get relief only when those change; when our sales reach a certain level; when we can hire another person; when the kids are older; when the economy gets better; when the economy slows down.

It’s true that things would be easier to manage if our lives were simpler, if the pace of change was slower and we had fewer choices to make all the time.

But there are things you can do to reduce your overwhelm. Here are a few suggestions:

• Reduce your expectations about how much you can do. Thinking you can/should/need to handle everything only puts more pressure on you, which backfires by reducing your effectiveness. Have you ever mentally worked yourself into a frenzy about a deadline and realized that you spent the last hour fretting but accomplishing nothing that you can use?

• Stop thinking that you can control things, or that you need to in order to be safe. It’s impossible to cover every eventuality. Some pre-vacation preparation and planning is wise, too much and you end up being more stressed than if you hadn’t gone at all.

• Keep your goals in mind and not because they will motivate you to work harder, but because they will help you decide what you really need to do and what can wait or be eliminated from your list.

• If you find yourself running short of time, take extra time to think about how to spend your time. Instead of running around trying to get all the items on your to-do list done, you’d be better off taking a mental break to assess what you really need to do next and focus just on that.

• This brings me to multi-tasking. It can really contribute both to overwhelm and to low effectiveness. If you multi-task make sure that all but one of the tasks can be done automatically without giving them your attention.

• Finally, the energy of overwhelm feeds on itself and can send you spinning. It’s essential to break the cycle, take a breath, and ground yourself. That alone will dramatically increase your level of energy, your presence of mind and the quality of your decisions.

• They are overwhelmed by the array of choices: strategies to implement, tasks to complete, technology to learn or outsource, etc.
• They are facing this alone and will fully bear the consequences of their choices.

Gone is the established set of procedures or best practices.

Gone is the ability to pick up the phone and consult in-house specialists.

Gone are the co-workers that could provide moral support as well as important feedback on proposed actions.

Gone is the guaranteed (or so it seemed) paycheck even if you were working on a long-term project.

Everything is shifting; economic predictions are meaningless, markets are uncertain, and there doesn’t seem to be a safe place to land or a reliable fallback position.

You’re feeling it aren’t you? Well so are your potential clients.

We all need to assemble our support system for emotional reasons, as a source of information, a pool of resources, and to prevent us from re-inventing the wheel all by ourselves:

• Like-minded entrepreneurial buddies
• Mastermind participants
• Mentors or coaches

Can you provide products or services that would help guide others?

For example, one of my mentors is Connie Ragen Green, and she simplifies what you must learn and do if you want to create an internet business (or an internet presence for your existing business). You might want to see what she offers whether you think you need an internet mentor or as an example of someone who is successful filling those two needs. (Click here for her main site).

Who comes to mind in your industy when you think of a helpful, knowledgeable guide that people feel safe with? Use them as a model for your business.

What happens is that the planning never gets finished, either because it’s too vague (and therefore more akin to day-dreaming) or lacking in a cohesive vision.

Or the entrepreneur gets stopped by her fears, and that’s a topic that deserves separate posts.

Even before you put together a business plan, you need to ask yourself a number of basic questions, such as:

• What is your purpose in starting the business. Besides money, what do you want it to do for you
• How do you want your business daily life to be like
• What has your history taught you about yourself: where are your weaknesses and strengths
• Can you explain your business concept clearly, namely:

1. What problems will you solve
2. For whom
3. And how

Now these questions are self evident but fact is, very few entrepreneurs take the time to thoroughly answer them. They think that they know the answers in their head, but they don’t, at least not with sufficient clarity.

As a consequence, they might start a business that:

• Never gets really profitable
• Feels like a burden and a trap
• Has a much longer startup phase than necessary

Now I realize that people are overwhelmed and find it hard to gather up the time and energy to do the necessary self-exploration. Somehow, it’s easier to do when someone else is taking us through it.

So I’m putting together a brief teleseminar series in June that would give you the framework and the assistance needed to prepare the ground for your business.

To find out when it starts, check in with this blog in a week or so. Even better, put your e-mail address in the box in the top right corner and I’ll let you know the scoop.

As spiritually-oriented as I am, there was part of me that thought: “I’d rather go to a workshop where I can listen and interact with people, rather than face the boredom of two days and nights of nothingness.”

Well she found the experience transformative (if you want to read her own words about it, you can click here for her blog post). But it took her a while before she was able to tap into the deep place she was seeking.

And that’s what I’m finding; it seems harder lately to get still. I can think of several reasons:

• The constant presence of technology in our lives, especially for those of us who have businesses online
• The current pace of change and uncertainty
• The collective subconscious reaction to these conditions

We’re impacted not only by our own life circumstances, but also by the energy of those we meet and even society at large.

Which means it is more essential than ever to manage our thoughts and our energy.

The feeling of overwhelm seems to be lurking more than ever. I see it in others, and I experience it myself.

And the tendency to feel out of control and freeze seems to be out of proportion to what is on my plate.

I know I’m not alone because I’ve observed in others, and heard the comments from all sorts of competent people.

So what gives?

The logical answer would be that the pervasive pace of change and level of uncertainty has eroded our ability to take things in stride. We’re tired of walking on Jell-O.

But I think it’s bigger than logic. For example, my own circumstances don’t warrant this reduced resiliency. Yet I feel it, likely because as an empath, I pick up the energy, thoughts and feelings that are around me. And whether you think of yourself as someone who’s attuned to what’s around you or not, you are affected by the current collective  “psyche”.

