How Women Entrepreneurs Can Reduce Stress and Beat Decision Fatigue

Links: https://www.laurenchapnick.com/

Are you feeling overwhelmed by decision fatigue as a woman entrepreneur or speaker?

In this episode of She’s Got the Mic, Lauren Chapnick shares the four powerful questions she uses to reduce stress, trust her intuition, and make clearer decisions in business and life. Whether you are launching something new, growing a membership, producing live events, or simply juggling entrepreneurship and motherhood, this conversation will help you reset your nervous system and lead with more confidence.

Entrepreneurs are professional decision makers. From pricing to partnerships to parenting, we make hundreds of decisions every single day. When you are building something new, that pressure can feel intense. Lauren explains how stress is a physiological response, but leadership is defined by how you choose to respond to it.

If you are a woman speaker, coach, founder, or creative who feels stuck in overthinking or second guessing, this episode will help you simplify your choices and reconnect with your inner voice.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to reduce decision fatigue as a woman entrepreneur
•  How to trust your intuition and strengthen your hell yes muscle
•  A simple mindset shift for confident leadership
•  How to regulate your nervous system when business stress spikes
•  Why fun and joy are strategic tools for business growth
•  How to become the version of yourself who achieves your goals

Lauren walks through her signature framework for reducing stress and building a bold, aligned business:

1. How can this be easy?
2.  Is it a hell yes?
3.  Who do I want to be?
4.  How can this be more fun?

These four questions help women entrepreneurs simplify complex decisions, build confidence, overcome imposter syndrome, and move forward without burnout.

If you are navigating public speaking opportunities, pitching sponsors, growing your audience, or stepping into bigger leadership, this episode will remind you that clarity does not come from overthinking. It comes from alignment.

This episode is for women entrepreneurs, public speakers, coaches, founders, and creatives who want to grow their business using their voice, feel less overwhelmed by constant decision making, and become more confident leaders in both business and life.

If this episode resonated with you, follow the show, leave a rating and review, and share it with another woman who is ready to take the mic.

For weekly Hell Yes Energy and behind the scenes invites to live speaking experiences, text SPEAK to 833-681-6463.

Now go trust your gut, get off your butt, and make some noise.

To be played at opening of all SGTM episodes, this is a promo for the Speakers Collective.

