50 Reasons to Start Your Own Business

Some people are destined to be entrepreneurs. From the time they get through school, or maybe even before that, they’re hungry to start a business and lead it to success, and they’ll stop at nothing to make that dream a reality.

Related: 3 Steps to Eliminating the Barriers to Becoming Self-Sufficient

For others, starting a business is a scary, intimidating notion. There are too many unknowns to take the plunge. But if you’re considering becoming an entrepreneur, don’t forget all the benefits that go along with it:

1. Flexibility. Work your own hours.

2. More spare time (eventually). Spend more time with your family and friends. But note: This is only applicable once your business is established and you have employees handling the majority of necessary responsibilities. Don’t expect to have more spare time until you reach this point. In fact, expect to have much less.

3. Call the shots. Nobody else is going to set the rules. You are.

4. Set your own deadlines. No more last-minute rushing unless you want to do it.

5. Sell how you want to sell. Online? In person? Inbound? Outbound? It’s your call.

6. Create your own environment. You can set the formality and culture of your organization.

7. Pursue your passion. You can do what makes you happy.

8. Create something from scratch. Watch your organization grow from start to finish.

9. Meet new people. Network with other entrepreneurs and professionals.

10. Build a team. You decide who to hire and bring into your company.

11. Create jobs. Improve the economy with new job opportunities.

12. Help people. Use products and services to improve people’s lives.

13. Become an expert. Learn the ropes of your industry through first-hand experience.

14. Invest in yourself. You take the risk, and you’ll gain the rewards.

15. Make more money. If you want a pay raise, you can give yourself one.

16. Financial independence. No one else is signing your paychecks.

17. Tax benefits. Write off your biggest expenses Note: while you do get to write off lots of expenses as an entrepreneur, beware the “self employment tax.”

18. New challenges every day. Find new ways to stimulate your mind.

19. Get exposed to new cultures. Discover new perspectives and approaches.

20. Discover new fields. Delve deeper into your industry.

21. Create an asset. Give yourself something sellable to hedge your bets.

22. Connect with your clients. Forge real, personal connections.

23. Delegate boring tasks. Don’t do anything you don’t want to.

24. You can stop working. Work you enjoy doing can’t be described as “work.”

25. The power to give. Have the power and flexibility to donate time or money to worthy causes.

Related: The 8-Step Battle Plan to Succeed as an Entrepreneur

26. Get involved in the community. Participate actively in your neighborhood and region. 

27. Improve your industry. Push your industry forward with new innovations and ideas.

28. Get a mentor. Meet valuable, insightful mentors and learn from them.

29. Become a mentor. Take your own knowledge and experience, and mentor someone else.

30. Learn new skills. Branch out in new departments.

31. Attend new classes and seminars. Constantly refine your skillset and stay updated.

32. Have a big office. If you want the biggest office in your workplace, it’s yours.

33. Work from anywhere. Work from home, an office or a beach if you so choose.

34. Have the option for multiple ventures. Start another business when you’re done with this one.

35. Gain entrepreneurial experience. Being an entrepreneur makes you a better professional in almost any position.

36. Get recognized. Start earning name recognition and build a reputation.

37. Get things done faster. Set your own efficiency rates.

38. Build a personal brand. Take the time to develop your personal brand, and tie it into your business’s.

39. Get more creative. Create your own opportunities and your own solutions.

40. Inspire others. Serve as an example for other people to follow their dreams.

41. Reduce your commute. Find an office space closer to your home.

42. Have more job stability. Never worry about being laid off or fired.

43. Find pride and fulfillment. Finally start taking pride in the work you’re doing.

44. Reach your dreams. If you’ve ever dreamed of being wildly successful, this is your chance.

45. Learn to embrace failure. Even if you fail, you’ll walk away with new skills and more experience you never had before.

46. Have a great story to tell. It will be a fun story for your grandchildren one day, win or lose.

47. Leave something behind. Pass the business down to your children and grandchildren.

48. Change the world. It may seem like a lofty goal for you right now, but your business really could change the world.

49. Resources are plentiful. With the dominance of the Internet, it’s easier than ever to find resources you need, including startup capital, loans, grants and even mentors.

