As a highly sensitive person, it is challenging to find the perfect career path. Entrepreneurship allows the highly sensitive person to create a life according to their needs. In this article, highly sensitive entrepreneur Anne-Kathrin shares practical tips on the do’s and don’ts as an HSP entrepreneur.
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
4 years ago I graduated. I applied for jobs and soon found a job that perfectly fit my skills. However, after 1 and a half years in the 9 to 5 rhythm, I realized that it didn’t make me happy.
As a highly sensitive person, I needed more room to experiment with my time and energy. However, when you work for an employer, this feels quite challenging. At least that was how I felt back then.
While employed, I felt proud that I never called in sick and always showed up at work no matter how sick I was. Looking back, I feel so ashamed for neglecting my need to rest and pushing myself to the verge of a burnout.
In the second half of 2018, I realized something had to change. Therefore, I started discovering alternative career paths. One of them was to pursue entrepreneurship and respect my needs as a highly sensitive person.
After building up the courage to quit my job, I started HiSensitives and also began freelancing as a writer and social media expert. Best choice ever!
Ever since becoming an entrepreneur, I feel an incredible amount of love and respect for myself. It was the best act of love I could do for myself.
However, I remember how scary it was to take that leap. I did not know what to expect from entrepreneurship. I can imagine that you feel the same. Therefore, I share a couple of do’s and don’ts for highly sensitive entrepreneurs!
Here’s What You’ll Learn:
Do This When You Are A Highly Sensitive Person Pursuing Entrepreneurship
First, let’s have at the do’s as a highly sensitive person pursuing entrepreneurship. These tips helped me to truly thrive in entrepreneurship and I wished somebody would have shared them with me when I began my journey as an HSP entrepreneur.
Envision Your Ideal Future
The first advice I recommend you to try out is to start envisioning. Once you know that you want to become an entrepreneur, it is time to start dreaming.
Take your favorite journal, turn on some relaxing music and start imagining. Imagine your wildest life. Imagine what you would do. Envision what your daily work life would look like. What would your work life balance look like? Try to be as specific as possible.
Also, visualize how you’d like to feel. What energy do you want to carry throughout the day? All of these visualizations help you to become clear about your desire.
Once you clarified these things, I highly recommend you to create your own vision board. To me, my vision boards are daily motivators that help me remember why I chose this journey. Especially on tough days (yes, we all have them), my vision board is a great motivator!
If you’d like to learn more about envisioning, have a look at the book ‘Start with the Vision: Six Steps to Effectively Plan, Create Solutions, and Take Action’
Set Healthy Boundaries
Another valuable tip I have for you is to start setting healthy boundaries from day one. Within entrepreneurship, you as a highly sensitive person soon will realize that these boundaries are crucial for your overall well-being.
For instance, determine clearly which hours you do want to work and which hours you want to spend on leisure. You should communicate these boundaries with your customers immediately, so they know what to expect.
Also, when you notice that your schedule is filled up and you have clients asking you for new projects and gigs, respectfully refer them to a colleague or consider scaling up your business by hiring employees. You do not want to overwork yourself, as this is not the reason why you as a highly sensitive person pursued entrepreneurship.
If you are not interested in helping a new client on a project, respectfully set a boundary. For instance, you could say “As much as I’d like to work on this project, it is beyond my capacity.”
Setting boundaries helps you to avoid entrepreneur overwhelm. Therefore, set them as soon as you can.
Respect Your Body
Something that I learned very recently, is to start respecting my body and its needs. As a highly sensitive person choosing entrepreneurship, it is easy to forget the time sometimes.
After all, you love what you do and can’t get enough of it! However, it is important to respect your body in the process! With that I mean to not neglect your needs.
Oftentimes, our body tells us whether it needs sleep, a relaxing walk, a break for the mind, food or water. Listen to those signals while working.
Preferably try to check in with your body in between different tasks, just to see whether you are respecting your own boundaries.
For instance, when my body tells me that it needs to recharge and rest, I do it immediately instead of postponing it until the evening. Why? Because I can! Entrepreneurship allows me as a highly sensitive person to listen to my rhythm. Why should I neglect it? Because society tells me to do so?
Throughout my entrepreneurship journey, I learned that resting is the most productive thing I could do for my business. Whenever I am done resting, I am 10 times more productive than when I overwork myself and am tired.
Try to provide some room in your daily schedule to rest in between projects. This way, you will truly thrive as a highly sensitive entrepreneur.
Ask For Help
Another valuable advice I discovered early on in my entrepreneurship path as a highly sensitive person, is to ask for help when needed. If you struggle with a business choice, it is not a bad thing to ask for help.
For instance, you can ask a fellow entrepreneur friend for advice. Also, you could consider joining a couple of groups for entrepreneurs. Here, you usually receive advice from many different perspectives.
