Article: What does Emotional Resilience mean to Entrepreneurs?
Emotional Resilience for Founders and Entrepreneurs
Emotional resilience is your ability to adapt to stressful situations or crises. It’s your ability to bounce back from adversity and have the emotional capacity to adapt in the face of challenging circumstances.
Often when we as entrepreneurs discuss emotional resilience, antifragility becomes a part of the conversation. Antifragility is the concept that we grow when faced with stressors and challenges. To be antifragile is to be able to evolve into a better version of yourself when faced with an obstruction or state of chaos.
Business founders, start-up builders and entrepreneurs are more likely to experience more risk and uncertainty as they navigate growing their companies from an idea to a profitable business.
What do Founders say?
We asked our growing community of entrepreneurs what emotional resilience means to them. The answers were broad, but the sentiment was consistent: it was their inner power:
“Emotional Resilience is protecting your mind like your skin is protecting the rest of your body. It allows your mind to heal if it has been hurt in any possible way. It's what helps people recover from genocide, losing loved ones, business etc. It's protecting our mind, the base of everything we are. It's essential to our being” - Ruud Hendriks
“Emotional Resilience is going through very challenging times and not seeing myself as a failure- in my darkest times I always imagine myself victorious. Unbeaten. Invincible” – Asma Khan
“Emotional Resilience in entrepreneurship means following the calling of your vision like the song of the sirens, even if it means walking through fire: going unpaid for 18 months to raise your seed round, working 7 am to 11 pm Mon-Sat to get the ball rolling... none of which would be possible without your community of supporters and the heroic sacrifice and patience of your loved ones” - Juan Guerra
“Emotional Resilience is a continuous flow of feeling something, recognising it, interrogating it, not understanding it, feeling it deeper, interrogating it, still not understanding it, feeling frustration, learning, interrogating, starting to understand it, learning more, doing the work, accepting, appreciating, and then starting all over again” - Monique Baars
“Emotional Resilience is Belief” - Brett king
View the full experience from our community of founders here:
How do you build your Emotional Resilience?
Being emotionally resilient and having an anti-fragility mindset is central to not only building a successful business, but protecting the mental and emotional wellbeing of founders. The good news is, resilience is like a muscle: it can be built, trained and strengthened, and we’ve collated some resources here to support your self-training programme:
5 Minutes Read: Entrepreneurial Lessons On Resilience From The World's Great Minds - Elizabeth MacBride
7 Minutes Read: The resilient entrepreneur: How to become stronger in the face of failure - Dustin Christensen
10 Minutes Read: Hit the Emotional Gym — The Founder's Framework for Emotional Fitness, First Round Review
16 Minutes Watch: The 3 secrets of resilient people - Lucy Hone
51 Minutes Listen: Achieving Mental and Emotional Resilience as a Business Owner - Will Drumwright
Now it’s your turn. What does Emotional Resilience mean to you?
Complete the tweet and tell your community what has emotional resilience meant to you
Be it a single word, a quote, a story or an image, share your resilience journey as an entrepreneur on #EmotionalResilience with @thefuturefarm tagged.
Become a contributor and engage with The Future Farm
Are you interested in contributing on the topic of entrepreneur health and emotional resilience with us? Or interested in inviting The Future Farm to contribute to your initiatives or event? Drop us a note.
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