50. There’s nothing stopping you. What’s really keeping you from being an entrepreneur? Of course there are risks, but there’s nothing forcing you not to take them.

If you want to become an entrepreneur, there’s nothing really holding you back. Take the leap, and lead the company you’ve always wanted.

If you decide to take the leap, be sure to grab my ebook to help with your growth, The Definitive Guide to Marketing Your Business Online.

Related: 10 Reasons Why 2015 Will Be the Year to Start Your Business

Jayson Demers

This Essential Leadership Trait Can Push Employees to Do Their Best

There’s a misconception that great leaders are born, or that talented professionals can decide to be leaders and, overnight, step into the role with grace and excellence. Of course, the tenets of great leadership can occasionally be stumbled upon, but for the rest of us, leadership demands hard work and constant refinement.

Some of the characteristics of great leaders are easy to identify, and most emerging leaders are aware of them enough to actively work toward them -- traits such as respect and authority. But there’s one particular characteristic that commonly gets overlooked, and it’s critically important if you want to build trust and camaraderie within your team: transparency.

Related: Embrace True Transparency, and You'll Experience More Success

There are a few possible definitions of transparency, so before I go any further, I’ll clarify what I mean by “transparency” as it relates to leadership. In this context, transparency is a degree of honesty and openness, executed so consistently that your workers trust in your candor. To a further application, that commitment to transparency often spreads to the wider company culture, promoting more honesty and candid expression among your team members.

While the ethics of transparency are generally positive and transparency can be argued as an ethically superior quality, ultimately, its use in leadership is geared toward achieving certain benefits for the entire team.

Relationships can form

Allowing more transparency in your style of leadership opens yourself to more meaningful relationships -- both with the team as a whole and with the individuals of that team. Forming friendships with your employees isn’t typically a productive course of action since it can distort your working relationship, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have healthy, mutually respectful, sociable relationships with each individual on your team.

Being transparent makes you more approachable, and makes you seem more like a human than a robotic boss. The end result is an environment where positive working relationships form easier and last longer.

People trust you more easily

Consistent transparency is the easiest way to build trust -- though it still takes a long time. Being completely open and honest will eventually give your employees a powerful sense of trust, which leads to a more unified team and a healthier work environment. Furthermore, you’ll be able to assign tasks, give criticism and provide direction to your team, and employees will respect and unanimously follow you.

Problems reach a resolution faster

Transparent leadership allows employees to be more honest about their individual viewpoints and more open about expressing them in a public dialogue. The more openness and honesty you facilitate in the context of your team, the faster you’ll be able to work together to achieve a common end goal.

Related: 5 Steps to Align Your Reward Process and Reach Your Company Goals

People are more willing to work together

It’s easier to assign teams cohesively when you’re honest about your motivations for the assignment. If paired with a more seasoned employee, a lower-ranking employee may feel that you don’t acknowledge his/her ability to complete the job independently. Simply being honest and acknowledging your motivations for the pairing -- such as strengths and complementary weaknesses that will allow the job to go smoothly -- will push both workers to contently engage in the mutual effort.

Encouraging an atmosphere of transparency will also promote transparency at all levels. Employees will feel more comfortable expressing their opinions, submitting their work and openly engaging in progressive dialogue.

People work harder

Under a transparent leader, people will be more satisfied, and they’re going to work harder for you as a result. Even if they don’t work any harder, they’ll at least work more productively. This is the bottom line of effective, transparent leadership that you cannot afford to ignore.

Becoming more transparent

It’s easy to talk about the benefits of transparency. Achieving that level of transparency is more challenging. Fortunately, there are a handful of strategies you can use to improve your own transparency as a leader, and cultivate a working environment that rewards equally transparent employees:

• Express your opinions openly. You may find this difficult, especially when expressing dissatisfaction, but honesty is crucial.
• Keep your messaging consistent. Expressing two different ideas on the same topic to two different employees can damage your credibility as a transparent leader.
• Keep all your commitments. If you can’t promise something, don’t promise it.
• Listen to the feedback of others. Even if you disagree with it, show your appreciation and respect for it.

Simply engaging in these strategies on an occasional basis isn’t enough. The key to building long-lasting trust is consistency, and only through consistent execution will you be able to see the benefits of transparency amongst your team.

Related: Multiply the Trust Factor Inside Your Organization

 Jayson Demers

8 Great Entrepreneurial Success Stories

It never ceases to amaze me how much time people waste searching endlessly for magic shortcuts to entrepreneurial success and fulfillment when the only real path is staring them right in the face: real entrepreneurs who start real businesses that employ real people who provide real products and services to real customers.

Yes, I know that’s hard. It's a lot of work. What can I say, that’s life. Besides, look on the bright side: You get to do what you want and you get to do it your way. There’s just one catch. You’ve got to start somewhere. Ideas and opportunities don’t just materialize out of thin air.

The only way I know to get started is by learning a marketable skill and getting to work. In my experience, that’s where the ideas, opportunities, partners, and finances always seem to come from. Sure, it also takes an enormous amount of hard work, but that just comes with the territory.

If you want to do entrepreneurship right, here are eight stories you’ve probably never heard about companies you’ve most definitely heard of.

The Pierre Omidyar way. In 1995, a computer programmer started auctioning off stuff on his personal website. AuctionWeb, as it was then known, was really just a personal project, but, when the amount of web traffic made it necessary to upgrade to a business Internet account, Omidyar had to start charging people fees. He actually hired his first employee to handle all the payment checks. The site is now known as eBay.  

Related: How to Be Smarter

The John Ferolito and Don Vultaggio way. Back in the 70s, a couple of Brooklyn friends started a beer distributor out of the back of an old VW bus. Two decades later, after seeing how well Snapple was doing they decided to try their hand at soft drinks and launched AriZona Green Tea. Today, AriZona teas are #1 in America and distributed worldwide. The friends still own the company.   

The Matt Maloney and Mike Evans way. When a couple of Chicago software developers working on lookup searches for Apartments.com got sick of calling restaurants in search of takeout food for dinner, the light bulb went off: Why isn’t there a one-stop shop for food delivery? That’s when the pair decided to start GrubHub, which went public last April and is now valued at more than $3 billion.   

The Joe Coulombe way. After operating a small chain of convenience stores in southern California, Joe Coulombe had an idea: that upwardly mobile college grads might want something better than 7-11. So he opened a tropical-themed market in Pasadena, stocked it with good wine and booze, hired good people, and paid them well. He added more locations near universities, then healthy foods, and that’s how Trader Joe’s got started.   

Related: Success Does Not Follow a Time Clock

The Howard Schultz way. A trip to Milan gave a young marketer working for a Seattle coffee bean roaster an idea for upscale espresso cafes like they have all over Italy. His employer had no interest in owning coffee shops but agreed to finance Schultz’s endeavor. They even sold him their brand name, Starbucks.

The Phil Robertson way. There was a guy who so loved duck hunting that he chose that over playing pro football for the NFL. He invented a duck call, started a company called Duck Commander, eventually put his son Willy in charge, and that spawned a media and merchandising empire for a family of rednecks known as Duck Dynasty.  

The Konosuke Matsushita way. In Japan in 1917, a 23-year-old apprentice at the Osaka Electric Light Company with no formal education came up with an improved light socket. His boss wasn’t interested so young Matsushita started making samples in his basement. He later expanded with battery-powered bicycle lamps and other electronic products. Matsushita Electric, as it was known until 2008 when the company officially changed its name to Panasonic, is now worth $66 billion.

The Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs way. While they had been friends since high school, the two college dropouts gained considerable exposure to the computer world while working on game software together on the night shift at Atari. The third Apple founder, Ron Wayne, was also an Atari alumnus.

As I always say, the world is full of infinite possibilities and countless opportunities, but your life and career are finite, meaning you have limited time to find what you’re searching for and make your mark on the world. This is your time. It’s limited so don’t waste it. Find something you like to do and just do it. That’s how real entrepreneurs always start.

Related: 10 Behaviors You Never See in Successful People

Steve Tobak

Success Does Not Follow a Time Clock

We’re growing up later than we used to. We’re finishing school later,starting our careers later, even getting married and having kids later. In case you’re wondering, it’s a worldwide phenomenon that’s been studied to death. We’ve known about it for years. So what’s new?

What’s new is a study of 5 million workers over a period of decades. The economists who did the research for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concluded that average workers see most of their earnings grow during the first 10 years of their career and begin to stagnate after age 35.

But there is one big caveat: that flattening of the growth curve does nothappen to higher-income earners. And therein lies the rub. Nobody has a crystal ball so you don’t know if you’re going to be an average earner or make gobs of money until after the fact.

Take my career, for example. The first decade ended with me stuck in middle management. I didn’t break through to the executive ranks until my mid-30s. That’s when all the good stuff started to happen. And my compensation was still on the rise when I retired from the corporate world and started my own business at 46.

Related: Your Product Is Your Brand

If I were you, I’d take studies like this one with a big dose of salt. But since mainstream news outlets are already mischaracterizing the data with eye-ball catching headlines like “Your lifetime earnings are probably determined in your 20s,” I thought I’d provide some advice that’s a bit less sensational and a lot more balanced:

Driving yourself too hard can backfire.

One of the takeaways from those reporting on the study is essentially that you should get your head in the game and get while the getting’s good. If you’re a slacker, that’s good advice, but if you’re already a highly driven achievement-oriented person, putting even more pressure on yourself is a bad idea.

Probably the main reason I ended up stuck in middle-management hell in the first place is that I was pushing myself too hard. As a result, I came across rough around the edges, my management style was a bit on the toxic side, and I wasn’t deemed executive leadership material.

Once I learned to let go and relax a bit, that’s when I started to shine, doors that had been closed began to open, and climbing the ladder of success became a whole lot easier. On a side note my personal relationships improved, as well. Turns out nobody wants to be around a guy that takes himself too seriously – at work or at home.

Related: 10 Behaviors You Never See in Successful People

You’re not racing against a biological time clock.

If you juxtapose the two sets of research – that people are growing up later but their earning potential is dictated earlier – you might reach the erroneous conclusion that those two concepts are at odds with each other, that you need to grow up ASAP or you’ll miss your best opportunity to be successful. That’s simply not true.

It’s all relative. The clock starts when you’re ready, more or less. Some of us are just late bloomers. I know I was. That doesn’t mean you want to screw around for a few decades, wake up when you’re 60 and declare, “I’m ready, now show me the money.” Trust me, that’s not going to end well.

But if you’re like some people – me for example – your career will have many twists and turns. It may slump or drag for a while and then take off when you finally hit your stride. And who knows when that’ll happen? After all, there’s definitely a random component to life. None of us is in complete control, that’s for sure.

And while maturity does make life easier in many ways, you never want to lose that childlike belief that anything is possible and regular folk like you and me can achieve amazing things if we set our minds to it. While I can’t point to a study, I’ve definitely observed the power of dreams. They can and often do become self-fulfilling prophecies.   

Related: Why You Become Happier With Age

Steve Tobak

How to Be Smarter

When we’re young, life just seems to happen without us having much say in the matter. Then responsibility begins to shift from our parents to us. From that point forth, our own decisions and circumstance dominate our lives. Those two factors are largely responsible for how things turn out for us. And the two are intimately related.

We often observe how successful people make their own luck, but that’s really just another way of saying they make smart decisions when it comes to taking risks and creating or capitalizing on opportunities. So success in business – and in life, I would argue – is primarily a function of making smart decisions.

Since every decision you make is based entirely on your own thoughts and feelings –how your brain processes experiences, events, and information from a variety of sources to draw conclusions – it’s actually not that complicated to determine how to make smarter decisions. This is how you do it.  

Be present in the moment.

