How Entrepreneurs Carry Their Emotional Baggage

In life, everybody seems to deal with emotional baggage sometimes. The problem, is this baggage slows us down in life, and hinders our growth. It’s heavy, but we struggle to let go of it.

Imagine that you’re going on a hike. If your backpack is very heavy, you’ll get worn out faster, you’ll slow down, and you won’t last as long. You will reach your destination slower, and when you reach it, you are going to be super exhausted.

Now imagine, you carry very heavy emotional baggage with you every day. As an entrepreneur, you have to perform. Being your own boss often means you are completely reliant on yourself.

If you get sick, there might be nobody who can do the tasks for you. If you lead a team that is relying on you, you might have the feeling you can’t let them down.

Life as an entrepreneur comes with a lot of responsibilities. If you can’t handle your emotional baggage well, then it will affect your performance.

Finally, when the emotional baggage gets to be too much, you can’t keep up with everyday life anymore. Everything in life seems too difficult, and there is no joy left in what you are doing. Even the smallest task becomes exhausting. All you want to do is escape from your responsibilities.

But, you aren’t alone in this. Most people have some emotional issues to resolve.

However, there are plenty of entrepreneurs who carry their emotional baggage well. Those are the people you want to learn from.

So, let’s have a look at what emotional baggage actually is. Where does it come from and how do successful entrepreneurs carry their emotional baggage?

What Exactly Is Emotional Baggage?

Emotional baggage comes from past experiences. Situations that gave us negative emotions and we still carry that pain around with us.

Perhaps, someone you cared about severely mistreated you, and you still hold a grudge. Or, you made a wrong decision in your career and you still have regrets about it.

Any negative emotions that come up because of actions in the past can be emotional baggage. You carry it around with you and it affects your life negatively.

Emotional baggage might eat away your self-confidence. It makes you insecure in certain situations. It hinders you from becoming your higher self.

Let me give you a perfect example from my own life: As a child, there was this incident where I saw my mother cry because we lost all our money. It was the worst thing I ever saw. The picture in my head of my mother crying became emotional baggage of some sort.

But for me, it also fueled my desire to financially support her. I swore to myself that I would never see her cry again.

Now, this turned out this way, because my emotions are very stable. For some less resilient people, such a situation can become emotional baggage.

Maybe they want to support their parents, but don’t know how to. So, they feel very helpless and carry around the feeling that they can’t help anybody.

This is only one example, and emotional baggage can come in many forms. The most important thing is to notice what is holding you back and to act on it.

How Do You Notice That You Are Carrying Emotional Baggage?

Sometimes emotional baggage is obvious. You feel tense, lonely, angry, sad or any other emotion that is seen as ‘negative’. Your thoughts seem to circle about things that happened to you. Your decision making is ruled by fear, doubt, and avoidance.

Now, having these emotions is normal. Everyone is going through rough phases sometimes. The problems occur if you can’t deal with your emotions properly. If they keep coming up without you knowing why and you don’t know how to solve the issue.

The next problem occurs if you avoid your own feelings. Instead of solving the issue, you start to push all your emotions away.

Ignoring your emotions is very, very harmful.

The thing is, emotions can only be delayed – but you can’t ignore them until they go away. If you bottle up, they will release sooner or later.

When your emotions hinder your daily life it’s definitely time to act.

Other times, your emotional baggage might be less obvious. Maybe you keep dreaming about certain scenarios. Or you start to avoid certain things without fully knowing why. It might take longer until the actual cause comes to the surface.

Sometimes emotional baggage shows in behavior like being unable to commit or constantly comparing yourself to others. You can’t open up to others and your self-esteem is suffering.

As an entrepreneur, this causes severe damage. Your self-perception is off and you have no idea if you are doing well.

No matter if your emotional baggage is obvious or hidden – the moment you notice it is the moment you want to act on it. If you wait and procrastinate it will only get harder.

Where Does Emotional Baggage Come From?

Emotional baggage can result from various reasons. Sometimes it’s from how others treated you. Sometimes your own actions are the cause.

Family

The way you grew up in your family has effects on you. If your family had problems in the past that can result in emotional baggage.

For example, if your family struggled financially when you were young, you might continue your life in a “poverty” mindset. You think there is never enough for anybody and it stresses you out. All your energy goes into securing your life. But, if you let go of that baggage you would see you are already living in abundance.

Mental health

Do you know people who have been diagnosed with depression? Or maybe you got that diagnosis yourself?

People who get told that they suffer from depression, often have such a hard time recovering. The moment they get the diagnosis, it becomes a burden they have to carry.

Every profession has its challenges. Entrepreneurs are usually very driven, but they can become overly obsessive and lose balance.

Just thinking that your mental health might be a bit unstable can be heavy baggage to carry.

Abuse and Trauma

Abusive relationships are another possible cause of emotional baggage. Even if the relationship has long ended there might be parts of it you are still carrying around with you.

People who experienced abuse often have a hard time trusting others. They subconsciously are afraid that the same thing happens again if they let other people in.

They might try to do everything alone and avoid relying on others. This is a very severe form of self-sabotage.

Regrets

If you have the feeling that you took a wrong decision, that’s heavy mental baggage. Regrets are hard to make peace with as you can’t travel back in time to make another decision.

In my early days as an entrepreneur, I built up and failed in 13 businesses. I was severely in debt. I could have given up and let my regrets eat me up from the inside. But I didn’t.

The thing with regrets is: there is only a way forward. If you make mistakes you can only learn from it. Failure is feedback.

Now that you have an idea where emotional baggage comes from, what can you do to let go of it?

Take Ownership For Your Actions

Most people are so busy looking for someone to blame. A situation happened and now they try to find all the mistakes other people made. For them, everybody else is to blame but never themselves.

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, take responsibility for their own actions. They don’t blame others – they see the results of their actions and analyze that.

They take the situation at face value and focus on the solutions.

The thing is, blaming others won’t help you to deal with your emotional baggage. If you blame others, you are giving all your power to them. You have no control over other people’s actions. Giving away your power will make your baggage even heavier.

So instead, focus on your actions. What can you take ownership of? To take ownership of your actions you need a bit of courage, but it frees you from a lot of unnecessary baggage.

If you are aware of the consequences of your actions and communicate it clearly, then nobody can use your mistakes against you. Others will respect you more and you become a better leader.

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