How to Find Freedom Under Pressure

After leaving my company in 2018, I ran a small retreat for exited founders who were exploring their next move. To a person, we were all sitting with the same basic question:

Am I really going to do that again?

Starting a company is hard. By choosing to do it, we invite stress and uncertainty into our lives—and the pressure and responsibility only increases as a company grows.

However, one’s experience as a founder isn’t only dependent on external circumstances. While the pressure doesn’t go away, there are more and less skillful ways of dealing with it. And if you don’t learn to perform and live well under stress, your life becomes driven by it.

I learned this the hard way in my first company, which became all-consuming. It was a travel company—an operationally intense business with low margins—and we were always six months away from running out of cash. Most of the time, it felt like some aspect of the business was on fire.

I reacted to this stress by focusing on the short term. I spent my days responding to momentary crises and immediate threats, rarely thinking more than 3-6 months in the future. While this kept the company afloat, it also meant that I lost touch with a long-term vision for our work. I didn’t exercise or date for several years—it was hard to focus on life amid the stress of work.

In the language of behaviorism, we’d say that my life fell under “aversive control.” In other words, I was making decisions driven by fear of bad outcomes, not inspired by the call of something greater. And fear is a lousy foundation for making good choices.

But there are ways to maintain our focus on what matters and the future we hope to create, no matter how stressful our environment. Through a few core practices, we can cultivate a mental and emotional freedom, such that stress doesn’t drive our decision-making.