How I Stopped Worrying About My Business — and How You Can, Too
Has worrying about your business or life at large become your primary creative venture? You might be feeling just as I was: Exhausted. Drained. Frozen — and not in the “let it go” or “let’s build a snowman” kind of way. Like me, you might have climbed the mountain of self-helpism only to find that the view from the top was actually really cloudy and that you didn’t feel any more confident about your business or any less worried, either.
In reality, we as American entrepreneurs don’t have a lot to complain about. We have the freedom to pursue our dreams, and with that comes all the personal baggage. There truly is no differentiation between personal and professional life, and the spillover from one to the other is real (and can be a struggle).
In this blog post, I’m taking things in a very personal direction. You guys know I’m a follower of God, and you also know that I don’t keep quiet about it in my brand. This post is about sharing my very personal, vulnerable story with how I *finally* stopped being a control freak and a worrier in regard to my business.
I felt the need to share this because I speak with many of you who seem to have the same sense of anxiety over your own businesses. You overanalyze every marketing decision you make, fearing that one wrong move will halt the growth of your business. Or you worry, as I have, that the success you’ve worked so hard to achieve could disappear. It’s not a fun way to live, let me tell you!
Until recently, I considered myself a professional worrier. I thought of nearly every possible bad scenario and came up with a solution for it even though those bad things never actually happened. However, something else was happening at the same time and it was causing needless turmoil and preventing me from the full experience of a great business and a great life.
Ironically, the better things became in my business and life in general, the more I worried. I worried about losing it all by some uncontrollable calamity or by my own poor choices. Was I being a good enough mom, or will my kids end up in therapy? Am I making the right business decisions, or am I going to self-destruct? How do I know if I’m actually being my best self? I had the constant feeling of impending doom, like I was walking the edge of a cliff and was always one or two wrong moves away from slipping.
Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? But I’m pretty sure this sort of thing is what our culture would classify as “anxiety.” While anxiety can be worsened by chemical factors, poor diet, or a lack of proper rest, anxiety is also an illness of the soul, an illness that impacts every choice we make. And that’s why today we’re today about worry, the solution for it, and what to do in our businesses when we feel completely bewildered about what to do next.
It has taken me almost a decade to realize all the things that I’m going to share with you today. If you are a worrier, take heart. If there is hope for me, there is hope for you. Thank God that every day is a new beginning, because there are still days that I have to go all the way back to the basics and remember why I don’t have to choose worry or anxiety anymore. That’s why I’m creating this blog post, for myself as much as for you.
How I Stopped Worrying About My Business — and How You Can, Too
Let me start at the beginning. Like many people, I’ve struggled with worrying too much about, well, everything. Am I good enough? Am I actually helping people? Am I charging too much or too little? Am I a good mom or am I too focused on my business? How can I be a better wife — should I do more…or just ask for more help?
Since my early 20s, I’ve taken a deep dive into self-help resources and made improvements with the help of trauma counselors, great books, podcasts, and my current coach. But something still felt missing. Postmodern philosophy tells us that we are the answers to our own problems, but I’ve lived long enough to know that isn’t true — because despite everything I tried and despite all the signs of outward success — I was still terrified of that imaginary moment when my business would fall apart, whether suddenly explode into a million pieces or slowly unravel. Yep, every entrepreneur’s worst nightmare!
But then I realized something profound…
God doesn’t give us things so that we can worry about them. He gives us things because He created us for that purpose, to fulfill that role, and to be faithful to Him in doing so.
All Worrywarts are Control Freaks
Faith and worry can’t co-exist, because worry is just controlling behavior wrapped in good intentions. (Hi, my name is Kate and I’m a recovering control freak.) And ask any business owner — we are, by nature, very controlling! That’s not how it should be, though.
God gave me a business — and waited several years before making it thrive — because He determined it should be that way, and He wanted me to learn how to steward it well, knowing it would be more than I could handle and that I would need to grow into it.
Whether or not you follow God, you’ve likely heard the statement, “God never gives us more than we can handle.” I call it bullcrap! Not only is this idea non-existent in the Bible, but it actually is contrary to the very idea of faith. If God gave us only what we could handle, what boring, lackluster, and un-miraculous lives we would lead.