Fact is, I can give all sorts of explanations but what we’re more interested in is: what do we do about it?

For me, this current phase is teaching me that I can’t slack off in my practice of awareness and connecting with the deeper parts of myself.

The ante has been raised and I can’t get away with laziness anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re feeling the same way.

Let me know if I’m right about that in a comment, ok

That principle applies to anything that gave you a fright physically, or a blow to your pride and sense of security (like losing a client, not getting a promotion, getting fired, bombing a speech, etc.).

You can’t let the negative experience “gel” without counteracting it, or your mind will doubt that you’re capable of succeeding despite having done so before your recent “fall”. I guess it’s the same principle as “only being as good as your latest movie”.

Your subconscious will also want to protect you from further harm by stopping you from getting into similar situations.

There is even a chance that it might generalize your experience to other risk-taking circumstances. For example, you might have bombed a talk at the Chamber of Commerce, but your sub-conscious wants to prevent you from speaking in front of anyone, even in team meetings.

There is also another level at work here deeper than our conscious and subconscious thought: the experience has imprinted you on an energetic level.

The good news about that is that you can defuse the subconscious fear of repeating past failures by working directly at the energy level.

An increasing number of people have discovered the effectiveness of tools such as EFT (the emotional freedom technique) as one way to untangle old fear imprinting, and you can find lots of free information online. ( emofree.com is a great resource).

• Get enough sleep
• Eat higher quality foods; avoid sugar, refined, and processed foods
• Exercise regularly
• Do something you’re passionate about
• Find ways to help others
• Avoid people or situations that drain you

Where does awareness fit in all of this?

It’s actually the pre-requisite to any other recommendation. To prevent yourself from sliding into the oblivion of blind habits and inertia, you need to spot when you’re starting to lean in a direction that will rob you (sooner or later) of your quality of life.

Inertia comes naturally to us humans, and we have two defenses against it: constructive habits, and awareness.

Let’s look at how awareness can help the situation I talked about in the last post, namely that “being nice” can be quite draining. That happens mainly because nice people tend to be constantly monitoring other people’s feelings and taking it upon themselves to smooth things over as needed.

How can you change or at least minimize such a natural tendency and ingrained habit? Only by catching yourself doing it and reminding yourself that you’re taking on responsibility that isn’t yours. In other words, you need to be aware of what you think and feel otherwise you’ll go down the well-worn path.

But by staying aware, you are able to correct your thinking, refuse burdens that aren’t your own, and conserve your energy for your own priorities.

A lot of us used to agree that “nice guys finish last”.

In this new relationship economy, we’ve learned that people buy from us if they know, like, and trust us. And that’s good news for the nice club.

But kindness does bring with it some characteristics that can get in the way of success if they’re not managed with awareness. I’d like to give you an example of one of them by relating a story that happened today.

I was taking an aerobics class at the gym and Emma, the instructor, changed our sequence a little abruptly. She then was a little bothered by what she thought was a disapproving look on one of the participants’ face, and said: “Beth, you look disgusted”.

Well, Beth might have had that reaction (she does like predictability), but she denied it, saying she was just trying to figure out an alternative to the move which her knees didn’t allow her to do.

As an observer of human nature, I reflected that Emma was the “nicest” of the instructors and probably the only one who would have been bothered by Beth’s reaction.

Nice people are by definition acutely sensitive to others’ feelings. The downside of that is that they can waste too much energy reading all of the subtle signs of others’ emotions, trying to respond to it, or even to anticipate and prevent unpleasantness.

This is not lack of backbone, by the way. It’s the opposite, taking on too much responsibility for others individually and as a group.

But an absolute pre-requisite of success is a high level of energy, and “soft hearts” deplete themselves by having their antenna constantly out for discomfort that they find distressing, especially if they think they might have caused it. Let alone the energy they spend attempting to smooth feelings and better the situation.

It’s not so much about learning not to care; it’s about energy management through awareness. More about that another day.

Now some of those are real addictions and my intention in this post is not to talk about the causes and remedies for addictions. For one thing, I couldn’t even graze the surface of the subject.

Let’s talk about things we do that we could resist if we tried, or at worst might be mild addictions. Some of the behaviors mentioned above might fit, but also others like:

• Spending too much time on administrative tasks when we know out time would be better spent on product development or marketing
• Accumulating a mess of papers on our desks when we know clutter is a drain on our energy
• Spreading negative news or gossip
• Cutting it too close by leaving at the last minute for appointments

And the list goes on and on.

Most of us have heard that fear and the instinct for survival is at the root of most of our automatic behaviors. We could spend countless hours exploring what we are afraid of, and why we do what we do.

But even though that’s the title of my post, I don’t intend to go down that road.

Why? Because I’m more interested in how we can change.

Yes, sometimes, finding the root cause helps us choose otherwise, but often, we don’t need to go there. Not only that, we can get stuck in our story since drama is so interesting, especially when we’re starring in it.

So back to the list: we do these things because they make us feel better in the short term even if they backfire in the long term.

Short term satisfaction or relief of tension even to the detriment of long term well-being. That kind of summarizes what created our environmental and monetary crises, doesn’t it?

How can we stop doing things that we know are bad for us?

Four keys:

• Awareness of what we’re doing (realizing what we are doing)
• Deciding what would be better (knowing what else we should be doing)
• Having another way of releasing the tension otherwise our primal instincts will overrule our decisions
• Having a system to keep us on track to prevent us going back to old habits

Amazing how once again, the answer lies in us harnessing the power of our attention and learning to be present and aware!