The first time I told the story of how an ex-girlfriend’s father took me in his Porsche to visit his startup company, where I learned about the coming wave of digital electronics (that was the late 70s, mind you), I remember thinking, what if I hadn’t been paying attention to the guy?

There have since been maybe seven or eight similarly critical random events that changed my life. And if I hadn’t been engaged in the moment they would have simply passed me by. I never even would have known I missed them. And where would I be today? It’s a sobering thought.

Related: Success Does Not Follow a Time Clock

Trust your instincts.

Using the same example, what if that simple event hadn’t resonated with me the way it did? What if I hadn’t jumped right on it without hesitation and capitalized on the opportunity? I never would have gone back to grad school, gotten into the high-tech industry, and had an awesome 20+ year career.

When it comes to decision-making, listen to what smart, knowledgeable people say but, in the end, you have to make the right call. If you learn to trust your gut, you won’t hesitate when what you’re hearing is right. And when you do hesitate, you’ll know it isn’t right.  

Think critically.

The more you allow yourself to be overloaded by information, interrupted by communication, and bombarded by distraction, the less time and attention you have left to focus on what really matters and question the accuracy, efficacy, and applicability of what you’re learning and experiencing.

Let me say it another way. By opting for quantity of information, communication, and possessions over quality, you sacrifice deep understanding through logical reasoning in favor of the next shiny object, inspiring post, or other feel-good nonsense that grabs your ever-shrinking attention span.

You would not believe how much dumber that makes you. Without logical constructs like deductive reasoning and the scientific method, our society would never have progressed. There would be no technology. We’d all be stuck back in the dark ages. Stop and think about that for a minute … without checking your phone. 

Related: Your Product Is Your Brand

Stay sharp.

Every time I see some popular and unsubstantiated nonsense about a miracle diet, pill, vitamin, or nutritional supplement that’s supposed to do magical things like make you thinner or smarter, it drives me nuts. None of that stuff works, folks. They’re all scams – moneymakers courtesy of our quick-fix culture.

Look, your brain is part of your body, right? Think. Just eat a good variety of reasonably healthy stuff, don’t eat too much, get out and exercise once or twice a week, and you’ll be fine. If you keep your body in pretty good shape, guess what? Your mind will come along for the ride and maintain its plasticity as you age.

One last thing. There’s been some negative stuff about caffeine from questionable sources, lately. Don’t believe it. It’s an amazing and, read my lips, naturally occurring stimulant. For the vast majority of you, a cappuccino or a few cups of tea a day will not harm you. And it will make you sharper. No kidding. As with anything, just don’t overdo it.

Related: 10 Behaviors You Never See in Successful People

Steve Tobak

The 8 Instinctive Habits of Remarkable Leaders

Once in a while you meet a leader who stands out -- even in a room filled with skilled, experienced, successful people. She hasn't just learned to be remarkably charismatic. He hasn't just learned to be remarkably likeable.

You can tell, in an instant, they simply think and act and lead differently than most people.

But those rare individuals don't become remarkable leaders overnight. While some are born with an aptitude for leadership, truly outstanding leaders are made. Through training, experience, and a healthy dose of introspection they learn how to make quick decisions. They learn to work with different personalities. They learn to nurture, motivate, and inspire.

They learn to truly lead.

And in time those skills become automatic and reflexive. While great leaders do a tremendous amount of thinking, that thinking happens behind the scenes. In the moment, in the trenches, when people look to them and need them most, they act: swiftly, decisively, and confidently.

Want to become a remarkable leader? Work hard to, like them, do some things naturally, automatically, and instinctively:

1. They praise.

It's easy to tell when employee recognition is simply one entry on a very long to-do list. We've all been around people who occasionally -- and awkwardly -- shake a few hands and pat a few backs. No matter how hard they try to fake it, their insincerity is evident. (Tell me you haven't had at least one boss like that.)

No one gets enough praise, so truly outstanding leaders see expressing thanks, giving praise, and providing recognition as one gift that can never be given often enough.

Praise is almost like breathing to a truly outstanding leader: natural, automatic, frequent, and most of all, genuine and sincere.