Self Help is an Illusion
Self-helpism would have me believe that the key to all success, happiness, and confidence lies within myself. What a glum outlook. I’m not the author of my fate. I’m the steward of it. I’m not the author of my business. I’m the manager of it.
In case you aren’t familiar with this idea, Jesus himself illustrates it beautifully in Matthew 25:23. He was telling a parable (a story with the intention of teaching) about a master entrusting various amounts of money to several of his servants. Two of the servants used the money to invest and earn even more — a great business principle.
In response…
“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’”
But the third servant had some issues. Some concerns. When asked what he did with the money, he said, “I was afraid, and I went and hid your [money] in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.”
Did you catch that? The servant didn’t waste the money. He didn’t even spend it on himself. He just got worried, buried it, and then gave it back to his master. In response, his master called him bad and lazy. Why? Because he played it safe. Because he obeyed his own worry instead of the command he was given. In doing so, he prevented his own success.
I’ve been that servant. I’ve taken what God has given me and done everything to protect it as though it were mine to control, and doing that has brought me nothing but stress, anxiety, and low confidence.
If I, and you, want to step into the success of stewarding what God has given us, we have to be like the first two servants. They took risks with what they were given, and they took responsibility for stewarding it well. In the end, they received the highest praise, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Being faithful means, in part, to not worry. Could we perhaps think of this as, “Good job, you who finally stopped worrying”? When we make choices based on faith instead of anxiety, we put ourselves in a position to experience miracles.
Isn’t that bizarre? All God is asking us to do is stop worrying and to give up our silly illusion of control, to get out of the way — basically. To the one who stops acting out of fear, He says, “Well done,” a statement that both acknowledges the accomplishment while also signifying the completeness of the act.
You might think that if God would just give you step-by-step written instructions on how to run, market, and manage your business, you could have a bit more peace about it. You might think that if your business would just reach certain revenue goals, you could totally stop worrying about it.
But, my friend, I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work. The idea that hitting certain big revenue goals will remove your worries is an illusion, one that I’ve had to dismantle. I realized that I was putting faith in how many clients hired me. I was also putting faith in the numbers in my bank statements, and I would trust God worry-free only as long as those numbers stayed where I wanted them — which means I wasn’t trusting God at all.
It’s Time to Stop Freaking Out
It’s embarrassing, to be honest. I thought I was so faithful, but now I see that I was of little faith. Not zero faith, just not enough. It’s honestly a miracle that God has chosen to continue blessing my business when, all the while, I was doing such a poor job of being faithful. But, that’s the grace of God in action. And I’m not the only one who has experienced this.
In case you’ve never heard the story of Peter — one of Jesus' disciples who literally walked on water — let me share it with you. Peter and his friends were waiting for Jesus on a boat, but Jesus didn’t show up until sometime in the middle of the night. By that point, a storm had begun and had pushed the boat far from the shore. That was no problem for Jesus; He started walking across the rolling waves directly toward the boat.
The guys in the boat started freaking out, saying, “Oh no, it’s a ghost!” Because, well, who walks on water…and through a storm no less?
And Jesus had to reply with — and I paraphrase, “Don’t freak out guys, it’s just me.”
But Peter — who was totally the Enneagram 3 and type A of the group — wasn’t satisfied. He demanded that Jesus prove it was him by giving Peter himself the power to walk on water, too, to which Jesus replied, “Yep, come over here.”
Full of faith that he wouldn’t sink, “Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’” Matthew 14: 29-31.
Why do we doubt? Because we take our eyes off Jesus even in the midst of a miracle, even when He’s standing right in front of us. But here’s the amazing part about Peter’s story that has brought me so much hope. Jesus didn’t wait for Peter to start having faith again before He saved him. The Bible says that Jesus “immediately reached out His hand and took hold of him.” Jesus closed the gap between Peter and Himself, and He didn’t even call Peter “faithless.” He said, “You of little faith.”
Although Peter had good intentions when he’d looked around at the storm, his sense of self-preservation started kicking in — the same way yours might if you see an economic downturn that might potentially impact your business. But focusing on the uncertainty stopped him from moving forward and made him literally sink. This might be similar to you or me feeling stuck, overwhelmed, and unable to make clear decisions.
