Why You Should Embrace Anxiety

Why embrace anxiety?

Because it’s a sign you’re doing things right.

I know, I know, I talk about being calm and present. And there is absolutely value in that.

I am more effective when I am calm and present.

But I am finding, after years of meditation practice, that the main value is the capacity that it has built in me to be uncomfortable.

To go after things I would have never gone after.

The Terrifying Malaise Of Success

If your business is going really well, when you have built your team, when you have made yourself unnecessary, when the team, if they are honest with you, tells you “you don’t need to come into the office, we’ve got this,” what happens?

You can find things to do, you can bug people, you can question their decisions even though, if you are honest with yourself, you know your team is now as capable or even more capable than you are.

Or you can find a new challenge.

And that new challenge can feel terrifying.

Because, now that you are successful, now that you have created an image of yourself as successful, do you really want to risk it?

Do you really want to risk your own story of success?

The Entrepreneurial Cycle

Every entrepreneur I work with goes through a cycle.

First, there is almost crippling fear. The terror of “declaring” that you are creating a business, and the fear that those first clients, employees, investors will not show up.

Second, a settling into a steady state. Things begin to work well. The team comes together. Clients and customers find you. The business makes money and maybe even attracts investors and growth.

Third, stagnation. This does not necessarily mean there is anything wrong with the business. In fact, all may be right with the business. Stagnation refers to the owner, to the entrepreneur who thought that at this point they would feel like they had “arrived,” that they would feel “complete.”

Instead, at this point they often feel bored and restless and sometimes even depressed.

They need a new challenge. And at least a part of them is resentful that their success was apparently not enough.

Is this you? Do you think that something must be wrong with you to have success and not feel able to appreciate it?

You’re not alone.

The Razor’s Edge Of Feeling Alive

The Jungian psychotherapist James Hollis writes that we have a choice between anxiety and depression. That if we value growth, we are going to experience anxiety in the course of that growth. And that if we instead value safety and comfort, we risk stagnation, malaise, even depression.

I have found I so instinctively value comfort that I have to remind myself to get uncomfortable.

I habitually fall into doing what I know how to do, and then, after a while, wondering why I feel bored and uncomfortable.

I recently hired a coach who I know will push me, and then the first thing my mind did was create all kinds of reasons why now is not the right time to work together.

Because I was scared of what he was going to push me to do.

I must feel challenged to feel alive. And yet I resist.

I resist my coach for the very reason I hired him!

Can you relate?

Going Deeper

If you want to explore this in more depth, this cyclical journey from overwhelm to malaise and back again, you are not alone.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning. To the joy of feeling alive and “on purpose.”

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

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