Stress, anxiety, exhaustion, and the fear of uncertainty resulting from the uncertainty of the market, time pressure, high work demands, or high expectations from themselves are common emotional challenges experienced by entrepreneurs, particularly student entrepreneurs (Benkirane, 2019; Oh, 2017; Stephan, 2018). This Guide will introduce resources that help you manage stress, anxiety, burnout, and build your resilience.

The courses selected can be audited for free and you can find the audit instructions for Coursera and Edx courses.

Becoming a Resilient Person - The Science of Stress Management (University of Washington)

This course gives you the permission to take care of yourself by learning the skills to manage stress and optimize wellbeing. Research has shown that people can learn and use specific resilience skills (such as optimistic thinking, relaxation strategies, choosing one’s attention) and positive routines (good sleep, scheduling in fun, and so on) in order to better manage stress, bounce back quicker after a setback…

Positive Psychology: Resilience Skills (The University of Pennsylvania)

Learn how to incorporate resilience interventions into your personal and professional life with Dr. Karen Reivich. In this course, you are exposed to the foundational research in resilience, including protective factors such as mental agility and optimism.

Adaptability and Resiliency (University of California, Davis)

To survive in today’s constantly changing business landscape requires being comfortable in uncertainty. Adaptability is what allows people and businesses to solve problems, overcome challenges and move back from the edge of attrition to the more stable ground of relevance.

Mindfulness and Resilience to Stress at Work | edX

This course offers research-based strategies for building resilience to stress and fortifying our well-being in the face of challenges. It explains the biological and psychological impact of stress, helps you distinguish between harmful and helpful forms of stress at work, and provides strategies for handling stress in healthy and productive ways.

Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress (Yale)

Developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress will provide participants with the knowledge, skills, and strategies to understand and manage their emotions and those of their students.

Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant discuss 'Option B' at Wharton (KnowledgeAtWharton)

Wharton's Adam Grant and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg discuss their new book, "Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy," during a recent appearance as part of the Authors@Wharton series

A Burnout Manifesto (Stanford eCorner - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast)

Gabriel Parisi-Amon, co-founder, CTO and COO of environmentally conscious shower startup, Nebia, bravely challenges the myth of “the perfect startup founder.” Parisi-Amon takes us on a journey through the seven stages of burnout he experienced in the early years of his startup, sharing how he’s emerged a more conscious and balanced leader. He offers tips and exercises for identifying the symptoms of burnout, urging us to prevent the fire before we’re consumed.

How to Avoid Startup Burnout [InVision, Wildbit] (Amazon Web Services)

Stewart Alsop III, Podcast Host of the Crazy Wisdom, is back - this time sitting down with Natalie Nagele, Co-founder and CEO at Wildbit, Sean Blanda, Editorial Director at InVision, and Amina AlTai, Founder and Startup Advisor, to discuss how running a startup at 100 mph can be an exciting ride - but can also create a high intensity and extreme pressure environment that introduces stress, isolation for distributed teams, and exhaust founders.

Three Years of “No” Video Clip and the entire talk Underestimated (Stanford eCorner)

Sometimes, being an entrepreneur means persevering through years of nothing but rejection. Backstage Capital founder and managing partner Arlan Hamilton built a venture capital fund from the ground up, while homeless. Her fund is dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or LGBT. Hamilton herself identifies as all three. Started in 2015, Backstage has invested nearly $7 million into 120 startups led by underestimated founders. In this talk, Hamilton describes how and why she created her unique fund, and why she views underrepresented, underestimated founders as a category with massive potential.

Staying Sane and Effective When the World Is Upside-Down (Stanford Graduate School of Business)

If you’re riding an emotional roller coaster in your personal and professional life right now, you’re not alone. We humans are predisposed to quickly respond to any perceived threat that comes our way. But those fight or flight reactions can be counterproductive.

Escape the Stress Spiral (Real Leaders)

A 56 minute interview with Carey Nieuwhof, the author of “At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor” (WaterBrook/Penguin Random House; 9/14/21) and "Didn’t See It Coming,” as well as the host of one of today’s most influential leadership podcasts. A former lawyer, he speaks at events around the world on leadership, change and personal growth.

