When you’re a law firm owner going through your first major adversity, it’s easy to let anxiety and panic overtake you. You’ve never handled anything like this before from a power position you’re currently in. The stakes are higher than ever, and so everything feels that much scarier.
But what would happen if experienced law firm owners looked at you in this position? They’d chuckle and ask: “First time?”
Welcome to entrepreneurship. Adversity is part of the process.
Many business owners make a mistake believing their anxious feelings mean something is wrong. But just because your mind is spiraling doesn’t mean the worst-case scenario is true.
I don’t know your specific situation, but I can promise you this: Whatever challenge you’re facing right now, you are not the first person to go through it. Or the millionth. Every successful entrepreneur has experienced setbacks, unexpected problems, difficult seasons, and moments where they questioned whether they were going to make it through.
Now, that doesn’t mean you should become careless. In fact, some level of concern is healthy. Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, wrote the book Only the Paranoid Survive for a reason. The overly relaxed business owner who thinks nothing can go wrong is usually the one with massive blind spots whose business ends up going under.
The problem doesn’t start with awareness. It starts when anxiety becomes paralysis — when you start catastrophizing every issue, lose control, and let the stress spill over onto your team.
That’s why one of the most important skills you can develop as a leader is emotional regulation, which is the ability to separate thoughts from facts.
Just because your brain tells you something terrible might happen doesn’t mean it’s happening. So when those moments come (and they will), ask yourself, “What do I actually know to be true?”
Not what you fear, what you’re imagining, what could be going wrong, but what is objectively the case?
Cold, hard facts.
One thing that’s helped me tremendously over the years is realizing that the hard moments often become the best stories later. Being in the middle of stress feels overwhelming, but eventually you gain perspective and what once felt impossible becomes another chapter in the journey later on.
The problems that overwhelm you today may someday become the problems that don’t even raise your heart rate anymore.
Think about it. If you gave your current-day problems to an earlier version of yourself, you probably would’ve collapsed under the pressure. But you’ve grown, your capacity expanded, and you became a better problem solver.
That’s what adversity does when you handle it correctly.
As Billie Jean King once said, “Pressure is privilege.” Having your problems in the first place means you’ve gotten to a very impressive place in your life. Remember that and instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” ask, “What can I control from here?”
You may not control the economy, your competitors, or the unexpected setbacks, but you do control your response and whether or not this moment becomes something that destroys you or develops you.
Remember, your track record for surviving hard days is still 100 percent. You’ve made it through every difficult season so far, and statistically, you’ll absolutely survive this, too.
Your anxiety is rarely the reality. It’s just an emotion, a small moment — and those always pass.
