Expat Entrepreneurs: Kiss Panic Attacks Goodbye

Posted on 08. Mar, 2010 by Emmanuelle Archer in Blog, Expat Entrepreneurs, Tools & Resources
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[Disclaimer: It goes without saying that this post is about your garden-variety work-related worries, not mental health issues. It is not meant as medical advice. If you believe you suffer from actual panic attacks or depression, please seek professional help immediately.]

If you want to get ahead with your business, you can’t afford to let negative feelings affect your productivity and concentration. It’s all too easy to lose hours, if not entire days, to worry, guilt, and sometimes even sheer panic. So what do you do when your stress levels get out of control?

Here’s the method I use to nip negative emotions in the bud – give it a try next time you’re having a bad day.

Play out the worst-case scenario

Your first reaction may be to try to “get a grip”. As you probably know from experience, that doesn’t work. Putting a lid on your emotions will only leave you all tensed up and feeling even less productive than before.

Instead, try the exact opposite.

Whatever it is that you’re worried about, allow your mind to race for a few moments. Go ahead, play out the worst-case scenario in detail – not just a vague sense of dread, but the specific consequences you’re afraid of.

Done? Good. Now come back to the present moment, and take a cold, hard look at your fears. Are they warranted? How likely are they to come true?

How bad is it really?

In most cases, you’ll be relieved to see that you were merely overreacting. No, you’re not going to lose your business because there’s a typo in your newsletter. Just let it slide and get back to work.

In other cases, you may want to take corrective action, but that still doesn’t mean there’s cause for alarm. OK, you didn’t understand half of what your local supplier was saying when she phoned you today. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to end up a social pariah in your host country – but consider signing up for conversation classes to boost your oral comprehension skills.

Finally, some of your fears might be entirely justified. While you’re unlikely to literally end up living under a bridge if you miss your deadline, you could very well lose business and damage your reputation. What you need in a case like this is an effective contingency plan.

How can you limit the inconvenience to your client? What changes do you need to make to manage your time more efficiently? What concrete actions can you take to put your mind at ease, and soften the blow should your worst-case scenario come true?

Connect the dots

Now that you’ve put your mind at rest, take a few moments to compare your worst fears to the list of triggers you wrote down the other day. What theme do they have in common? Money? Being wrong? Other people’s approval?

Identifying your hot-button issue is worthwhile, because it’s much easier to stop panic dead in its tracks when you can name clearly – I’m tempted to say coldly – what’s causing it. Use this as a shortcut to snap yourself out of a funk, restore your serenity, and go back to focusing on your work.

Whew. Doesn’t that feel better already?

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Emmanuelle

Images by LunaDiRimmel (top) and Anna Gay (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons