If you have a business and if you have staff, you most certainly have problems. It comes with the territory. But how you deal with those problems makes all the difference to your success.

Here I want to talk about the biggest, scariest problems. That could be losing key members of staff that you heavily rely on. It could be a break-in, or a fire or anything that prevents you from being able to operate your business. It could be a legal problem that has you worried sick. Lease negotiations where landlords are playing hardball and trying to get rid of you to redevelop their building.

It doesn’t really matter what the adversity is but how you deal with it matters very much. There are two things I have learned over the years from my own experience and from observing how others respond to big hairy problems.

The first thing is belief. Your strength of belief. My automatic reaction to any adversity is “I can handle this. There is a solution and I will find it.” I see it as a challenge and I rise to it, confident in my ability. I have trained myself to think correctly under pressure. I tell myself this will make me stronger. And it will work out in the end, for the best, one way or another. Your self-talk is huge. Remember you choose your mindset. You can choose what to believe. And it’s not about whether a belief is right or wrong. The only criteria you need to consider, is whether your belief, what you are telling yourself is useful. Wallowing in self-pity and fear is not useful to you. Telling yourself you can do this is useful and will get you a better result.

Second thing has to do with momentum. The average practice owner allows their every problem to incapacitate them. They allow it to neutralise any positive momentum they had going. It consumes them. All progress grounds to a standstill while they spend every waking moment worrying about the problem. On the other hand the smartest, most successful people I know are extremely good at compartmentalising problems.

The best advice I have for you is to keep your problems in a box. You take it out, think about it, fact find, look at your options and deal with it. But you only devote a reasonable time to deal with it. When that time is up you put that problem back in it’s box so you can work on something positive that is going to move your business forward. And no matter how serious the problem you are facing you ALWAYS need to be simultaneously working on something positive that will grow your business. Never allow any problem to consume you entirely. For the sake of your health, your sanity and the future health of your business. Put it in a box and take it out and deal with what you need to deal with and then put it back in the box until tomorrow.