Being an entrepreneur can be like a roller-coaster ride of exhilaration (whee, I’m on top of the world!) and terror (help, this thing is going downhill!). With no big company behind you, and maybe no other employees beside you, you need to rely on your own resilience and power to keep yourself going in the scary times.
Let’s talk about how you can build that resilience and power in your body.
Why your body? Because when things get scary, your body will want to default to its natural stress response. This could look like:
- Flight (hiding under the covers and ignoring what needs to be done)
- Fight (aggressively or impulsively moving forward in ways that might not be in your best interest)
- Freeze (completely stopping whatever you are up to and pretending that nothing uncomfortable is going on)
- Appease (trying to make nice with everyone and ignoring your own needs)
Do you recognize one of these as your default response? How might it serve you to develop more resilience when the going gets tough?
Animals are geniuses in trusting the resilience of their bodies, and this month, inspiration on this subject is courtesy of my new puppy. Rocky loves running and digging in the snow (exhilaration!), but his paws can get painfully cold (scary and uncomfortable).
Last week, both of Rocky’s back paws got cold at the same time, and before I knew it, he had leaned forward onto his front paws and begun to walk in a handstand. It was both amazing and hysterical. I was in awe of how he had instinctively relied on his body to do something it had never done before so that he didn’t have to walk on cold paws.
For people, it takes practice to build the kind of physical resilience that reliably enables skillful forward momentum. Here are two simple yoga sequences that can help you embody the strength, stability, and confidence to carry you through the scary times in just 5-10 minutes a day:
- Warrior Vinyasa is a short series of standing poses that will get you in touch with the strength and power of the (entrepreneurial) warrior
- Tabletop Vinyasa will connect you to your center of gravity and will – your core