Stress Awareness for Entrepreneurs: 5 Questions to Help You Reboot

By Anne-Wallis Droter, EO Staff Writer

The theme for April’s Stress Awareness Month 2025 is “Lead with Love.” That means both leading your team with compassion and also turning that kindness inward to treat yourself with acceptance and unconditional support.

With so many unconventional stress-busting actions and must-try mindset tactics shared by EO’s network of nearly 20,000 entrepreneurs worldwide, chances are you have tried a few of them.

Another successful way to deal with stress in real-time is to ask yourself intentional questions that lead you toward stress resolution. Self-inquiry is an effective method to lower stress because it can bring clarity, presence, and emotional regulation.

Here are 5 empowering questions to ask yourself when you’re juggling entrepreneurial pressure and uncertainty that is leading to feelings of stress or overwhelm:

1. What can I control right now?

Entrepreneurs know all too well that you can’t control every aspect of your market or industry. Stress can result when we try to manage situations that we have no control over. A workaround? Ask yourself what you can control, and take steps toward that end to redirect your energy into something positive and productive. When you focus on what you can control and take action instead of wallowing in what is beyond your control, stress levels will start to diminish as you make active forward progress.

For example, you can control your morning routine:

“I wake up in the morning, read my Bible for spiritual inspiration, practice yoga for 10-15 minutes, then do a 10-minute meditation or morning prime with Tony Robbins. Next, I time-block my morning using Grant Cardone’s 10x Planner — all before I open a single email. It gets my mindset right before the crazy-busy day begins. Finding a mind, body, and spiritual morning routine to properly align my mindset for the day has radically changed both my personal and professional life!”
— Rami Kalla, EO Arizona, president, Point in Time Studios

2. What’s the story I’m telling myself?

The entrepreneurial lifestyle is a natural habitat for stress. With past failures, worst-case scenarios, and assumptions swirling around your mind, sometimes the story you’re telling yourself causes more stress than the actual facts of a given situation. Identifying that internal story can help you divorce facts from fear. Is the story you’re telling yourself true? Is that the only possible way to view it?

Forget balance; go for focus.

“I’ve been able to reduce stress and achieve balance by rejecting the idea of balance! There is no balanced life as an entrepreneur — there are times of crisis, times of intense focus, downtimes, and in-between times. As a former professional actor and improviser, that’s the schedule I love. The key was to realize that my personal life would also look a bit like my professional life and embrace it.

“Many days a week, I’m a fantastic CEO: visiting clients, closing deals, creating new service lines, interviewing potential employees, and sweating spreadsheets. On those days, I’m not a great spouse, mother, community member, or friend. I set expectations with my family and friends in advance and ensure they have everything they will need. On other days, I’m an amazing spouse and mother: cooking, helping with homework, and planning vacations or date nights.

“There isn’t balance, there’s focus. Be completely present and focused with the people in your room at that moment. And be sure your priorities even out in the long run — you have to schedule your priorities, not prioritize your schedule. YOU have control.” — Karen Hough, EO Columbus, founder and CEO, ImprovEdge

3. Will this matter in a week? A month? A year?

Stress can shrink our perspective from the long range to the here and now. Remembering that entrepreneurship is a marathon—not a sprint—can help you find context to put the current situation into perspective as you downshift from panic to peace.

It may help to remember your purpose.

“I believe stress comes from forgetting your purpose in life. When you know and remember your life’s purpose, then you understand that every challenge, setback, and step up is all for a reason: To make you more of who you are meant to become.

“I come back to my purpose on a daily basis, starting the night before. I write down three goals to accomplish the next day, write my hour-by-hour schedule, and my five-year goals right before going to sleep. This allows my subconscious mind to go through my whole day while I am sleeping. When I wake up, I have a clear direction and purpose for the day. When a challenge arises, I go back to my plan. It is my top stress management technique.

“When you are guided, nothing can get you down.”  — Ruben Resendez, EO Silicon Valley, founder and CEO, adHere

4. What do I need right now—mentally, physically, emotionally?

Another great way to ground your mind in self-awareness and promote self-compassion is to assess what you need in the moment. Maybe you need rest, or movement, or to talk it over with an entrepreneur in your network who has “been there, done that” in a similar situation. Asking yourself what you need opens the door to resolving the stressor.

Explore the power of movement, mindset, and connection.

Aaron Houghton (EO Colorado) founded Dory, the world’s largest community (10,000+ members) dedicated solely to stress reduction for entrepreneurs.

After hundreds of hours of interviewing high-performers, Houghton discovered that the top three categories of stress-relieving techniques make up 80 percent of the most effective strategies entrepreneurs use to build mental resilience.

“To increase your mental resilience, remember MMC: Movement, Mindset, and Connection.

• Movement practices move the body—like yoga, walking, and breathwork.
• Mindset work involves planting and fostering supportive thoughts and beliefs in our minds. It includes things like journaling, reciting mantras, and practicing gratitude.
• Connection practices bring us closer to the people, communities, and identities we hold dear. It includes activities like calling a friend, spending time with pets, and taking action to support people in our communities.”

5. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

In Psychology Today, psychologist Jeffrey Bernstein shared a bit of counterintuitive advice: When you find yourself spiraling and ruminating over every possible “what if,” take a step back and confront the worst-case scenario.

Instead of asking, “What if I don’t meet this deadline?” or “What if tariffs raise our product prices exorbitantly?” — adopt a different tactic.

Ask yourself, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” That question confronts your fear head-on, interrupts the mental spiral, and grounds you in reality. The answer may be that you lose a client, need to pivot your product offering, or even close your company. While none of those are ideal, all of them are survivable.

Then, ask a follow-up: “And how would I handle that?”

As an entrepreneur, you have proven that you can do hard things and deal with difficult challenges. And you don’t have to face hardship alone. With 20,000 EO members in the vast EO network, you can connect with someone who has faced a similar situation and come out successfully on the other side—who is willing to share their experience for your benefit.

Pro Tip: Lower Stress in Real-Time

Happily, we are living in an era where tech can provide you with a direct pathway to peace of mind.

“Your high-level thinking and reasoning are no match for the sensory network that controls your internal stress switch,” said Dr. Amy Serin (EO Arizona), author of The Stress Switch. “Reason can’t lower high stress, and you can’t mantra your way into convincing your brain that you’re OK with something when you’re stressed.”

The solution? Tech products like Dharma Dr. utilize Bi-Lateral Stimulation (BLS) to lower stress almost immediately. “It’s the most economical, fastest way I’ve found to lower stress quickly and profoundly,” Serin says.

"You don’t need to head to the mountains of Tibet to reduce stress. There are simple ways to lower your stress in real time, improve productivity, stay focused, and access your own humanity in more moments, all of which add up to huge gains. Isn’t that such great news?”