How To Escape Mental Anxiety In Entrepreneurship

I used to cringe looking at my credit card balances. Seeing debt would set me into a state of depression. I'd binge on Mcdonald’s for a week, be super unproductive at the office, and disconnect from my morning time with God and my writing.

That's the power that SEEING a credit card bill had over me. Crazy.

However, I learned to change the way I see debt. I used to see it as slavery, but now I see it as freedom. I smile when I see my credit card bills because I know the debt is because I'm building a business that will (eventually) pay the debt off.

That simple shift in my view has reduced my stress and helped me push forward with my ideas, even if I didn't know how long it would take to pay it off. I can rest assured that God is working in my life to become the entrepreneur that is faithful with a little and thus can be trusted with more.

How could I go from depression to excitement over the same credit card bill? The only explanation is that the enemy has one plan for our lives, and God has a totally different (and opposite) plan.

We Christian entrepreneurs can apply this type of mental opposition awareness to almost every area of our business and personal lives.

The enemy that dwells in our mind has one goal - for us to feel pain. So how do we battle this enemy? How do we go to war with it so we can finally defeat its negative thoughts that send us into periods of depression?

What I've come to learn is that our job isn't to battle the enemy. Jesus already did that and won. Our job is to know it exists, simply observe it, smile at it, and NOT follow where it wants to take you.

The Bible says

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. (Ephesians 6:11-17 ESV)

Notice how God's plan is to shift the mind into metaphorically protecting the body (where the holy spirit dwells), thus escaping the mental cycle that the enemy exists in.

After you realize that the enemy dwelling in your mind (1 Peter 5:8) is causing you pain, preventing you from truly running your business in the present, you need to detach yourself from your mental cycle.

How?

To separate yourself from the grips the enemy has on your mind, you must become fully conscious of it and the power it has over you. Otherwise, you’ll never understand the countless small and subtle ways the adversary influences your thinking and behavior – and, therefore, your happiness.

The Bible wants us to see the enemy as something we must battle against, thus the imagery of putting on the armor of God. Through observing yourself as a soldier standing firm in your faith, you’ve managed to create a gap in the enemy's flow of thinking.

The great news is that you don't actually have to go into any battle. You're simply partnering with God (who is the armor), and He battled the enemy so you can run your business freely.

That's why I can run my business with confidence, even in the face of the enemy taunting me because of my credit card debt.

If you apply this concept to different business areas, you’ll start to notice how much you are usually occupied by the continuous attacks from the enemy in your mind. And you’ll have found the primary tool for interrupting the enemy and thus separating from it. HALLELUJAH!

Another method I use to battle the enemy in my mind is to simply observe it without judgment. For example, I don't judge my debt as a failure, not getting rich fast enough, others being better than me, or being irresponsible with my money.

Judging is itself an act of the enemy. He has us question everything, and usually, the judgment doesn't lead us anywhere good. So if we judge something, we are back to being controlled by our mind again.

The counterattack to this is to use your physical body in a certain way. Some people will speak the enemy away. Others will just smile at it and accept that it exists. Our body knows what's good for us because that's where our Holy Spirit dwells.

By doing these tactics, we'll learn to notice the enemy in our mind without having to follow it wherever it’s trying to lead us on our entrepreneurial journey.

#TrustOnGod