How to Optimize and Prioritize Your Mental Health as an Entrepreneur with Rick William

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like the Hustle and Flowchart. Today, we'll be breaking down how to optimize and prioritize your mental health as an entrepreneur. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Rick William in the EO Fire Studios. Rick is an EQ mastery coach and business strategist. He synthesizes the best in Western and Eastern psychology to support high-performing business owners, investors, and coaches to achieve peak performance and life fulfillment.

0:35And today, Foundation will talk about self-sabotage, optimizing and prioritizing our mental health, the best tools to optimize this, personal development, internal vision thriving, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Rick and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented.

1:10The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Rick, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Well, firstly, Hi, FI Nation. It's a pleasure to be here with you all. I think for me, I think something that I believe is essential to success might not be something that people disagree with, but might not be something people are familiar with. And I actually believe in order for us to live a successful life, we have to have the inner skills to do so.

1:58By that, I mean, you know, a nervous system, a relational system, which we call our attachment system in psychology, that actually allows for life to be and feel successful. Because, you know, just having accolades and just having, you know, financial rewards, yes, they're brilliant, they're beautiful. and I believe the most important thing in life is fulfillment and is the feeling of success and that our impact, our actions benefit those we're serving, our families, our communities and those we serve and support through the vehicle of business. Well, Fire Nation, we are diving deep into meaningful conversation today about optimizing and prioritizing your mental health as an entrepreneur.

2:52And Rick, I want to start there because you believe that entrepreneurs need to optimize and prioritize our mental health. So tell us more. Yeah, well, speaking as an entrepreneur, I created my first business when I was 14. So like many here in Fire Nation, we know what it takes to make a business. And really, I see business as the kind of athletics. Entrepreneurship is really the athletics of business and in order to do that we have to learn how to actually deal with what business is and business is it might as well be a psychological emotional uh spiritual game in many ways and you know if you're an entrepreneur listening to this you'll know that um having taken on a business and maybe a team and the responsibilities and everything else that it takes to actually run a business maybe versus when you were you know an employee or working in someone else's business and you finished work at five o 'clock and you go home and you clock off and then you can just be with your your kids your family your friends etc when you become an entrepreneur you take on so much more and you'll all know this if you know as you're in this creating your businesses that it actually requires us to learn a skill set that actually allows for us to be able to create our businesses in a way that feels successful creates impact for the for the team and those we're serving and also allows us to play for the long haul so you know that's why i think it's important and also it's not just this is not just my opinion or experience you know if we look at the the studies on entrepreneurship you know there's there's a study that i was reading a couple of weeks ago that found 49 % of entrepreneurs reported having either depression, ADHD, anxiety, or substance abuse problems.

4:53And they rank higher in pretty much every single study done that I've read. They rank higher than general population. So we really are, as entrepreneurs, emotional athletes. I'm curious what you think on that, John. I truly have found that to be the case on multiple levels. And I just feel like it's important that we're talking about this subject because in a lot of ways it's taboo. Like, you know, people can say, man, I'm tired, man, I'm struggling. But, you know, for somebody to say, hey, like I am struggling mentally, like that's showing a lot of vulnerability. And, you know, coming from the military world, like I did, I spent 13 months in Iraq in war as a tank commander in charge of four tanks and 16 men, you know, I saw a lot.

5:39In fact, four of the 16 men that we deployed with made the ultimate sacrifice and did not come back. And I struggled mentally. I dealt with PTSD in my 20s and even into my early 30s. And of course, you know, once it's there, it's never completely gone. So I'm always on top of that mentally and trying to make sure that I'm doing the things that I need to do to prioritize and optimize my own personal mental health. because there's this self-sabotage thing that happens as well, which is another topic that I want to get into because it's such a challenge when you're doing everything you can and then boom, self-sabotage hits you out of nowhere, which you're not expecting.

6:17So talk about that. What is the main cause you're seeing when it comes to self-sabotage? Great question. And I just want to speak to the other piece first because I think we really need to normalize. You said just there before, John, about there's being a stigma about mental health and our emotional well-being. And I actually think it's an important key shift that we have to make as leaders and as entrepreneurs and actually recognizing that looking after our mental, emotional health is actually of the greatest service. I think a lot of people don't do this and don't take care of this. And there is stigma around this because I think there's an aversion there to actually dealing with it because it takes a level of courage.