Transcript

Choose Fun And Ease

Lauren Chapnick 0:42

Because if you don't inject your own fun into your life, nobody's going to hand it to you. Nobody's going to come along and say, all right, it's time to have fun. You have to make it happen for yourself. You have to find those moments of joy, of lightness. And I promise you, once you do, everything else seems so much less complicated and stressful. And those decisions become so much easier. Welcome to She's Got the Mic, the show for women speakers and entrepreneurs using their voice to grow their business. I'm your host, Lauren Chapnick. Let's go. Hi, everybody, and welcome to She's Got the Mike. If this is your first time here, welcome. My name is Lauren Chapnick. I am your host. I am a nurse, a mom, a speaker, entrepreneur. And this podcast is all about celebrating women's voices, women's entrepreneurship, and those women who want to use their voice to grow their business, tell their story. Everybody who listens here has some sort of passion for speaking, public speaking, whether that is pursuing a career in professional speaking, or if you use your voice and speaking somewhere in your business, that is what we talk about here. We talk about the challenges of being an entrepreneur and the world of speaking. So, my lovely, beautiful audience, I would like to know how the heck are you? How are you doing? Let's check in. I gotta tell you, I have been feeling it recently. I have been feeling the stress by the end of the day. My cheeks are flushed. Like I am in it. I am in a phase of this new part of my business where I am building this membership. I'm building this speakers collective of incredible women. I've spoken to so many of you, and you are all just bright lights, just amazing people. And there are so many aspects of building a community and being an event producer and all of these things that a few months ago, I never planned to do this. It just something sparked in me, and I am off to the races, and I'm having such an incredible time. But it's very stressful. Running a business is stressful. No matter what phase you're in, no matter what part of your business you're in, whether you've been in it 10 years or you're just starting out, it ebbs and flows with these periods of incredible stress, especially when you're launching something new in your business, which is what I'm doing now. And what I have discovered, and what I've said over and over in all my years of owning businesses, we are professional decision makers. That's what we do all day long, is make decisions. That's what parenthood is, too. Just side note. But as an entrepreneur, that's what we do. We make decisions all day long. And when you are the one that's in control and you're the one calling the shots and you're vulnerable and you're creating something new, it is scary to make those decisions. You don't want to make a wrong decision. And you can start second guessing yourself and thinking, am I making a mistake? Am I doing the right thing? And it hit me this week. It hit me sitting there this morning drinking my coffee. Something said to me, Are you practicing what you preach? Because my four signature questions, the through line in all of the talks that I do, the four questions that really allow you to listen to that inner whisper and get crystal clear on what it is you want. And these four questions that lower stress and that are the tools to live your biggest best life, the life that you want to create for yourself, to be the kind of leader, the kind of entrepreneur that I want to be. I want to live my life by these four questions. But I realized am I really truly embodying these questions? When things get hard, sure, when things are easier, when life is a little lighter, when I'm not creating something new, when I'm not launching 15 gazillion events, these four questions are easier to live by. But when you are in it, when you are feeling that stress, you can choose how to respond to it. That stress is a physiological hormonal response to a situation. But how you choose to navigate through that stress, that tells you what kind of leader, what kind of person you are at your core. And I'm going to go through these four questions as a reminder to all of us that here they are. Number one, how can this be easy? Now that can mean so many different things. And I think it depends on how you interpret it, given the situation that you are in at the moment. To me, what that really means is can you boil things down to their simplest form? Can you narrow your focus to that one thing that really matters? Make things easy for yourself. Choose that one thing that's going to move the needle forward. Or if something is screaming at you, oh my gosh, this is too hard. How can this be easy? Maybe you don't do that thing in that moment. How can this be easy? That can be as simple as taking a breath, taking five minutes for yourself to meditate, and then going back to that task that seemed so daunting to you before. You can make things lighter, you can make things easier for yourself by simplifying them. Not everything has to be so complicated. If you're trying to decide between three or four things, choose one. How can this be easy? Number two, is it a hell yes? If not, it's a no. This is at its base level. This is what training your intuition is. And you can use this question all day long from very important decisions on how to navigate through your business, how decisions you make for your kids, for your family, and little decisions. Little decisions like which kind of peanut butter am I gonna buy? What am I going to eat for dinner tonight when you're looking at the menu? What feels in your body like a full body yes? A hell yes, a lightning bolt energy yes. And not everything is gonna feel like a lightning bolt, yes, but what is your first instinct? I used to say this to my nursing students. Usually your first instinct on that exam is the answer. And if you can live by this with the 15 gazillion decisions you make every day as a human being and as a business owner, you can start to alleviate that decision fatigue at the end of the day. If you can start training