The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship

“It’s not the heavy load that breaks you down. It’s the way you car­ry it.” — Lena Horne, Jazz Icon & Civ­il Rights Activist

I’ve had the great for­tune to work with hun­dreds of great entre­pre­neurs and lead­ers of entre­pre­neur­ial com­pa­nies — to have been a part of some amaz­ing suc­cess­es, and painful learn­ing experiences.

I’ve been most for­tu­nate to wit­ness the real, behind-the-scenes sto­ries of what it real­ly takes to build these spec­tac­u­lar com­pa­nies – the sac­ri­fices of hard work, long hours, stress and strain. But it’s the men­tal toll that can almost or com­plete­ly break peo­ple who build and lead them — which I often describe as ​“when things get weird” — that inspired me to write my book Your Oxy­gen Mask First.

Most lead­ers, with some fre­quen­cy — every few years or decade or so — expe­ri­ence incred­i­ble met­al strain which can turn into depres­sion or anx­i­ety, and/​or man­i­fest itself physically.

This is not a poplar top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion – and cer­tain­ly nev­er men­tioned when they give an accep­tance speech for an award – even though it’s a com­mon problem.

John Boitnott’s May 2019 arti­cle talks about a 2015 research study (Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley and UC San Fran­cis­co) that shows that:

• Almost three-quar­ters of the entre­pre­neur­ial pop­u­la­tion suf­fers from some type of diag­nos­able men­tal health issue
• 72 per­cent expe­ri­ence men­tal health con­cerns and
• 49 per­cent expe­ri­ence chron­ic men­tal ill­ness (includ­ing depres­sion, bipo­lar dis­or­der, and others).

The truth is that lead­ers face a high­er risk for a men­tal health cri­sis and man­ag­ing it is a must-have skill.

Warn­ing signs

In Chap­ter 7 of my book — Man­age Your Men­tal Health — I talk about the Men­tal Health Con­tin­u­um Mod­el (used by men­tal health orga­ni­za­tions) which out­lines behav­iours at four dif­fer­ent colour-cod­ed lev­els: Healthy, React­ing, Injured and Ill (green, yel­low, orange and red zones, respectively).

It’s a quick way to self-assess and to know when you’ve crossed from one thresh­old to the next.

Gen­er­al­ly, some of the warn­ing signs to note are:

• Reg­u­lar prob­lem sleeping
• Prob­lems with think­ing or behaviour
• Social with­draw­al
• Rely­ing on unhealthy mech­a­nisms or addictions
• Not enjoy­ing the highs
• Not able to bounce back from lows.

Men­tal health is a busi­ness issue because your per­for­mance as a leader will be affect­ed when you are stressed, upset or lack resilience.

And there’s a sim­ple solution:

1. Pay atten­tion
2. Talk to some­one – soon­er than later
3. Be proac­tive with your Resilience Rit­u­als to keep you strong.

If you haven’t already done so, read and work through Chap­ter 3 Resilience Rit­u­als to take care of your mind, body and spir­it. When you stay true to them, you set your­self up to win, no mat­ter what life throws at you.

Keep­ing men­tal issues to your­self and avoid­ing healthy changes can be debil­i­tat­ing to your well­be­ing and to your business.

The Chal­lenge

• Do a quick self-assess­ment using the Men­tal Health Continuum
• What zone are you in right now?
• What zone are you usu­al­ly in?
• Where can you get help, if you need it?