Related: 10 Qualities of Really Amazing Employees (LinkedIn)

2. They decide.

Ideas are great but implementation is everything. Outstanding leaders quickly weigh, assess, decide, and then immediately act -- because decisiveness and action build confidence and momentum.

That's why making a poor decision is often better than making no decision at all. Mistakes can almost always be corrected. Even though you should always try, rarely must you be right the first time. Adapting and learning and revising so you get it right in the end matters a lot more.

Especially when...

3. They take responsibility.

We all make bad decisions. What matters is what we do afterwe make those mistakes.

Outstanding leaders are the first to say, "I was wrong." Outstanding leaders are the first to say, "I made the wrong choice. We need to change course."

Outstanding leaders instinctively admit their mistakes early and often because they're quick to take responsibility and because they desperately want to build a culture where mistakes are simply challenges to overcome, not opportunities to point fingers and assign blame.

4. They communicate.

Business is filled with what: What to execute, what to implement, what to say, and sometimes even what to feel.

What's often missing is the why.

That's why so many projects, processes, and tasks fail. Tell me what to do and I'll try to do it; tell me why, help me understand why, help me believe and make that why my mission too...and I'll run through proverbial brick walls to do the impossible.

Managers stipulate. Outstanding leaders explain. And then they listen--because the most effective communication involves way more listening than talking.

5. They set the example.

Say you're walking through a factory with the plant manager and there's a piece of trash on the floor. There are two types of people when that happens:

• One spots it, stops, struts over, snatches it up, crumples it like a beer can, and strides 20 feet to a trashcan to slam it home. He picked up the trash... but he also made a statement.
• The other veers over without breaking stride, picks it up, crumples it, keeps talking, and doesn't throw it away until he comes across a convenient trashcan. He's not thinking about making a statement. He just saw a little trash... and picked it up without thinking.

Simple example? Sure. But extremely telling -- especially to employees.

Why? Employees notice what you do. When you're in charge, everyone watches what you do. The difference lies in how you do what you do... and what that says about you.

Outstanding leaders do what they do simply because it's important to them. It's part of who they are. They care about go, not show -- and, in time, so do they people they work with.

Related: What Kinds of People Do You Hate to Work With? (LinkedIn)

6. They give feedback.

We all want to improve: to be more skilled, more polished, more successful. That's why we all need constructive feedback.

Because they care about their employees, not just as workers but as people, outstanding leaders instinctively go to the person struggling and say, "I know you can do this. And I'm going to help you."

Think about a time when a person told you what you least wanted to hear and yet most needed to hear. They changed your life. Outstanding leaders naturally try to change people's lives, even if it's uncomfortable... because they care.

7. They seek help.

At some point, most people in leadership positions start to avoid displaying any signs of vulnerability. After all, you're in charge of everything, so you're supposed to know everything.

Of course that's impossible. You can't know everything about your job. (Your employees can't know everything about their jobs, either.)

Outstanding leaders don't pretend to know everything. (In fact, they purposely hire people who know more than they do.) So they instinctively ask questions. They automatically ask for help.

And in the process they show vulnerability, respect for the knowledge and skills of others, and a willingness to listen -- all of which are qualities of outstanding leaders.

8. They challenge.

Most leaders implement their ideas by enforcing processes and procedures that support those ideas.

For employees, though, engagement and satisfaction are largely based on autonomy and independence. I care a lot more when it's mine: my idea, my process, my responsibility. I care the most when I feel I am depended on -- and given the authority -- to make important decisions and do what's right.

Outstanding leaders create broad standards and guidelines and then challenge their employees by giving them the autonomy and independence to work the way they work best. They allow employees to turn "yours" into "ours," transforming work into an outward expression of each person's unique skills, talents, and experiences.

That's a challenge every employee wants to face -- and one that outstanding leaders instinctively provide.

LinkedIn Influencer, Jeff Haden, published this post originally on LinkedIn. 

How Successful People Stay Calm

The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people, and we’ve found that 90 percent of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control.