that hell yes muscle, and when a decision comes your way, if it's not an instant, yep, that's it, then it's a no and move on. Number three, ask yourself, who do I want to be and act as if one of my favorite podcasts that I'm listening to right now is called Powerhouse Women. The host name is Lindsay. I forget her last name. But I listened to one of her episodes today, and it goes along with this third question. And she asks herself, don't focus on all the things you need to do to hit your goals in your business, in your life. Ask yourself, who do I need to become in order to get there? I asked myself when I use this question, who do I want to be and act as if? And then I say, What would a blank blank do? And I do that. So if I'm feeling like, you know, I I wrote in my planner to work out today, but I don't feel like doing it. I say, what would a healthy and strong person do? And I get up and I do that thing. I use this in nursing school all the time. When I was feeling intimidated, when I was feeling like an imposter on one of those hospital floors, and I was asked to assist with doing something, and I felt intimidated. I would say in my head, what would a confident nurse do? And I would do that thing, and I would become that confident nurse by just diving right into it. As an entrepreneur, you are going to be faced with intimidating, vulnerable situations all the time. Speaking to people, getting on the phone and asking for money from sponsors for an event or meeting potential new members of your community or doing a discovery call as a coach. Sometimes it can be downright intimidating. But if you ask yourself, what would a confident coach do? Who do I need to become in order to hit those goals? Well, I need to become a confident whatever. I need to become a blank blank. I need to become an inspired writer. I need to become someone who sits down and writes for 15 minutes every morning if I want to write that book. Ask yourself, who do I want to be and act as if? Action becomes identity. So ask yourself, what would a blank blank do if the next time you're feeling scared to make that bold move? Act as if. Number four, how can this be more fun? Because if you don't inject your own fun into your life, nobody's gonna hand it to you. Nobody's gonna come along and say, all right, it's time to have fun. You have to make it happen for yourself. You have to find those moments of joy, of lightness. And I promise you, once you do, everything else seems so much less complicated and stressful. And those decisions become so much easier. This was maybe a couple years ago. I was in the car driving with my kids, and we hadn't made it barely out of the driveway when they were just driving me nuts. And to be honest, it wasn't really them, probably it was me because I was feeling it that day for whatever reason. And I could feel myself starting to lose my patience. I could just feel it. And I didn't want to yell, I didn't want to be that mom. So I just kept driving. And when they wouldn't stop, and then they started fighting, and it was just chaos in the car. This question came to my mind, and I said, How can this be more fun? And I pulled off into a parking lot, and I opened my door, and I opened their doors, and I said, Let's go. And I started running laps around the car, and I started playing follow the leader and red light, green light, and just being crazy in this empty parking lot and just running laps around the car, and then having them run the opposite direction and just being spontaneous and silly, and they were so caught off guard that they were laughing, they forgot about what they were fighting about. And this took maybe two minutes, and then we got back in the car and we started going to wherever we were going, and it just made the rest of the day lighter, easier, and any decision I had to make after that was just better and easier because we had had this moment of joy, this unplanned, spontaneous moment of getting out of the car, running around, running laps, getting back in, acting silly. And we all just need more moments like that, where we can just hit pause and whatever that is for you, have that fun. Be silly, be crazy, and don't take everything so seriously. Because I promise you, when you come back to the task to work on that book or work on that podcast episode, whatever it is you're working on in your business, it's going to be so much easier. You will be that much more focused because you released that serotonin, that oxytocin, that dopamine from moving your body and having fun. Joy is something that we can create, and we all need more of it. So as we move into the rest of our week, and when whenever you're listening to this, I invite you to try these four questions. The next time you're faced with a decision, the next time you're feeling stressed out, pick your favorite one, go through all four, whatever it is. Number one, how can this be easy? Number two, is it a hell yes? If not, it's a no. Number three, ask yourself, who do I want to be and act as if? And number four, how can this be more fun? Whatever you teach in your business, whatever principles you live by, whatever core values you teach to your clients or you embody for yourself, when things get hard, when the stress piles up, when your nervous system is overloaded, I invite you to stop, take a step back, and ask yourself, are you practicing what you preach? Because those are the moments that it matters the most. Thank you so much for listening. And I hope this resonated with you. If you found it helpful, please share it with a friend. And I can't tell you how far a rating and review goes. So, guys, make today awesome. Trust your gut, get off your butt. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you the next time. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to She's Got the Mic. If you enjoyed today's episode, hit follow, rate, and review, and send it to another woman who's ready to take the mic. And for a weekly hit of Hell Yes Energy, plus behind-the-scenes invites for live speaking experiences, add the word sweep to 833-681-6463. That's sweep to 833 681 6464. Now go make some noise.