The best choice for my business was to find a business buddy. By talking about your business and goals with somebody else, you have somebody that gives advice from an objective perspective.
Also, he or she is an accountability partner who helps you to improve your business. And of course you do the same for them. A business buddy is incredibly valuable for highly sensitive entrepreneurs.
Asking for help saves you a great amount of time and helps you to avoid overwhelm. Therefore, do not feel ashamed if you need help or advice every now and then. Everyone of us needs it sometimes!
Highly Sensitive People Should Plan Regular Vacations Within Their Entrepreneurship
Vacations are not only good for your body and health, but also a great way to take a step back from your business to reflect. In stillness, you will receive the best insights.
Whenever I take a vacation, I return to work full of ideas and inspiration. Also, I know what to let go of and what to do more of. Vacations are a great way to reset your mind and recharge.
Therefore, consider scheduling them in your calendar and taking them into account. Save up enough money each week to enable yourself to take a break every now and then.
I know that this can be challenging in the beginning, as you still need to make enough money to pay your bills. If that is the case, try to schedule long weekends every now and then to give yourself time to recharge. This way, the impact won’t be that extreme financially and you will still feel recharged.
Work With The Universal Laws
Finally, I highly recommend you to work with the Universal Laws. Before I learned about these laws, I was filled with fear and anxiety about whether I’d make it as an entrepreneur.
However, after discovering these laws, I feel confident and at peace. I know that everything is possible with the right energy and mindset!
I started working actively with the law of attraction and manifestation and ever since doing so, my business is growing and becoming more and more stable.
Hence, I definitely advise you to look into these laws and implement them in your daily life. You won’t regret it!
Avoid This As A Highly Sensitive Person Pursuing Entrepreneurship
Now that you’ve discovered the do’s of entrepreneurship as an HSP, it is time to discover what you should avoid. I had to discover this the hard way. Therefore, I hope that I save you some trouble and stress with these practical tips:
Comparing Yourself To Others
First of all, I highly recommend you to avoid comparing yourself to other entrepreneurs. When you start your business, you usually do a competitor analysis to discover how you fit in the market with your product. Sure, at that point it is important to check out the competition and find your unique selling points.
However, once you have done that, I recommend you to not follow your competitors on social media. Unconsciously, most of us who do so start comparing our own work with theirs. Nevertheless, you do not know whether they have been in business for 1, 5 or maybe even more than 10 years.
Comparing yourself to them is unrealistic, as you just started your business. Therefore, try to avoid doing that. If you’d like to measure your performance somehow, measure it against your performances from the past. That’s a more positive approach to validate your work.
Neglecting Your Intuition
Another important no go is to neglect your intuition. Highly sensitive people are highly intuitive beings. However, society often stimulates us to only use our mind and rational side in the decision making process. Especially as a highly sensitive person pursuing entrepreneurship, it is crucial to neglect this advice.
If you want to truly feel aligned with your decisions, I recommend you to use your intuition first and then confirm it with your mind. This way, you allow the energy to flow in the right direction.
Whenever I neglected my intuition, I would end up in the wrong collaborations, feeling incredibly miserable. It would result in months of frustration and low energy. When my mind overrules my intuition, it always ends in disaster. Therefore, save yourself the trouble and practice listening to your intuition from the beginning on.
Taking Action From A Place Of Fear And Desperation
Finally, try to avoid taking action from a fear mindset or from a place of desperation. Sometimes (especially in the beginning), you will have to work hard to get new clients. Maybe you even see that your savings are decreasing and it stressed you out greatly.
I know how difficult it is to not feel stressed out in this situation, as I’ve been there myself. However, what I realized is that whenever I take action from a place of lack, fear, worries, stress or desperation for clients, I fail attracting more clients. Because of that, I started trying something else, that works much better:
I take a step back, meditate, visualize success and what it would feel like. I write down my intentions of what I’d like to receive. Then, I believe with all my heart that it is on its way. After doing this, I start working. Oftentimes, a new lead or project presents itself a couple of hours after shifting my energy in a positive direction.
Whenever I notice my energy shifting back to low vibrations, I repeat the exercise above. Energy is everything! When you work with a positive attitude, positive things will enter your path!
The books that helped me to change my mindset as an entrepreneur, were the books ‘The Universe Has Your Back’ and ‘Super Attractor’ by Gabrielle Bernstein. Highly recommended!
Have Fun On Your Journey As A Highly Sensitive Entrepreneur
When you become an entrepreneur you will undoubtedly discover what works for you and what doesn’t. It is a very individual journey and what works for one person, might not work for the other.
I recommend you to experiment with some of the tips I shared in this article and see what makes you happy. Good luck on your journey!
Are you considering becoming an entrepreneur? Feel free to share more about your plans in the comments below, as I love connecting with my readers!