7:01you know like you john you've you've been to war it takes courage for you to have gone to and dealt with your pt ptsd therapy it takes courage to actually begin to do the work and take responsibility of looking after your emotional state like that takes real courage and responsibility and i actually think you know as entrepreneurs and as leaders that really is our responsibility it's not selfish at all it's it's actually the most selfless thing we can do because we are interconnected to those we serve in our business. And as we show up as powerful leaders, as connected leaders, as present leaders in our businesses, then everyone benefits from that.

7:40So let's move into self-sabotage. Yeah. So this is, again, self-sabotage as entrepreneurs really speaks to the first piece, which is actually as entrepreneurs, a part of our superpower is that we have the capacity and ability to create something from nothing. We have the ability to be able to see a problem in the present moment, project ourselves into the future where we see a solution, and we can create things from our minds that other people don't see. And we bring that into reality, and that's called a business, a product, or a service. So it's really a superpower of an entrepreneur to be able to live into the future and bring it into the present but as you can imagine what can happen there is you start living in the future all the time now if you live in the future all the time you know your present moment you can become dissatisfied with and you know you're combining that with as we said before all of the different extra stresses and strains that you have being an entrepreneur essentially your nervous system we all have a nervous system we're all bomb whether it was formed before any of our other organs this nervous system is dealing with all of this extra stress and if we haven't learned the skills of how to uh you know release that stress and come back into the enjoyment of the present moment then our nervous system is essentially on this hamster wheel and i lived this this is why i can speak about it our nervous system's on this hamster wheel which is always activated always stressed always burning up burning up burning up burning up burning up and as you can imagine at some point the body says no more now that no more can be your burnout that no more can be i'm leaving the business we're selling it or whatever whatever form that shows up as but essentially the self-sabotage i like to think of it much more as self-protection and when you can begin to understand that your body has been given you cues maybe for months weeks years or even decades that there's something that's not quite right that maybe the level of stress you're experiencing is not quite right and that hasn't been dealt with it reaches a point where basically the body says no more to whatever this thing we're experiencing is and it will create situations it will create um different things that show up in our life that actually then look like self-sabotage but actually if we step back a little bit and we look at the the larger picture here we can actually begin to see that there's something under the hood there is a there are you know unconscious um programs at play there's a nervous system at play there's our unconscious mind which has stored all of the different data from our whole life experience and if at you know for example age eight you went and spoke on stage at school but you know you come off and then you were bullied by the kids for a week a month after that if you've stored that me expressing myself and me speaking on stage leads to me being ostracized by the group or bullied by the group then you can imagine how it might be difficult if that's been stored it might be difficult for you as an entrepreneur who might want to then create a personal brand on the side or speak on stages to share your product.

11:09That there might be something coming up in the nervous system that that thing that you want is also unconsciously a cue of danger. And when you actually begin to do the work to reconcile what's underneath that in the belief system and the nervous system, then all of a sudden you have the capacity and the ability to go and speak on stage. you have the ability to speak in groups and the reason I can share this and know this firsthand is I experienced this John I was you know the kid who was eight years old getting bullied for speaking in class was also me and I'd created these beliefs about me speaking in groups being something that I didn't have the capacity to do or didn't want to do even though deep down I really did and then I actually did the work to to clear that up I cleared the beliefs around that I I learned how to regulate my nervous system.

11:56And then from that, you know, now I've spoke on stages in front of hundreds of people and I'm constantly in, you know, group programs and podcasts like this where I'm getting to share this message. And the reason that I want to share this message is because I think there's so many of us out there who have a gift on our hearts that we want to share and have a business that we're here to create that's going to be of great service to this world. And really when we can begin to learn these inner skills that allow us to really be inner athletes, which allow us to show up as the type of business owners, leaders, and entrepreneurs that we're here to be.

12:28There's so much power in those words that Rick was just sharing, Fire Nation. And I really hope with everything we're talking about that you don't let yourself get to that place where your body says no more. or if you're in Puerto Rico or Costa Rica, no mas, because you don't want to be at a place where your body's telling you those things. And we have a lot more to talk about around these topics when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Being a small business owner comes with a lot of challenges, especially now. It seems like everyone is working with smaller budgets, shorter timelines, and sky-high expectations, and that can make growing a business feel pretty painful.

