Reframe Anxiety to Push Your Business Forward / Business Lessons from the King (yes, that one)
I fall down a rabbit hole probably several times a year.
Finding one topic, going deep, learning everything I can.
Sometimes the topics are business-related, other times they’re just personally interesting (although, let’s be honest, I almost always manage to bring them back around to business).
My most recent obsession?
The King.
It started with Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS.
Then I saw Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla.
Several documentaries later, I’m in deep.
And the whole time, I’m thinking, “How does this guy end up being Elvis? What brought him here?”
The answer came when I found a doc about his big ‘68 comeback tour.
Elvis had been down and out for several years. The comeback tour was pitched as this big victorious moment for someone who had been at the height of stardom and was trying to climb his way back to the top.
He was doing movies he didn’t care about. Stuck in a rut and unhappy.
Until he got the advice to go back on stage and do what he loved.
Elvis is one of the greats. But that ‘68 documentary showed me that he was also tremendously insecure. Nervous that this tour might not work, that the high point of high career might always be behind him.
He gets on stage, and you don’t see the nerves. You see a performance that’s simply electric.
Elvis is back, baby.
But his return is the result of a tremendous amount of fear, insecurity, and pressure on himself. Elvis doesn’t just sit and worry; he puts in the work. He turns his anxiety into an intense practice ethic. He aspires for perfection. He’ll practice the same passage 100 times until he gets it right.
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Confidence is important in business.
But so, I believe, is a healthy level of….concern, anxiety, paranoia…whatever you want to call it.
We perceive those emotions as negative, but when I look around at the greats of the world, I have to admit to myself: they tend to drive incredible results.
Most people don’t have the relentless drive to do better. Not even most entrepreneurs, although our community may have more of that trait than most. It’s okay to not be a perfectionist. It’s okay to not aspire to be the best in the business.
Just don’t expect to be king.
But if you have that drive, even if it’s about one small aspect of your business: building a strong company culture, delivering exceptional customer service, creating a product that’s head and shoulders above the competition: there are times when you should lean into your ambition.
I still prepare for high-stakes client meetings like I was a new consultant: arrive an hour early, take notes in advance, give myself time to settle in and mentally prepare.
Success takes a combination of confidence and drive. If your drive comes from insecurity, well, use it to fuel you. You’re nervous because you care.
Insecurity may well be what forges some of our best habits: consistency, practice, high standards, preparation.
My foray into the psyche of Elvis didn’t inspire me to become more neurotic, necessarily (no thank you). But it has helped me reframe insecurity and anxiety when they show up: to see them as potentially positive emotions.
Because another way of describing those feelings might be humility: the acknowledgement that we have farther to go and more we can accomplish.
