The Business Owner “Zone”

Everyone experiences stress, which also comes in multiple forms such as exhaustion, fear, anger, worry, anxiety, unhappiness, etc. When this happens, your fight-or-flight response is initiated which opens up the “hormone” door to cortisol and adrenaline.   Don’t get me wrong, stress can be your friend in certain situations and environments. For example:

• 0 – When you are in a restful, deep sleep, level 0 would be ideal.
• 4 – If you have goals you need to achieve, a stress level of 4 is ideal for accomplishing those goals. This is a good level of stress to push you.
• 10 – The immediate response you have just before an accident is about to occur would be at a level 10.

When you experience a high amount of stress, let’s take a look at where your confidence level is with a few questions:

1. When you feel higher levels of stress (6 to 10 on the scale) where is your confidence in yourself and others?
2. When you feel higher levels of stress (6 to 10 on the scale) do you feel like you can’t do anything right, you aren’t good enough, you are comfortable what you are doing, and freak out a bit when things change? Your confidence may be lacking in these situations.
3. When you feel higher levels of stress (6 to 10 on the scale) do you feel like no one can do anything right? Maybe everyone else is incompetent (yes, I heard a leader say this this week)? Maybe if you could duplicate yourself 10x over, everything would be perfect?
4. What about when you feel like everything is coming together as planned. Everything is working well. Relationships are ideal. Your happiness is good. You feel fulfilled.  Where is your confidence level then?

Please know, I am not a Dr. I don’t share this as an exact science. I share this as a concept on how your stress levels impact your confidence.

Being able to effectively “choose” what level of stress you want to use, gives you the control to manage your outcomes. Now you may be saying, “I can’t control that!” What I ask you to consider is that you can.

Now let’s talk about Goal achievement, or you can view it as productivity, feeling fulfilled, or all of the above.

Look back at when you were achieving your goals & you felt fulfilled and productive. Where was your confidence level?

How about when your confidence level was lacking. Did you have goals? Did you feel like you got nothing done in a day? Did you enjoy your day? Did you enjoy the people in your life?

How about when your confidence was so high, no one was going to stop you or get in your way? If you needed others to help you, were your goals more difficult to achieve? Did the work take longer? Were you more frustrated in the results of everyone around you? Did you experience a lack of engagement from others in what you were trying to achieve?

Let’s bring these two concepts of Stress and Productivity together. There is an optimal environment where a managed level of stress and confidence with bring you higher levels of Productivity, Goal Achievement, Influence, and Fulfillment.

The optimal environment, when managed effectively, will bring you into The “Zone.” When you are high in the “Zone” you are unstoppable. When you are lower in the “Zone” you may still be achieving goals, productivity, influence, and fulfillment, they just may take a bit longer.

Then there are the edges of the zone (in yellow) when you start to get triggered physiologically and you will step into lower confidence levels that are lacking or self-serving and higher stress levels. Your ability to be perceptive, your ability to listen, to make good decisions, to say the best words all reduces.

My next question for you is, how do you stay in The “Zone?”

What do you have to do daily to optimize the time you stay here?

Do you feel like you have the ability to manage your time in The “Zone?”

As a business owner, staying in the “Zone” is a fine balance of both art and science so you can see the forest through the trees. You are:

• Using your creativity to optimize the business and be a great leader
• You have your niche honed in and can anticipate your ideal clients problems with solutions to solve them
• You know where and when to leverage the best resources to grow your business

You may be driving a profit but effectiveness hasn’t quite been optimized because you haven’t been able to delegate those things that don’t fulfill you, that don’t tap into your strengths and can be given to others that have the strengths. And then because of that your systems are not yet effective where your people, processes, and technology enable your business to be systemized and work effortlessly.

The “Zone” of the business has a direct correlation to the amount of time the business owner is in the “Zone.”

If you aren’t a business owner and you work for someone else, consider this…. The “Zone” of your life and career has a direct correlation to the amount of time you are in the “Zone.”

My best suggestion for you, if you are up for suggestions, would be to evaluate both:

1. How often are you in the “Zone?” (More than 75% of the time, 50% of the time, Less than 25% of the time)
2. How often are you meeting or exceeding your goals and/or feel extraordinarily fulfilled? (More than 75% of the time, 50% of the time, Less than 25% of the time)

If the answer to both of these questions are not “More than 75% of the time”, what are you going to do about it?