If you follow our newsletter, you’ve read some startling research summaries that explore the havoc stress can wreak on one’s physical and mental health (such as the Yale study, which found that prolonged stress causes degeneration in the area of the brain responsible for self-control). The tricky thing about stress (and the anxiety that comes with it) is that it’s an absolutely necessary emotion. Our brains are wired such that it’s difficult to take action until we feel at least some level of this emotional state. In fact, performance peaks under the heightened activation that comes with moderate levels of stress. As long as the stress isn’t prolonged, it’s harmless.

Research from the University of California, Berkeley, reveals an upside to experiencing moderate levels of stress. But it also reinforces how important it is to keep stress under control. The study, led by post-doctoral fellow Elizabeth Kirby, found that the onset of stress entices the brain into growing new cells responsible for improved memory. However, this effect is only seen when stress is intermittent. As soon as the stress continues beyond a few moments into a prolonged state, it suppresses the brain’s ability to develop new cells.

“I think intermittent stressful events are probably what keeps the brain more alert, and you perform better when you are alert,” Kirby says. For animals, intermittent stress is the bulk of what they experience, in the form of physical threats in their immediate environment. Long ago, this was also the case for humans. As the human brain evolved and increased in complexity, we’ve developed the ability to worry and perseverate on events, which creates frequent experiences of prolonged stress.

Besides increasing your risk of heart disease, depression, and obesity, stress decreases your cognitive performance. Fortunately, though, unless a lion is chasing you, the bulk of your stress is subjective and under your control. Top performers have well-honed coping strategies that they employ under stressful circumstances. This lowers their stress levels regardless of what’s happening in their environment, ensuring that the stress they experience is intermittent and not prolonged.

Related: Caffeine: The Silent Killer of Success (LinkedIn)

While I’ve run across numerous effective strategies that successful people employ when faced with stress, what follows are ten of the best. Some of these strategies may seem obvious, but the real challenge lies in recognizing when you need to use them and having the wherewithal to actually do so in spite of your stress.

They Appreciate What They Have

Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the “right” thing to do. It also improves your mood, because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy, and physical well-being. It’s likely that lower levels of cortisol played a major role in this.

They Avoid Asking “What If?”

“What if?” statements throw fuel on the fire of stress and worry. Things can go in a million different directions, and the more time you spend worrying about the possibilities, the less time you’ll spend focusing on taking action that will calm you down and keep your stress under control. Calm people know that asking “what if? will only take them to a place they don’t want—or need—to go.

They Stay Positive

Positive thoughts help make stress intermittent by focusing your brain’s attention onto something that is completely stress-free. You have to give your wandering brain a little help by consciously selecting something positive to think about. Any positive thought will do to refocus your attention. When things are going well, and your mood is good, this is relatively easy. When things are going poorly, and your mind is flooded with negative thoughts, this can be a challenge. In these moments, think about your day and identify one positive thing that happened, no matter how small. If you can't think of something from the current day, reflect on the previous day or even the previous week. Or perhaps you’re looking forward to an exciting event that you can focus your attention on. The point here is that you must have something positive that you're ready to shift your attention to when your thoughts turn negative.

They Disconnect

Given the importance of keeping stress intermittent, it’s easy to see how taking regular time off the grid can help keep your stress under control. When you make yourself available to your work 24/7, you expose yourself to a constant barrage of stressors. Forcing yourself offline and even—gulp!—turning off your phone gives your body a break from a constant source of stress. Studies have shown that something as simple as an email break can lower stress levels.

Technology enables constant communication and the expectation that you should be available 24/7. It is extremely difficult to enjoy a stress-free moment outside of work when an email that will change your train of thought and get you thinking (read: stressing) about work can drop onto your phone at any moment. If detaching yourself from work-related communication on weekday evenings is too big a challenge, then how about the weekend? Choose blocks of time where you cut the cord and go offline. You’ll be amazed at how refreshing these breaks are and how they reduce stress by putting a mental recharge into your weekly schedule. If you’re worried about the negative repercussions of taking this step, first try doing it at times when you’re unlikely to be contacted—maybe Sunday morning. As you grow more comfortable with it, and as your coworkers begin to accept the time you spend offline, gradually expand the amount of time you spend away from technology.

