Psychological well-being of entrepreneurs are interconnected with their work characteristics, personality traits and values, firm and financial characteristics, social resources and stressors, and context (Stephan, 2018). Social relationships are an important source of mental well-being. Entrepreneurs who are lonely and socially isolated are more likely to develop burnout (Fernet et al., 2016). Social support can mitigate other stressors and negative experiences, and work-related social support buffers the effect of exhaustion on job satisfaction (Tetrick et al., 2000). This resource Guide introduces you to knowledge and resources that help you improve personal well-being and relationship.

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

Surviving the Entrepreneurial Life (Kauffman Foundation)

Meg Cadoux Hirshberg draws on the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurial families (her own included) to provide important insights into how families can survive the entrepreneurial life – with all its ups and downs.

Founder’s Dilemmas - Relationships (Kauffman Foundation)

Page and Brin. Jobs and Wozniak. Hewlett and Packard. Famous co-founders, striking stories. What are the pitfalls for co-founders? Where can things go wrong?

The Science of Well-Being (Yale)

In this course you will engage in a series of challenges designed to increase your own happiness and build more productive habits. As preparation for these tasks, Professor Laurie Santos reveals misconceptions about happiness, annoying features of the mind that lead us to think the way we do, and the research that can help us change.

Brilliant, Passionate You (University of Michigan)

You will envision your “perfect day” and then slowly deconstruct the elements of that day to better understand key elements such as finding your purpose, defining success, mental and physical health, the importance of community, and navigating risks and challenges. In addition, you will hear stories from a diverse array of individuals, including students, doctors, teachers, professional storytellers, professional athletes, coaches, and others sharing their own journeys, communities, and sources of inspiration.

Mindfulness and Well-being: Living with Balance and Ease (Rice University)

With interactive exercises to help students explore their own attitudes, mental habits and behaviors, Foundations of Mindfulness series offers a pathway for living with more freedom, authenticity and ease. Featured components of the course include experiential exercises, guided meditations, personal reflection and interactive discussions.

The Foundations of Happiness at Work | edX (the University of California, Berkeley)

"The Science of Happiness" is the first MOOC to teach the ground-breaking science of positive psychology, which explores the roots of a happy and meaningful life. Students will engage with some of the most provocative and practical lessons from this science, discovering how cutting-edge research can be applied to their own lives.

How To Build A Successful Relationship With A Co-Founder (Founder Institute)

On this webinar, we outline the ideal Co-Founder relationship, and teach you how to construct Co-Founder agreements, split equity, manage responsibilities, and deal with conflicts.

Finding Fulfillment in Entrepreneurship (Stanford eCorner - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast)

In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Justin Kan, an entrepreneur and investor best known as the co-founder of Twitch discusses the highs and lows of his life in startups, and explores what both success and failure have taught him about building entrepreneurial resilience and finding satisfaction.

Find Your Superpower, Launch Your Career (Stanford eCorner - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast)

Discover your superpower to unlock your potential in the workplace. Knowing what you excel at helps you develop your skills. Professor of the Practice Tina Seelig sits down with Steve Garrity, founder of Hearsay Systems and Juliet Rothenberg, product manager at DeepMind for a new podcast called LEAP!. This series will take a deep dive into how to grow your career by unpacking some of the often overlooked and under-taught soft skills critical to the success of every entrepreneur.

Founders Leadership Series (Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center)

Deepak Chopra, world-renowned author and inspirational speaker, is known for decades of work helping people live a joyful and healthy life.

Perseverance Creates Opportunity (Stanford eCorner - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast)

An entrepreneur, investor, business leader, and rocket-scientist, Sylvia Acevedo is the author of Path to the Stars: My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Scientist, which tells the story of her journey from a small town in New Mexico to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Acevedo most recently served as CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA. In this conversation with Stanford professor Tina Seelig, she shares how some important early lessons in perseverance built a mindset that allowed her to excel as both a scientist and an entrepreneur.

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.

Help Your Team Manage Stress, Anxiety, and Burnout

It can be tough enough to manage your own stress. But how can you, as a manager, help the members of your team handle their feelings of stress, burnout, or disengagement?

