How do you guys cope with anxiety?

Absolute Focus on the current moment instead of past or future helped me to overcome anxiety after I was told I could become quadriplegic and I had to shutdown my startup which I was running successfully as a solopreneur for 5 years.

Philosophers called it optimal state of consciousness and Psychologists call it Flow.

Rich kids call it as Mindfulness.

What ever it's called, its just simple focus on the present and it works.

I understand your pain. Yes it does feel hard, the challenges will flow constantly and it is easy to get carried away. I was a solo founder and assembled my team. However, the worries did not decline, they went up, because once you have a team, you develop dependencies... and then that becomes a different ball game. So enjoy the solo status even if it may appear negative at the moment.

One thing you could try is to 'feel more and think less'. This can bring you closer to the 'present' as it cuts out focus on the past or future. And be open to welcome what you feel. When it works, it works well for me. If not, I just feel 'the unmet expectation'. Expectations can be big obstacles imho. When they come, don't push them away, just say hi :) I see you :) have a seat.

Take some time to sit outside and just be, that can help too. A lot of the current cravings for this and that might feel terribly important in the moment, you might even see your own avoidance behaviors, even feel guilty about them etc... and even how your own mind wants to work against your own interest... all that when seen clearly will have less power over you.

And please don't read too much about success stories of others... (even if you do, that's ok too, you just need to know it is happening, that in itself is enough to prevent them from making you feel incomplete). Life works in strange ways... e.g. recently I made far more money on the stock market than the best times of my career when I worked extremely hard... Even those 'signs' of 'success' can feel painful (at least for me and when I was younger, I was laughing at stock chasing people with a passion). I wish I could for e.g. make half of what I make from stocks from my business. I will still keep trying, sometimes you are rewarded in strange ways. And then there is also the case where sometimes your customers may rate/rank your different products very differently from how you would do it if you were in their shoes. It happens very often actually. For e.g. some of the papers I wrote that I find 'crap' have the most citations, those I LOVE get no love. It's a strange journey, just cultivate openness, there are too many things in our blind spots. Long story short, never stop loving YOU, no matter what. And cultivate your independence ... because once you think someone else will complete you... that's a big trap.

Don't take stories your mind tell you about yourself or your business too seriously. Your true worth as a human being is beyond all that... external thing that we call 'world'. Enjoy the ride. Creativity does not hang around for long when you don't make your own mood management priority #1.

By showing up and keep at it, day in day out.

Hey John,

Join us! Take a month and build with us in a little group. I'm not sure if it's corona related or what but it's helped me this month a lot. xoxo.vc

Hi John,

Uclusion has two co-founders and that's definitely normally better for this kind of anxiety. But it can also lead to anxiety as if either of us gives in to a "10 million subscribers" headline we both suffer.

If it helps I just want to mention I'm a big fan of Coolboard and just joined your waiting list. You're bootstrapping a big, really useful idea and that is a wonderful thing when so many are cynically after quick, much less useful wins.

For dealing with contractors we made this video on how to use Uclusion the same way we do with contractors. We believe it will help lower your stress with managing your contractor ROI as it did for us.

Good luck,
David

Blow on your thumb. Trust me ;)

Working on the emotions was the hardest part of my career
I just realised that emotions are useless on the way to success

However, easier said than done

Whenever I have some questions bothering me, I turn to communities
That's always a source of "ways to go" in a calm and rational way :)

Start with sales and then build a product - you will never be anxious ever again.

You sound like someone who sets high standards for your performance and seeks to improve both your capabilities and your results. This creates a certain amount of tension between what you have accomplished and where you want to be, and between what you are currently capable of and capabilities you want to develop.

I think all of us deal with anxiety in different forms. There are two parallel approaches to consider:

1. take the pressure off by giving yourself an experiment budget, or an error budget, or a homework / practice budget. Plan for a high rate of failure since you are venturing into unknown territory and be gentle with yourself. The medical profession has a model they call "forgive and remember." They are very forgiving of errors in judgement but don't tolerate ethical mistakes. I think that's a good model for entrepreneurs as well. Pay close attention to where you were unkind or misrepresented the situation or cheated someone. These actions are sometimes advocated as effective shortcuts but do more damage to your business than any honest mistake you can make.

2. engage in activities that reduce your stress level and increase your resilience. This includes mundane items like making sure you are getting enough sleep, taking breaks for regular exercise (even if it's just going for a walk), maintaining connections with friends and acquaintances. I find meditation is also helpful but your mileage may vary.

I think it stems from the feeling that the project being too big for me: I am a solo founder, this is my first venture and I am not familiar with a lot of things. I don't know how to do marketing, I don't know how to manage a business, I don't know how to deal with contractors (since there are stuff that are beyond me). So there are many-many unknown things. Also besides Indie Hackers I have nobody to ask questions from: I neither have a mentor nor a group or anything.

This is one of the reasons I founded the Bootstrapper Breakfasts in 2006. It's a low key roundtable discussion among serious entrepreneurs. You can see a schedule at https://www.meetup.com/Bootstrappers-Breakfast-SV/ (We have an event tomorrow at 9am you are welcome to attend, see https://www.meetup.com/Bootstrappers-Breakfast-SV/events/xqhnpqybcfbkc/ )

I have to admit sometimes I feel uncomfortable coming to Indie Hackers because I can see the milestones on the right: "I hit 10 million subscribers within a week", "just reached 500k MRR...". While I haven't made a penny yet, actually I've just lost money so far. I know this is just the social media effect: everyone shows their success off and they speak less about their struggles, but still.

