Small Businesses Surviving the Storms of Stress

If you are a small business owner or work for one, the last few days (or even weeks) have probably been challenging. (Albeit arguably they are challenging for everyone!)

While much of the media focus is on how big businesses get impacted by the current climate, small businesses will actually be bearing the bulk and brunt of the pain.

Most consultants and magazines will be talking about how the declining market will lead to cost cutting and large layoffs. They will highlight the need to do so effectively and quickly to mitigate the effects of the markets changing.

But large companies have a luxury that small businesses do not: they have built-in inefficiencies and ineffectiveness that they can cut out.

• Large companies can afford to hire more people rather than manage systems, processes, and projects effectively.
• They can endure the effects of the performance drain created by toxic leaders with toxic people practices.
• They can afford to burnout their top talent and replace them with fresh new faces.

Meanwhile, small businesses, which still make up nearly half the economy are just as important and have fewer inefficiencies with which to "cut the fat" to mitigate against a volatile market.

When you own a small business, it really only takes losing a few customers or not making a few new sales to potentially devastate your business. While larger businesses begin freezing spending, many small businesses already operate with minimal budgets and no excess capacity.

As a small business owner, you can’t just hire more people, tolerate toxic leaders, or burnout your talent only to replace them. Small business owners already know how critical great leadership and key talent is to their success. They already are efficient and have limited their costs to stay lean.

In other words, small businesses don’t have the fat to trim that large corporations have and arguably ultimately end up healthier by trimming off.

Shifting Into (and Out Of) Survival

If you are like me, seeing the markets drop is triggering and shifting you (and your people) into states of survival (fight, flight, freeze, fawn). 

Recently, I noticed a deep sense of overwhelm creeping into my mind and body. I felt myself begin to shift into a past pattern to weather this next storm. Whether this pattern will be helpful or not doesn’t matter, my body is wired to shift into it when it detects threats and unconsciously identifies what has worked best in the past. 

As I began trying to work through my to-do lists, everything felt extra hard. 

• A 30-minute webinar that should have only taken a couple hours max was taking me way too long as I kept re-thinking and spinning on its contents. 
• I struggled to stay present in meetings, feeling drawn to multitask (aka multi-distract). Which made my effectiveness in them plummet! 
• Questions like, "What goals are most important? Which projects require my attention the most?" became extremely difficult to answer. My brain felt foggy, unclear, and was struggling to make sense of things let alone make decisions.
• This left me feeling ungrounded and unsure of my direction and next steps. Which made me start questioning myself and started up spinning on all sorts of topics of insecurity and fear.

Can you relate? Have you noticed yourself or others reacting to current life challenges more quickly and in more significant ways? 

But here's the thing, survival states are not good for us. In fact, survival states are downright toxic and highly problematic to making wise decisions or solving problems. 

Why Survival States Suck & Get Stuck

I refuse to stay stuck in survival or to allow the stress of survival states to get stuck in my body. After burning out in 2021, it's taken me three years to reclaim the health of my body, stop getting sick, and improve my immune system. 

Back then, I didn't know that every single stressful event I experienced (that I didn't process or discharge out of my body) was getting stored within it. You can't see it at first, but over time, it builds and builds until you start feeling physical pain, getting sick more often, experiencing more emotional extremes, and even losing joy. 

Every time we have these stressful experiences in our lives (even those we might consider minor), our body experiences the stress and stores it. We aren't out-running the tiger, we're staring at the screens-on our desks, phones, and televisions that are not only causing us stress but also not helping us release it. 

When environments become unstable — shifting economies, changing leadership, volatile industries — our first instinct is often to pull inward. 

We have a tendency to retreat, pull away from other people, hunker down and protect ourselves. We feel the stress and anxiety in the world, and we want to move away from it, avoid it.

Have you noticed a desire to stay home? Avoid other people? 

We also experience a narrowing of our views (literally) and perspectives; we can't see other opportunities or possibilities because we are so focused on the challenging situation(s). 

When survival takes over, three things happen: 

1. Perception narrows: We lose the ability to take in broader perspectives that could help find better solutions.
2. Emotional trust erodes: Fear and resentment replace connection and collaboration.
3. Action fragments: People act out of self-preservation instead of collective commitment.

In other words, we're more disconnected, can see fewer solutions, and are less likely to take healthy action...not a great state to be in, right?

Survival States Don't Lead to Successful Outcomes

While survival states might keep us alive in truly live or death situations, they will not help us take wise action that will lead to successful results. 

In these survival states, the head, heart, and gut intelligences — the three centers that guide our thinking, feeling, and acting — become dysregulated:

• Head brain rigidifies or spins, misinterpreting expectations as threats.
• Heart brain floods or shuts down, disconnecting from shared values.
• Gut brain freezes or reacts impulsively, undermining wise action.

Instead of accessing our full human intelligence to identify what we can actually do or what is the wisest next step we can take, we stay stuck in past patterns.

What we really need to do is move towards each other. Rather than less human connection, we actually need more!

The more unpredictable the world becomes, the more important it is to stay connected — not just to tasks and timelines, but to each other. 

By connecting with others and sharing our experiences offering one another compassion, we can create stabilization. The witnessing by others of our experiences with compassion can shift us back into higher and wiser states. 

In actuality, when we come together with others that are regulated, the creativity we can tap into in those spaces can help us get clearer on what is needed and what goals and actions we need to set for ourselves.

Tapping Out the Market Crash

Now that I am conscious of the impact of stress on the body and can identify when I shift into these states of survival, I can actually do something about it. 

Today, I spent 50 minutes in a Shift Change session (Anonymous Virtual Group EMDR) and during that time, I was able to tap out and reprocess (1) a relationship issue (2) the market crash and (3) a business issue. (For info, go to shiftchange.life)

By the end of the session, my brain had made sense of those issues, and I no longer felt the stress of them in my body. I quite literally got more capacity back to:

• Think more clearly and make wiser decisions.
• Identify what's most important and prioritize more effectively.
• To take action on the things that have the highest priority of helping me right now.

Conclusion

The hard truth is that we can't control much of what happens in our workplaces, communities, the market, or the world. We can't control other people, events, or circumstances.

The one thing I have control over is myself and I want to ensure I'm operating as the highest wisest most creative, compassionate, and courageous human being I can be.

Meanwhile, I've also identified the importance of expanding my connections with others rather than pulling away from and avoiding others. I now see how important conscious coherent human connection can be to help support navigating our lives and work. 

I've held off for a while on launching my Performance Partner Community (probably stuck in varying states of survival), but the truth is, we desperately need community right now. 

We need spaces that are safe, coherent, and filled with wise human beings who want to connect with other wise human beings!

As a result, I'm going to open up my community to expand it beyond just leaders to anyone who is interested in being in a space of conscious community. Together, we will navigate life's challenges using the science of human performance, the wisdom of human beings, and work together to positively impact our work and lives.

Stay tuned for more information as I share more about this community and open its doors so that we can connect as creative, compassionate, and courageous human beings! If you are interested, make sure to reach out!