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14:34Over 7 ,000 global companies like Atlassian, FlowHealth, and Quora use Vanta to manage risk, improve security in real time. And right now, Fire Nation, Vanta has a special offer waiting for you of$1 ,000 off at vanta.com slash fire. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash fire for$1 ,000 off. Rick, we're back and we've talked a lot about some very important things, mental health, self-sabotage. What are the best tools that you have found to optimize mental health? The best tools that I've found for kind of really optimizing our mental, emotional health and well-being would take some time to really go into.

15:18You know, when I'm working with my clients, we're really learning how to understand and optimize the three core systems, which is the nervous system, attachment system, and attentional system. And I could do a whole workshop on each of those, and I could explain why they're really important. But I actually really want to be of the greatest service to your listeners. So I recommend you go and researching those things if that's of interest to you. But really, the thing that I think would be of the most value to anyone listening is really creating the space to honor and respect and train really your internal state.

15:56So, you know, I really recommend for all the entrepreneurs, all the people that I work with to create, you know, five to 10 to 20 to ideally something like 30 minutes in the morning where you're really prioritizing your inner state of being. You're really giving yourself the time, recognizing like an athlete would prepare for the game that the day ahead is going to be demanding of you. You know, like you with your little girl, John, you know, you've got a business running and now you've got family. so and that's the case for a lot of us right we have other responsibilities in our life we have responsibilities of our team of our business everything we're creating so we really are as entrepreneurs like business athletes and in order to do that we've got to prepare for the game so my biggest recommendation would be to carve out time to allow for you to really prep your state prep your nervous system prep your mind in a way that allows you to show up fully for the day and And for different people, it's different things.

16:55I have some clients who are, they'll do an ice bath and sauna. For other people, it'll be a 20 or 30 minute workout. For others, it might be meditation or qigong. All of these things we can utilize to really support our resiliency and capacity to be able to show up for the life that we're creating so that we can play the long game. Because my understanding of business is actually, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. And a lot of entrepreneurs find themselves, you know, with that skill set of being able to create from thin air, find themselves, you know, two, three years really interested and then it dies out and then maybe the business dies out.

17:33Right. But actually, often that's the self-sabotaging that versus being able to stay in the game for longer and play that longer game so that you can scale your company from seven to eight to nine or whatever it is that you're here to create, as well as being able to have the relationships that support that. Have the friendships that support that so that maybe as you get your exit or as your business starts thriving as you want it to, that you actually have connection to your children, to your wife or your partner and your friends in your life so that you have this capacity to be able to really play the long game.

18:09and carving out that time, giving yourself that time is then going to equip you with the ability to fully show up for your life. And I think that's the key shift that I would love anyone listening to just try out with, to experiment with, to see what happens if you prioritize your state for the next 30 days. Who might you become? How might you show up in your relationships? How might those outcomes you're looking for in your business begin to develop when you have the capacity, when your creative faculties are online, when you're less stressed as the leader, when you're more calm? Just watch what happens inside your team.

18:48And I really recommend everyone to try that for 10 to 30 days and just notice, like an experiment, just notice what happens. Okay, so let's say we do that 10, 20, 30 days, and we really feel like we get our internal vision thriving. It's just humming along. How do we integrate that with our external success? So when we look at internal or external success, they're really one and the same. They're interlinked. And it's really important to get these pieces interlinked. And one of the reasons that I care so much about and so passionate about interlinking the internal vision first and then linking that in with external reality, external life, is because, you know, I was at age 25.

19:35I'd built a business. We grew to 200 ,000 members in the UK and things were really great. You know, the business was doing all the things it should have been doing and more. But yet I found myself in a position where like something wasn't quite fitting. And at that time, I hired a coach, I hired support because I knew that there were things that I was sensing that I wasn't able to see. And I wanted to get someone who could help me see those things and then help me carve a way through. And in doing that, I had to get really real with the fact that the business that I created wasn't really truly aligned with the things that I value most with the life that I imagined myself in my 40s, 50s, 60s living.

20:18There was this deeper aspect in terms of my own internal why that I just couldn't fit into this business. So, you know, my coach really helped me one, learn the skills that I could stop being this burnout entrepreneur, and then also learn how to, you know, apply and take everything that I'd learned and then apply it to, you know, businesses and projects that were really going to light me up and, and give me the, the internal energy and, uh, passion really that I was, that I was looking for. And, you know, in doing that, in aligning my internal experience, my values, what I care for with my business, you know, since then, you know, I have more responsibility, John, I have more responsibility, more kind of things on my plate than I've ever had in my life.

