How Stress Affects Your Blogging Business & How to Fix It

There’s a documentary on HBO called One Nation Under Stress that I highly recommend you watch. 

In the documentary, Dr. Sanjay Gupata, Chief Medical Correspondent for CNN, investigates why we are having what they call “deaths of despair” in the United States. “Deaths of despair” are death by suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related deaths. 

It’s incredibly fascinating how all the science behind this works and this is why today we’re going to talk more about how stress is quite literally killing your blogging business and how to fix it. 

Understanding Stress

Stress is a natural response that we are meant to have in dire citations, like when a lion is running after you and you have to escape. That is what it’s there for so when we’re under stress in any situation, our blood vessels open up so that we have more blood pumping. 

Our lungs are able to expand, we can run, we have all this energy going through our bodies for that fight or flight reaction to get us out of a situation. 

It shuts down non-central non-essential functions of your body so you can save yourself and your life. 

The problem that we’re having is that in the U.S. we are highly stressed, and this is happening in other developed countries as well, but we are way too stressed. 

We’re overworked. We have these expectations on us and ourselves, our bodies, on our work, on everything that we do that it needs to be perfect. We are in a constant state of stress. 

This is horrible for your body because what is happening physically in our bodies is that our brains are starting to atrophy or shrink. The prefrontal cortex in the front of your brain (the critical thinking part of your brain) is starting to shrink. 

Connections are disconnecting in your brain. These are important parts for high level thinking. 

When you’re creative, when you’re working on pitching brands, when you’re planning out your content, when you are scheduling meetings - all of this is high-level thinking.

When you’re stressed, you can’t think as well.

We don’t want our brains to shrink, we don’t want to operate at a primal level, we want to operate at our highest level. 

How Do We Fix Our Stress & Our Blogging Business?

While it may seem like the stress is never ending, I promise you there is a way to fix it! 

In the documentary, they found that the two biggest factors in keeping people from having health-related issues that are related to stress were:

1. A feeling of security; and
2. A sense of community

How do we bring this into your life and your business?

Being organized, creating structure for yourself and your team, plan ahead, and goal setting. When we do these things,  we are able to work on our sense of community and our connection with the world. 

The organization and the systems you have in place help free up brain space so you can create community. We can get out and socialize and be happier. 

Once you’ve lowered your stress and you’re happy, you’ll have the extra time to do things you loved, which is the reason you started blogging in the first place!

Stress is really serious, we don’t want our brains to shrink, we want to fix this by creating structure, organization, and predictability in our businesses. 

Always cheering you on,

Kate

Creator of the Smarter Not Harder: 3-Day Workweeks for Millennial Entrepreneurs©  Program

Owner + Founder, Kate Waldo + Co. 

P.S. Curious how you can grow your 6-figure business while slashing your workweek in half? Click here to learn about the Smarter Not Harder© program!