Your happiness ≠ How the business is doing
No matter how your business is doing, your happiness is up to you
Hey! I’ve been quiet here for a while.
I’ve moved to canada from japan this May, but i’ll talk about another topic this time :)
2024 Chiang Mai: 3 months ruled by numbers
In 2024 Jan, I’ve stayed in Chiang Mai long-term for the first time.
I’d been there a bunch before so I already knew the place was great.
I’m talking $2 bowls of khao soi, a comfy 25–35 °C every day, and a crew of digital-nomad buds. It was PARADISE.
But honestly? I felt miserable pretty much the whole time, and I still remember that feeling.
Instead of enjoying the pool on weekends like any sane person in Thailand, I was freaking out and dragging myself to a co-working space every single day.
By May 2024, I’d gotten my first real burnout…
Something gotta change
After that burnout, I started digging into psychology books and learning how to handle stress.
The first takeaway I came up with is an equation I keep in my head:
My happiness ≠ How the business is doingI try not to tie my personal happiness too tightly to the state of my SaaS project.
statistically speaking, most businesses fail; that’s just how it is.
If you equate your happiness with your business results, you’ll spend a lot of time feeling miserable :/
That mindset is wasteful and unsustainable.
Imagine this: you land in Chiang Mai for the first time, but your business is getting high churn rate, MRR is going down. You’re grumpy the whole trip.
Instead of enjoying the moment, you stew in frustration. Even with a delicious bowl of khao soi sitting right in front of you, the thought “my business is failing” drowns out the flavor. Talk about wasting life.
That was exactly me in early 2024. Nothing felt fun, and I was constantly stressed. Despite being in Chiang Mai, I skipped the pool on weekends and stayed holed up in a co working space. It’s easy to imagine my relationship with my partner took a hit too.
If I had kept that up, I’d have set myself up for an unhappy life and die.
So step one was to separate my happiness from my business growth.
2025 Chiang Mai: The same city felt like heaven
A year later I headed back to Chiang Mai.
This stay was sooo fun (unlike before), even though I booked the same fav hotel and the same co working space.
It felt like a completely different experience, almost hard to believe I was in the same city lol. The vibe was fresh and new.
(We were so happy that we took a podcast (sry it’s in Japanese…!) lol)
Here is what I realized:
Your mindset decides your life
Your happiness should not hinge on your business
People should default to being happy
When you face the same situation, whether you end up happy or unhappy comes down to how you look at it, your mindset.
I also think this mindset keeps you healthier, since high stress hurts your immune system, and it lets you work on more projects over the long run, which raises your odds of business success.
If you’re a founder, how do you handle stress, especially when your project is doing poorly?