Don't Underestimate the Power of a Walk

Walking is one of the simplest and most strategic things you can do for yourself. It takes little preparation, minimal effort, no special equipment, and it can contract or expand to fit the exact amount of time you have available.

5 Things to Do When You Feel Overwhelmed by Your Workload

If you have moments of feeling overwhelmed by your workload, start with some deep breathing and healthy self-talk, like saying to yourself, ”Even though I have many things to do, I can only focus on the one thing I’m doing right now.”

Connect with Empathy, But Lead with Compassion

For the past two years, leaders have been shouldering a big emotional burden: helping teams recover from the grief and loss of the pandemic, buoying the declining mental health of their employees, and being sensitive to people’s anxieties.

To Reduce the Strain of Overwork, Learn to Listen to Your Body

Can learning how to engage with your body differently help with symptoms of overwork? Research on two groups of people taking yoga teacher training shows that learning how to “let go” during training also helped participants do the same in their work lives....

Find more Harvard Business Review topics on mindfulness, wellness, managing yourself, stress management.

Positive and Negative Antecedents for

Entrepreneurs’ Psychological Well-Being

Adapted from

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

Work Characteristics

• Positive Antecedent Examples:

Autonomy; time flexibility; skill utilization; significance and meaningfulness of the work; interesting, varied, and coherent work; the opportunity for feedback and learning; recovering process from stress

• Negative Antecedent Examples:

Higher work demands (with some exceptions for new entrepreneurs who perceive high demands as a signal of the business doing well); role stress; long/intense working hour

Personality Traits and Values

• Positive Antecedent Examples:

Self-efficacy; optimism; emotional intelligence; internal locus of control; risk tolerance; innovativeness; three of the Big 5 traits (agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness); problem-focused and proactive style for coping challenging situations; business skills; stress management skills; self-management skills; intrinsic motivations; health maintenance behavior

• Negative Antecedent Examples:

High levels of optimism and improvisational behavior (in some cases); neuroticism; vulnerabilities; fear of failure; low or deficient business and entrepreneurial skills; past business failures; high opportunity cost; extrinsic motivation

Firm and Financial Characteristics

• Positive Antecedent Examples:

Income and related financial rewards; subjectively perceived firm success; leading larger firms

• Negative Antecedent Examples:

Financial problems; low income; job loss or job insecurity; poor venture performance (perceived as a threat to entrepreneurs' self-image and even their identity)

Social Resources and Stressors

• Positive Antecedent Examples:

Social support from others at work and from their family; work-family enrichment; positive feedback from customers

• Negative Antecedent Examples:

Work-family conflict; conflicts with customers and employees

Context

• Positive Antecedent Examples:

Objective measures of economic growth and business climate; supportive societal context

• Negative Antecedent Examples:

Economic recession; low customer demand; strong market competition (increased role stress); lack of societal esteem for entrepreneurs (in certain culture); poor physical working environments

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.

• Boyatzis, Richard E, and Clayton M. Christensen. Hbr's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself: [if You Read Nothing Else on Managing Yourself, Read These Definitive Articles from Harvard Business Review ; Bonus Article "how Will You Measure Your Life?" by Clayton M. Christensen]. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Review Press, 2010. Print.

• Friedman, Stewart D. Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press, 2008. Print.

• Friedman, Stewart D. Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014. Print.

• The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness. , 2021. Print.

• Thaler, Richard H, and Cass R. Sunstein. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness. London: Penguin, 2009. Print.

Read More Books on This Topic

Fernet, C., Torrès, O., Austin, S., & St-Pierre, J. (2016). The psychological costs of owning and managing an SME: Linking job stressors, occupational loneliness, entrepreneurial orientation, and burnout. Burnout Research, 3(2), 45–53.

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

Tetrick, L. E., Slack, K. J., Da Silva, N., & Sinclair, R. R. (2000). A comparison of the stress-strain process for business owners and nonowners: differences in job demands, emotional exhaustion, satisfaction, and social support. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5(4), 464–476.