They Limit Their Caffeine Intake

Drinking caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline is the source of the “fight-or-flight” response, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to a curt email. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyperaroused state of stress, your emotions overrun your behavior. The stress that caffeine creates is far from intermittent, as its long half-life ensures that it takes its sweet time working its way out of your body.

They Sleep

I’ve beaten this one to death over the years and can’t say enough about the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and managing your stress levels. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams), so that you wake up alert and clear-headed. Your self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when you don’t get enough—or the right kind—of sleep. Sleep deprivation raises stress hormone levels on its own, even without a stressor present. Stressful projects often make you feel as if you have no time to sleep, but taking the time to get a decent night’s sleep is often the one thing keeping you from getting things under control.

Related: The 6 Secrets of Self-Control (LinkedIn)

They Squash Negative Self-Talk

A big step in managing stress involves stopping negative self-talk in its tracks. The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts. When you find yourself believing the negative and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it's time to stop and write them down. Literally stop what you're doing and write down what you're thinking. Once you've taken a moment to slow down the negative momentum of your thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed in evaluating their veracity.

You can bet that your statements aren’t true any time you use words like “never,” “worst,” “ever,” etc. If your statements still look like facts once they’re on paper, take them to a friend or colleague you trust and see if he or she agrees with you. Then the truth will surely come out. When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain’s natural threat tendency inflating the perceived frequency or severity of an event. Identifying and labeling your thoughts as thoughts by separating them from the facts will help you escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive new outlook.

They Reframe Their Perspective

Stress and worry are fueled by our own skewed perception of events. It’s easy to think that unrealistic deadlines, unforgiving bosses, and out-of-control traffic are the reasons we’re so stressed all the time. You can’t control your circumstances, but you can control how you respond to them. So before you spend too much time dwelling on something, take a minute to put the situation in perspective. If you aren’t sure when you need to do this, try looking for clues that your anxiety may not be proportional to the stressor. If you’re thinking in broad, sweeping statements such as “Everything is going wrong” or “Nothing will work out,” then you need to reframe the situation. A great way to correct this unproductive thought pattern is to list the specific things that actually are going wrong or not working out. Most likely you will come up with just some things—not everything—and the scope of these stressors will look much more limited than it initially appeared.

They Breathe

The easiest way to make stress intermittent lies in something that you have to do everyday anyway: breathing. The practice of being in the moment with your breathing will begin to train your brain to focus solely on the task at hand and get the stress monkey off your back. When you’re feeling stressed, take a couple of minutes to focus on your breathing. Close the door, put away all other distractions, and just sit in a chair and breathe. The goal is to spend the entire time focused only on your breathing, which will prevent your mind from wandering. Think about how it feels to breathe in and out. This sounds simple, but it’s hard to do for more than a minute or two. It’s all right if you get sidetracked by another thought; this is sure to happen at the beginning, and you just need to bring your focus back to your breathing. If staying focused on your breathing proves to be a real struggle, try counting each breath in and out until you get to 20, and then start again from 1. Don’t worry if you lose count; you can always just start over.

This task may seem too easy or even a little silly, but you’ll be surprised by how calm you feel afterward and how much easier it is to let go of distracting thoughts that otherwise seem to have lodged permanently inside your brain.

They Use Their Support System

It’s tempting, yet entirely ineffective, to attempt tackling everything by yourself. To be calm and productive, you need to recognize your weaknesses and ask for help when you need it. This means tapping into your support system when a situation is challenging enough for you to feel overwhelmed. Everyone has someone at work and/or outside work who is on their team, rooting for them, and ready to help them get the best from a difficult situation. Identify these individuals in your life and make an effort to seek their insight and assistance when you need it. Something as simple as talking about your worries will provide an outlet for your anxiety and stress and supply you with a new perspective on the situation. Most of the time, other people can see a solution that you can’t because they are not as emotionally invested in the situation. Asking for help will mitigate your stress and strengthen your relationships with those you rely upon. 

Travis Bradberry