Is your business keeping you up at night? If it is, you’re not alone. I get lots of calls from clients who are in the same boat.

And who can blame them? We’ve all been on an emotional roller coaster for the past three years. Before the pandemic, business was booming and people were busier than they’d ever been. Some were even expecting their biggest year ever.

Businesses were riding a wave of stress, anxiety, and hope. And then BAM! The pandemic hit. Everything got blown up.

It’s not unreasonable for owners to encounter more emotions in their day than they used to. That’s okay. Right now, it’s normal.

Many of my client calls begin with a statement of some sort of emotion. “I’m stressed.” “I’m panicked.” “I’m worried.” “I’m confused.” Sometimes even, “I’m angry.”

The trick is to unpack these negative emotions to see what’s behind them. They’re trying to tell you something. And if you don’t listen, they’ll keep you up at night.

When you take some time to listen and examine, you can start to turn negative emotions into positive energy. You can transform stress, worry, and anger into solutions that stir hope.

Of all the negative emotions I hear clients are feeling, three top the list: frantic, confused, and hopeless. Let’s look at these three emotions and see what’s behind them, how to shift them, and what actions you can take to transform them into positive energy.

Frantic (Too Busy)

What is it like to feel frantic as a business owner?

You and/or your team are completely overwhelmed — and there’s no end in sight. You feel so in over your head that there isn’t much you can do to fix what’s right in front of you.

It’s a feeling that’s all too familiar to many owners in this high-demand market.

I recently spoke with a client experiencing this emotion to the point that he was visibly upset. His team was frantic, so he was frantic. He was out of capacity and their committed shows kept growing. Every new need triggered a new crisis, and they had no quick fixes left.

The solution to his problem, of course, wasn’t to dump his commitments and start over. We’re show people. Regardless of how we feel, we’re going to get the show done.

And that’s the truth. It may not be easy. It may not be pretty. But we’ll get it done.

The trouble comes — along with that frantic feeling — when there’s no prospect of the madness ever ending. You can’t work at 110% every day forever. Something has to give.

The Shift

If you’re feeling frantic, look at the things you can do to buy some breathing room in the near future. It may not be today, tomorrow, or even next week. But you need to envision some breathing room in the near-term foreseeable future.

Give yourself the space to take back control of your time and capacity.

The Action

One option for retaking control is to raise your prices. Increasing your margins will mean you can afford to turn away some work. Ask yourself, “How can I price myself out of being this busy?”

The inflation we’re seeing in the services industry right now is due, in large part, to this. It’s not about price gouging or making a quick buck. It’s about coping with high demand and buying some relief.

But this isn’t the only move you can make.

The frantic client I mentioned had already raised prices. So next, he went to his team and said, “For the next 90 days after this current surge is over, we’re going to operate at 75% capacity instead of 110%.”

That empowered the team. The promise of future relief and a quantifiable target allowed everyone to calm down and see a light at the end of the tunnel. He gave them the time and permission to help identify where they should be doing their work and where they shouldn’t.

A move like this means you have to follow a plan. It takes hard work and turning down business. It means you have to be razor sharp on your pricing and clear on your filters and availability.

It probably also means tightening your existing filters to say NO to clients who are unnecessarily difficult to work with. I’ve heard them called energy vampires. They breed negativity and stress. It’s time to turn them away.

This will give you space to reprioritize and retake control of your time and capacity. You’re not really reducing your capacity. You’re reserving capacity for self-care.

Once you make the shift and take action, whether it’s raising prices, learning to say NO to difficult clients, or reserving capacity for self-care, you’ll get the breathing room you need.

Meeting this goal will reduce negative emotions. It will create hope by reducing anxiety. And by collaborating with your people, you share that positive energy with the whole team.

Confused (Too Many Options)

Confusion is a cousin to frantic. It happens when you have too many options, and they all seem great.

Let’s say I get a call from a client. He has a list of all the things that are pulling him every which way. He needs to buy an LED wall. His client wants him to open an office in a new city. He has an opportunity to hire a highly qualified employee, but doesn’t know if he really needs a new hire.

Everything seems important. Everything seems urgent.

The Shift

If you’re in the above scenario, the first thing you need is to realize you’re trying to please too many people at the same time. You have to learn to be more selective about who and what gets your attention.

You need to make fewer things both urgent and important.

It’s okay to be excited about opportunities without actually following through with them.

I love it when I can join in a client’s excitement over multiple great opportunities, but I also always follow that up with, “What’s the ONE you’re going to choose?”

This is where you have to apply your business strategy. The whole point of your business strategy is to prioritize opportunities and tell you what you should ignore.

Reconnecting with your strategy will filter out a lot of unnecessary work.

Use your strategy to assess the consequences of NOT doing something. Anything that’s urgent and important will have a clear deadline and a significant consequence for not meeting it. A missed opportunity is not a consequence. Making less money is.

Do you need to have an office in another city? No? Great, then filter that noise as quickly as possible.

The ultimate test for any opportunity is the Shiny Object Test. If the opportunity in front of you didn’t exist, would you be out looking for it? If the answer is no, you should probably dismiss it.

The outcome of reconnecting with your business strategy is that you develop better filters for opportunities. These filters let you know what to pursue and what to dismiss.

You end up dismissing confusion as well.

Hopelessness (Too Calm)

Two different owners might call me in the exact same situation. One says, “Everything is going too well,” and the other says, “Everything is falling apart.”

One feels listless, and the other feels depressed. Actually, feeling hopeless comes from a very similar place as feeling complacent.

The Shift

These owners’ reactions have to do with how they frame their idea of success.

In both cases, the owners need to redefine success by making it either broader or narrower. Those are the only two options on this one.

The Action

People often fail to redefine success because they have an emotional trigger they aren’t aware of.

Remember that emotions are trying to tell you something, even if they aren’t the stoic, logical ideal stereotypical to business. You need to translate that communication into logical action.

When you understand what your emotions are telling you, you can put your energy into a definition of success that fits your needs. Then you can make more progress toward that success. You’ll also spend less time worried about things you don’t have control over.

If profit is a major component in your definition of success, then you can ask, “What other ways can we generate revenue?” Or you might ask, “How can I put energy into increasing profits?” Then you can take specific actions to work toward success.

When you have a realistic definition of success, you won’t feel like you’re spinning your wheels or the world is falling apart. You’ll have a goal. That’s the way out of the quagmire of hopelessness.

Bottom Line

Negative emotions are a reality in the turbulent world of business today. You don’t have to be ashamed of them, but you also don’t have to let them run your life. Take action to leave negative emotions behind in favor of positive forward momentum.

You can’t get started too soon on a journey like that.