From High Anxiety to High Impact with Charlie Stevenson

Anxiety is an inevitable part of the entrepreneurial world, the question is – how do you navigate through all the complexities?

In today’s conversation, Adam speaks with Charlie Stevenson as they take a deep dive into ways you can get yourself out of a morass. As entrepreneurs, we all have those points in life where we could feel frustrated or demotivated. And so, it’s important to have practices that keep you in your flow.

Charlie is a serial entrepreneur who is currently scaling an impact-focused, commercial real estate investment business called Akras Capital. His goal is to impact one million lives by 2030. 

Here are some power takeaways from today’s conversation:

• Pushing on your passion helps with anxiety
• The bigger the problem, the higher the consciousness
• How to get out of the morass and the monkey-mind
• The role of adventure in mental health
• Letting flow happen naturally
• Integrating impact in the affordable housing space

Episode Highlights:

[14:50] Dealing with Anxiety

When you’re feeling anxious, sad, depressed, frustrated, demotivated, or whatever that is, you have the tendency to focus on yourself. But try looking at the next level, or your inner circle, and shift your focus on them and how you can help them. By taking that step back and focusing on helping others, those very individualized concerns will slowly melt away. The greatest leaders focus on the biggest problems because it raises their consciousness to higher levels. And so the bigger the problem that you focus on, the more positive energy that can bring to you.

[18:25] Ways to Get Out of the Funk

1. Get yourself moving – Engage in any physical activity that you like whether that’s running, swimming, or walking. This creates a little gap between the constant chatter of the monkey mind and getting out of the morass.
2. Gratitude – Think about 19 things you’re grateful for. A gratitude exercise helps give you a new and fresher perspective in life.
3. Cold plunge – This triggers a physiological fear-based response, which then results in the dopamine release that gives you a nice degree of separation from the funk you’re in. 20-second cold showers work too.
4. Meditation – Whether that’s 5 minutes or 30 minutes, meditation keeps you above falling into that space. Then recite your affirmation and create a commitment to staying aware of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and pain, and staying on top of them so they won’t take over.

[41:42] Integrating Impact into the Business Model

There’s an affordable housing crisis right now. And so, how can we direct our resources toward alleviating that crisis? Charlie says we can make an impact by buying certain types of assets that are in neighborhoods where there’s a burgeoning need for workforce housing. It is truly impactful if we can just focus our efforts on that and figure out how the business model makes sense for our investors and our own partners’ financial needs. 

Resources Mentioned:

Akras Capital

Email: cstevenson@akrascapital.com 

Meet With Charlie – Akras Capital