The Bible says many times that we shouldn’t worry about anything. Nothing. Zero. In fact, Jesus is really specific about exactly what not to worry about in Matthew 6. Here’s what He says…
“Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”
The Bible is Full of Helpful Business Psychology
Why do you think Jesus talked about the basics, like food and clothing? Because Jesus understood Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs long before Maslow ever existed in the 1950s. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is the psychological principle that states there are 5 levels of human needs, the first and most important being the need for food, shelter, and clothing. That base-level need has to be met before it’s possible for any other needs to be met — which makes sense. If we don’t have food and shelter, we aren’t going to survive.
That’s why Jesus started with the foundational needs of humanity and basically said, “You know those things you need in order to survive? Yeah, don’t worry about them.” And if we don’t have to worry about that, what more do we have left to worry about?
Jesus didn’t say that we should just lay around and become passive, though, and that is where being a good steward comes into play. It means managing what He’s given us with wisdom and integrity, giving to those who need it, and not staking our faith in the gift, but rather in the Giver of all Good Things. Because God didn’t give us our businesses, our families, or our lives just so we could worry about them.
In fact, Jesus also said, “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?” Luke 12:25-26.
Wait, did He just call adding extra hours to our own lifespans a small thing? For us, it would be a miracle if worrying about things could do something as extraordinary as make us live longer! And yet, He says that’s such a small, easy thing (for Him!) to do, and that if we can’t even make ourselves live longer by all this worrying, then why on earth are we still doing it?
Is it possible to live a worry-free life?
What would your life look like if you didn’t have to worry at all — about anything? It sounds like a dream, so freeing and lighthearted. Like a fantasy. Just think about how much more mental space and creativity you would have!
That’s how we are supposed to live, without worrying about a single thing for a single moment.
If you and I stopped worrying, just imagine how much happier we would be, what great clarity we would have, and how present we would be. Think about the awesome wisdom and decision-making that would result from living with an unburdened mind.
You might think, as I have often struggled with, that not worrying means lackadaisical behavior, which in turn means things will go undone or start falling apart without you there to hold it all together.
I get it! And you and I aren’t the first women to think that, actually. Ever heard the story of Mary and Martha? In Luke 10, here’s what happens…
“Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.’”
In other words, the “many things,” the busy work, the over-analyzing behavior we try to maintain is not “necessary.” Jesus’ words — not mine! And what a relief that is.
But does this mean our businesses will automatically and always be successful, that life will always be good? Not at all. As Jesus said in John 16, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
The world is outside of our control, and yet I want to control as much as possible to stay safe and protect what is most important to me — as though I have the ability to do either of those things.
The economy doesn’t determine whether our businesses are successful. Our pipeline doesn’t determine our success, either. Those things change on a daily basis, but God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He knows all things and sees all things, and He says to stop worrying about it.
But what if you don’t know how to steward your business or your life very well?
If you are facing something in your life or business that leaves you bewildered, don’t worry, there’s an actionable step for you in James 1…
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.”
Hmm, kind of like how Peter was tossed around at sea? Yep, exactly like that.
I, for one, am sick of letting myself be tossed around. My life and everything in it is a gift, and it wasn’t given to me so that I could worry about it. That would be a misuse of the gift, and so incredibly insulting to an Almighty God.
The same is true for you. Your business might be struggling right now. Your personal life might be a mess, but how does worrying make it any better? All it does is add stress upon stress.
Here’s what you need to do, according to Philippians 4…
“...Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
In other words, be thankful for what you have, and ask God for what you need. God can handle your stress, your worries, your doubts — even your doubts about Him. I challenge you to start asking Him your hardest questions and start asking Him for wisdom about running your business, even if you’ve never previously said a word to Him.
A few encouraging words to keep in mind from Jeremiah 17:7, “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.”
And also Proverbs 3:25-26, “Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the Lord will be at your side and will keep your foot from being snared.”
And finally 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”
It’s time to take back the only thing we CAN control — ourselves.
What do you have to lose?
Resources
Matthew 25:23
Matthew 14: 29-31
Luke 10
Luke 12:25-26
John 16
James 1
Philippians 4
Jeremiah 17:7
Proverbs 3:25-26
2 Timothy 1:7