Getting stuck in the negatives (and how to get unstuck) (Tedx Talks)

Alison Ledgerwood joined the Department of Psychology at UC Davis in 2008 after completing her PhD in social psychology at New York University. She is interested in understanding how people think, and how they can think better. Her research investigates how certain ways of thinking about an issue tend to stick in people's heads. Her classes on social psychology focus on understanding the way people think and behave in social situations, and how to harness that knowledge to potentially improve the social world in which we all live.

Surviving the Startup Grind (Stanford eCorner - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast)

Scaling a startup isn’t a linear path. Sometimes you can launch with the wrong assumptions, fail to attract initial users, miss some big opportunities, and still succeed if you stay committed.

Make Money Not Stress | Ryan Harris | Talks at Google

Bestselling author Ryan Harris is a 10-year veteran of the NFL. In 2015, he became a Super Bowl Champion after winning Super Bowl 50 with the Denver Broncos. Ryan talks about how financial freedom can be achieved by anyone who works any job, how to combat stress, and how to build a high performing mindset.

Scaling with Resilience (Stanford eCorner - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast)

Vlad Tenev is the CEO and co-founder of Robinhood, a fast-growing brokerage platform giving millions of people access to investment opportunities and financial tools. In this conversation with Stanford lecturer Ravi Belani, Tenev offers a behind-the-scenes view of high-stakes decisions related to the GameStop crisis, discusses the future of the financial services industry, and reflects on both past missteps and ongoing efforts to innovate at Robinhood and transform securities trading in the 21st century.

Weathering a Storm (Stanford eCorner - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast)

Vlad Tenev is the CEO and co-founder of Robinhood, a fast-growing brokerage platform giving millions of people access to investment opportunities and financial tools. In this conversation with Stanford lecturer Ravi Belani, Tenev offers a behind-the-scenes view of high-stakes decisions related to the GameStop crisis, discusses the future of the financial services industry, and reflects on both past missteps and ongoing efforts to innovate at Robinhood and transform securities trading in the 21st century.

Resilience is Everything (Stanford eCorner - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast)

Not long after landing at PagerDuty in 2016, Jennifer Tejada embarked on that harrowing rite of passage for CEOs of fortunate young startups: the pursuit of an IPO. Tejada raised a $90 million Series D round in late 2018, and saw PagerDuty go public on April 11, 2019. Her path to that point, she observes, was anything but linear. She tells the story of how a very “average” University of Michigan grad ended up becoming the CEO of a public SaaS company, and describes how gritty perseverance, some fortunate early leadership opportunities, and a passion for understanding and embracing different perspectives drove her career forward. She offers strategies that aspiring leaders can employ to challenge themselves and build tenacity while creating diverse, high-performing teams.

How to Survive Rejection (Kauffman Foundation)

A fact of life about selling anything: people are going to say no. They are going to say no a lot. Most of us don’t deal with rejection very well. Add some important tools to your arsenal to overcome rejection.

Facing a Crisis with Principles (Stanford Innovation Lab)

Strong, clear principles can help leaders and companies weather a storm. In the first episode of our “Entrepreneurship and Ethics” miniseries, Stanford professor Tom Byers speaks with Stanford lecturer Jack Fuchs and Jazz Pharmaceuticals CEO Bruce Cozadd about how strong principles can help a leader navigate a crisis. Fuchs discusses his “Principled Entrepreneurial Decisions” course, and Cozadd walks through a case study he first presented in that class, focusing on how he leaned on his principles when his company hit a wall during the 2008 economic crash.

Strategies for Student Entrepreneurs (Stanford eCorner - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast)

Beat imposter syndrome and build confidence by learning from failure, facing the hard questions, and always “playing up.” Mar Hershenson co-founded Pear VC in 2013, and under her watch the firm has made seed and pre-seed investments in category-defining companies like DropBox, Gusto, DoorDash and Branch Metrics. Along the way, she’s spent a significant amount of time mentoring student-entrepreneurs. In this talk, she focuses on some of the most common questions and concerns she hears from student entrepreneurs, offering insights she’s gained both as a serial startup founder and as a seed-stage VC investor.

You can search Harvard Business Review to learn more articles on this topic. You can also check if your university library has a subscription to the Business Source Complete database, which provides full-text access to Harvard Business Review articles, or use the library’s interlibrary loan service to access the article.

