I wish I could say anxiety stops once you leave a toxic work place or once you become an entrepreneur but the fact is the levels flare in any capacity. Networking and scaling my businesses caused me to connect and collaborate with different professionals and what I learned slowly over time is that when something isn’t a good fit our intuition will cause our anxiety to flare up. Once that anxiety flares up, we become easily offended and everything from that point forward bothers us.
I know anxiety prevents so many people from having healthy relationships and I know that sometimes when I perceive people to be malicious it’s really just my anxiety speaking. I am in a constant state of keeping myself in check. In order to keep myself in check:
I do not allow myself to be rushed into making decisions. I take at least 24-48 hours to weigh the pros and cons of an opportunity. Rushing leads to error. If an opportunity can not wait for me to do my due diligence in research then I know it just wasn’t an opportunity for me.
I consult with “get it people”. People who I know, love, and TRUST to tell it just like it is. People who are honest, people I can confide in.
I PRAY. After I deliberate and after I consult, I connect with God for a final answer. I don’t want my thoughts or ways to be misled by my own personal agenda or one of someone else.
One sided relationships can trigger your anxiety:
Early in my career, and something I found myself doing again once I relocated was accepting every opportunity to come my way. This backfired every single time, because I ended up collaborating with people who benefited more from than they had to offer to the collaboration. In the midst of having a full work load due to the collaborative projects, I set the precedence that I was a “yes man”. There were instances when I went from being invited to speak at an event to designing the event flyer and each individual speaker flyer for free, to giving coaching sessions for free, to answering questions via text that I charge my clients to answer…for free. I went from collaborating on an event to designing a book cover free of charge, to giving brand coaching tips for free, and once I set the boundary of saying “no” I watched as this person paid another professional for the things they’d asked me for…for free.
Being contacted under the umbrella of familiarity caused me to lose money and time. The nature of these relationships caused me to feel very anxious and t develop a strong dislike for the parties involved. This is where self awareness comes in, if I had set boundaries, this could’ve all been avoided. When I needed them for their services I paid full price, but when the tables were turned I’d given mine away for free. That was on me! Not them.
If you struggle with anxiety here are a few steps to take to help you manage it day to day:
- Set routines. Set a morning routine that allows you to be in a good headspace and perspective and you face the day. My morning routine consists of prayer, journaling, and a motivational sermon, speech, podcast, or music. Also set a night routine. Shower the day away use scents that promote calm energy and a good nights rest. I love my lavender essential oil and my lavender lip oil from Couture Cosmetics.
- Take breaks throughout the day. During my breaks I would sit at my desk, don’t do that. Take a walk, change the scenery even if only for 10 minutes. I have to force myself to do it but it gives me a second wind/a kick to finish refreshed and strong.
- When you feel a flare up, step away for a while. Allow yourself to identify what triggered the flare up so that your response won’t be through filtered lenses. Then revisit the situation after you have clearly identified what triggered you and the best way to respond or proceed.
- Evaluate every opportunity. Take time to write out a list of pros and cons as well as how this opportunity will immediately impact you vs how it will impact you in the future.