21:08But because one, it's for a much bigger vision, like the things I'm talking about here, I think are really important in the world that we're living in. You know, I don't think the way that most people are running businesses sustainable and to be a messenger for that is really important to me because I was burned out anxious stressed out and my relationships at the time in my 20s sucked and I learned skills of how to to do that at the time from my coach and now other mentors and it's and it completely changed my life and you know I really think it's important and I see the shifts in my clients when when we're actually truly aligned when our heart is lit up by what we're doing, it allows for this much greater perspective.

21:50It's not just about us anymore. It's about, it's about we, yes, it's about you. It's about your values, but it's interconnected into a way that really pulls you forward. You know, like Simon Sinek talks about, you know, the start with why, you know, I was trying to like muddle my why to make sense versus like really finding like who I am and what I care about as a man, as a human being, and then being a stand for something much bigger. And inside of that, it also just like fueled me with extra motivation. And, you know, it's not just my personal experience. If we look at also the studies on, you know, fulfillment and purpose, it reduces all cause mortality.

22:26Think about that. All cause mortality reduced. Why is that, right? Why is that? Well, that's because, you know, when we have a bigger vision that we're pulled by, it starts to allow for the internal, this is about me, to begin to feel a lot smaller. We gain a larger perspective. And then you combine that with actually learning skills to regulate your nervous system, to focus your mind, to align your values. You combine that together. It completely changed my life. And I become really passionate about sharing that with other people. Well, if Fire Nation is listening now and they're just like, hey, I am ready to optimize and prioritize my own mental health, what are the next steps that they should take today?

23:15The next steps it should take today is, as I said before, is making a commitment. And a commitment is something that is signed and sealed in your heart, something that you're sincerely committed to and committing to carving time out to recognizing and maybe looking like really looking at your life in this moment as an entrepreneur and asking yourself that question like really what is it going to take for me to really show up to life in this moment to show up to my business to my team to those I serve and from that place you know recognizing that it is your inner state of being that is reflected out it is your nervous system essentially that you're bringing to your work and as you've probably seen if you go home stressed at the end of the day how does people respond to that how does your wife or partner husband respond to that if you show up in the office in a flustered state how is that impacting the team you'll probably already be noticing this So really recognizing that your state of being is something to be prioritized.

24:23It's your responsibility. Therefore, it's something that you, you know, really need to do and have to prioritize as an entrepreneur and then carving that time out and just writing one thing down. Okay, like, what is that for me in the morning? Maybe it's five minutes. Maybe it's 10. Maybe it's 30. What would be one thing that I could really do to empower, nourish my state, bring me into a state of presence? what could I do to really nourish me and then commit to that for 10 20 or 30 days and just see it as an experiment like look what happens when you do that how do you show up in the day do you have better ideas do you show it better for your team do you see better results from your team when you show up in that state back home does that have an impact on your relationships and soon as you compare the dots to the work that you're doing and putting in on your own state of being to the results in your business life, family relationships.

25:17Well, from that place, you create a positive feedback loop and then the rest is easy. So Rick, we've heard a lot of genius coming from you today. I like to say value bombs galore. So if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more directly from you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Well, the things I've been sharing about are interesting. I have a free app, which has all of these kind of tools built in. I also have a free seven day challenge, which will step by step teach you some of the things that I've been talking about, teach you how to regulate from states of stress back into a state of like empowered connection.

25:56And it takes you through that over seven days. I think the maximum length is like 50 minutes. So it's really easy to do. You can get that if you go to my website, which is www.rickwilliam.com. You scroll down, you'll see my app. It'll take you straight to the Google Play Store or straight to the Apple Store. That will be the first thing. And also, we can connect on Instagram. I'd love to connect with you guys on Instagram. My channel is IamRickWilliam. And inside of that, I'm posting lots of content that supports entrepreneurs to really optimize our state and optimize our mental health so that we can truly show up for our lives.

26:31Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with RW and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Rick in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Rick, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, brother. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Rick for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment.

27:10I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. It's the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit uncommonsuccessbook.com, and I will catch you there or on the flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier.

27:48AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.