How I Learned to Treat Fear as a Tool for Personal Growth (Kauffman Foundation)

Whether you are launching a company, choosing an education path, or starting a career, you will experience some form of fear. Read this article to learn how John Hall leveraged this feeling to serve him instead of stall him.

Passion for Your Startup Doesn't Have to Mean Constant Stress (Harvard Business Review)

At MIT Sloan School of Management’s delta v accelerator 84 entrepreneurs participated in a first-of-its-kind, exploratory self-awareness program. By the end of the program, 88% of the participants (up from 21%) had independently established their own regular, weekly meditation or mindfulness practice; 53% of participants were more frequently utilizing a deliberate tool or technique to work through stress; and 40% were more aware of their emotions.

How to Stop Obsessing Over Your Mistakes (Harvard Business Review)

Do you ever find yourself endlessly mentally replaying situations in which you wish you’d performed differently? Overthinking in this way is called rumination, and it’s closely linked to anxiety and depression. The good news is that there are effective solutions for breaking yourself out of this rut, and they’re simpler than you might think.

4 Steps to Beating Burnout (Harvard Business Review)

Three symptoms characterize burnout: exhaustion; cynicism, or distancing oneself from work; and inefficacy, or feelings of incompetence and lack of achievement. Research has linked burnout to many health problems, including hypertension, sleep disturbances, depression, and substance abuse. Moreover, it can ruin relationships and jeopardize career prospects.

Why Social Entrepreneurs Are So Burned Out (Harvard Business Review)

Research on entrepreneurs within companies finds that those who are more interested and willing to help society are also more likely to overload themselves with too many responsibilities and, consequently, deplete their personal resources.

How Fear Helps (and Hurts) Entrepreneurs (Harvard Business Review)

Interviews with 65 entrepreneurs reveal the most common fears that startup founders share and also, somewhat surprisingly, that these fears can be helpful.

Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure (Harvard Business Review)

After working hard for long hours and toughing it out, we at least expect success. However, more often than not, at the end of the day we are exhausted and still have a long list of tasks to complete.

Find more Harvard Business Review Articles on the Topic of Stress Management and Personal resilience.

• Option B Support Groups on Facebook | OptionB.Org

• You can seek help from your university counseling center

Click the link to find a Worldcat book record; enter a zipcode to check which library nearby has the book you can borrow. When the record is not available, a link to Amazon is provided.

• Brown, Brené. The Gifts of Imperfection. 2020. Print.

• Helmstetter, Shad. Negative Self-Talk and How to Change It. 2019. Print.

• Manzoni, Jean-François, and Jean-Louis Barsoux. The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: Overcoming the Undertow of Expectations. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 2007. Print.

• Nagoski, Emily, and Amelia Nagoski. Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. 2019. Print.

• Bijoor, Mona. Startups and Downs: The Secrets of Resilient Entrepreneurs. 2019. Print.

• Duckworth, Angela. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. 2018. Print.

• Hanson, Rick. Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, And happiness. S.l.: Harmony Crown, 2020. Print.

• Harvard Business Review, Hbr's 10 Must Reads on Career Resilience. 2021. Print.

• Sandberg, Sheryl, and Adam M. Grant. Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. 2017. Print.

• Brewer, Judson. Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind. , 2021. Print.

• Cuddy, Amy J. C. Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges. , 2018. Print.

• Harvard Business Review. Hbr Guide to Beating Burnout. 2021. Print.

• McGonigal, Kelly. The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage. , 2021. Print.

• Weber, Jill P. Be Calm: Proven Techniques to Stop Anxiety Now. 2019. Print.

Find More Details or More Books on Coping with Stress and Negative Thoughts

Find More Details or More Books on Strengthening Resilience and Perseverance

Find More Details or More Books on Deal with Anxiety, Uncertainty, and Fear of Unknown

Benkirane, O. (2019). Acting on purpose: the reflections of MIT student entrepreneurs [Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. DSpace@MIT. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/122092

Oh, Y. (2017). Student Entrepreneurship at Cornell University: A Case Study. [Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University]. Cornell eCommons. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/47827

Stephan, U. (2018). Entrepreneurs’ mental health and well-being: A review and research agenda. Academy of Management Perspectives, 32(3), 290–322