subject: What are the effects of excessive stress, especially for entrepreneurs? [print this page] What are the effects of excessive stress, especially for entrepreneurs?
There are many effects of excessive stress. One of them is to disrupt the natural levels of cortisol in our bodies. Cortisol levels affect the immune system.
Our immune system has two basic modes, one for waking hours and the other for when we are asleep. The sleep mode is where our immune system "hunts" for cells infected by viruses or that are cancerous... and destroys them. Waking immunity "fire-fights" against all the potential infections we come cross in our active & waking life. Both modes are essential for our continued health & well-being.
Under prolonged excessive stress, our sleep mode immune system can be suppressed resulting in a much higher vulnerability to viruses. Meanwhile, with active mode permanently "switched on", we can suffer from a variety of allergies, skin complaints, and shingles.
Our bodies are simply not designed to be constantly at Red Alert. Something has to give. If you are a budding entrepreneur, the most important things that are affected are:
Energy levels
Ability to concentrate
Creativity
Innovation
Motivation
Perspective
These are crucial business attributes and you need to have them firing on all cylinders for your business to succeed.
There are lots of attributes of successful business people, however, creativity and its near relation, innovation, are ones that should be at the top of everyone's "must have" list.
Without the ability to think creatively, you will struggle to solve key business problems and your business will suffer as a result.
In addition, creativity and innovation are fundamental to getting your message across. Business is basically made up of three key elements
Marketing
Product creation/acquisition
Fulfilment
Of these three, marketing is by far the most important. All successful business people know that it's better to have a mediocre product with top class marketing than the other way around. Look at what happened in the Betamax v VHS scenario when video players & recorders came on the scene! If you are unfamiliar with this classic business "duel", Betamax was considered to be by far the most superior technology but was poorly marketed. This allowed is better marketed rival, VHS, to clean up in this area.
Most people who are setting up in a work-from-home business begin having to do all three key business functions themselves, including marketing. That means they are writing their own sales copy, amongst other things. Sales copy without creative flair is like eating cornflakes without milk dry, boring and likely to end up in the bin!
So, does that mean that if you're not naturally creative you are doomed to business failure? No. Certainly not. There are always ways round a problem and you need creativity to discover them. The good news is that there are ways to increase your creativity no matter what your starting point is.
