Shanli Liu argues that labeling something a problem creates more stress than the thing itself. Early-stage worries like trainer punctuality feel huge until your business grows and you realize they weren't. Stress tolerance rises with scale, and reframing difficulties as manageable makes you more resilient.
Think about your first business or think about your problems that you had 2 years ago or 3 years ago in business. You're probably like, "Oh my god, those weren't even real problems. Those are like nothing problems." Future you 3 years from now thinks that about your problems right now and so I think about this a lot because when I think about my problems of like when I was worried about how to get trainers show up on time and like somebody's membership wasn't recurring, I had churn issues or whatever it was within the gym that I had. Those problems, I could solve those in my sleep now because the problems that I have are bigger and so the thing is that you just become more enduring. You become tougher and your tolerance level for stress or what you deem to be stressful goes up. I still have the same problems I had when I had a much, much, much smaller business. I just don't think they're problems anymore. My choice to categorize the issue as a problem is actually the greater source of stress than the problem itself. And if you can adopt that perspective, you can be less stressed as you grow and make better decisions.