One poem I find very helpful is the Desiderata by Max Erhman, here are a few key lines I repeat to myself from time to time when I feel my stress level creeping up.

• If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
• Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
• Many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
• Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
• Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
• Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

So after I vented a bit, my question is: how do you guys cope with the anxiety? Or to whom do you turn if you have questions/problems with regard to your business?

Entrepreneurship is an emotional roller coaster. I try to compare notes regularly with a number of folks. I ask for help and criticism so that I can improve, even when it stings a lot, and I try to be helpful to others where I can.

Anyway, I hope this helps. I have included a couple of quotes you may find helpful.

“One of the best things you can do is call someone else facing a similar problem and talk them through it. When you talk other people through their problems, you come up with wiser perspectives and solutions for yourself.”
Adam Grant, author of "Give and Take"

“Happiness equals reality minus expectations.”
Tom Magliozzi

It’s only after you fail once or twice and learn to rely equally on thought, analysis, and anticipation–in addition to speed, talent, and execution–that you can really call yourself an entrepreneur. "
Barry Moltz in "You Need to Be a Little Crazy"

The advice here is pretty solid. Not sure I have anything to add, just thought I'd chime in and say you're not alone, brother! I'm generally prone to chronic anxiety, but I think running a startup exasperates it for most. So much unknown.

I recently moved to Mountain View (from Canada) and would happily grab a coffee if you ever wanted to chat!

If it makes you feel better, I also feel way over my head in terms of marketing/sales. I've always been good at writing the codez, but that doesn't seem to count for anything when you are trying to get your own thing out there.

Look into drugs 😉. No, really, anxiety is a real disease which can lead to other worse things like depression if left untreated -- especially in this isolated pandemic-hell world we live in now.

For the longest time, I felt that taking drugs was a failure for something that's "just in your head." But, it's really not.

It's a way to get yourself back out there and motivated again.

A small amount of Xanex or a serotonin-reuptake inhibitor can make all the difference. Obviously, you should talk to a doctor and not some random person on the internet.

But, anyway, you aren't alone.

Hi John - Here's a few quotes I keep in my back pocket for whenever I'm feeling the pressure... "Don't compare your beginning to someone else's middle". We all have to start somewhere so try to enjoy the journey.

Also - "don't worry about the things you can't control", ...which is to say - focus on the things you can control ...as Reid Hoffman says "Sometimes you have to let fires burn"

Hey John,

Brave of you to share this. Most people don't bother sharing about the tough time even though these are what stop people from continuing their business! If you can keep going where others stopped, you can find success!

I've learned from other indiehackers that motivation is a very common challenge and there's very little out there to help people out (those damn 10 million subscriber articles usually refrain from the years of work that come before, are total lies or a lucky shot - they really aren't motivational). It's one of the things I work on with validator.phalox.be.

I took some time to dig through your posts on IH and your website. (No I'm not a stalker, I just want to give honest feedback with a bit of background knowledge! - if I'm totally off, please forgive me and disregard this post :-)).

When I look at your landing page, I'm having issues figuring out what your value proposition is and who you're making it for. I've noticed from other projects that this usually means that it's not very clear for the indiehacker either :-) Not having a clear image of who your customer means, you can't really know their issues and can therefore not define a solution. So I'm somewhat going to agree with the UI designer who you talked to: I do think you need to go back to Idea validation.

Don't worry though, it's only a matter of shifting your focus from the solution, to the problem (and the customer). It's hard to keep it there, but if you manage it will do miracles. A 2nd thing, I don't believe you need to do any engineering at this stage. You're spending money on something that might never take off. You already have a landing page, which is great. Now you'll need to adjust your messaging to see what people are interested in. You should also spend 90% of your time on reaching out to customers to validate the problem you're trying to solve.

From your messages it seems that you're trying to build a lot of features at once; but there's a great chance that only 1 feature is the true core value. How can you trim down on this? (and how can you trim down on the resulting thing; up to a point where you have the simplest possible thing to release to your first customers).

My last piece of advice: We get anxious because of uncertainty. Uncertainty grows when we don't validate our assumptions with our customers frequently (during this time we build a fantasy world, and we're afraid it might collapse; making it even harder to go talk to customers). Make your experiments as small as possible, validate with a couple of people and go to the next one. Slowly you'll build your solution, in an even better manner: WITH your customers!

There's much more where this came from. If you're interested in alpha testing my offer validator.phalox.be, do reach out :) Good luck with your endeavors!

I know this is just the social media effect: everyone shows their success off and they speak less about their struggles, but still.

Well, You have to remind yourself about this a lot. Also, What you can do is remind yourself of your achievement.

You are a solo founder! Be proud of that.

There are a lot of failure stories posted here as well, try reading them if that soothes your mind.

I use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_emotive_behavior_therapy

Hey John! Are you working on it full time? If that's the case, maybe you're anxious because you feel like you have to make money at all cost and can't afford to fail.

That's not a good position to be in, especially if it's your first project, because let's be honest: we rarely succeed at our first try. Have you considered freelancing or taking a part time job? That could help taking some pressure away.

If you already have a job and this is a side project... give yourself permission to relax 🙂