Self-Care: The Secret to Your Business Success!
The Best Way to Love Your Business
As hard-working business women, we don’t hold back when it comes to prioritizing our businesses. Long days, late nights, sneaking work into the weekends...whatever it takes to make our businesses stronger!
What we forget sometimes is that WE are our businesses! We are the backbone of marketing, the genius of production, and the guardian of quality. This is all great, but…….if we’re not running on 100% strength, our businesses won’t be either. So how can we make sure that we’re thriving?
First Step: Know Yourself
What are your strengths and weaknesses? Some of us can handle mountains of paperwork and tight deadlines without batting an eye—but if we have to run a meeting or interview clients every day, the tension on our internal stress-o-meter starts to rise.
When you feel stress start creeping into your day, take a moment and write down the cause of the stress. After you do this for a week or two, you’ll probably start to notice a pattern. Once you’ve identified the main source of anxiety, brainstorm how to make it less stressful. If it’s a task you can hand off to someone else, great! If not, here are some tips to make the task less daunting:
If possible, schedule down-time right after the stressful task. This will give you a moment to clear your mind before launching back into the busy world of running a business.
Find someone who has no problems with the task in question, and ask them how they approach it and why they aren’t anxious. They may have tips or advice that will help you but sometimes just talking with someone about the task makes it less intimidating.
Do your best to keep the stressful task inside business hours. Home should be a safe place where you can take a break from the intensity of running your business. Try to keep work—especially the part of work causing you anxiety—separate from your home life.
Everyone, even those who seem totally confident, get stressed out about something. Don’t be discouraged about feeling anxious!
Second Step: Take a Break!
Giving 100% certainly includes pushing ourselves to constantly learn and grow. But this is only one half of the whole—self-care is the other vital half!
Many of us have a love/hate relationship with the term “self-care.” Sometimes it sounds like an excuse, or that we aren’t strong enough to just. keep. swimming. But honestly, we need to challenge the status quo on this...and many people are.
Let’s be part of that movement. Let’s start by recognizing we cannot keep functioning at the same level, day after day, constantly pouring out, if we don’t have anything pouring into us.
The odds aren’t in our favor. Even though we may want to take time for ourselves, often carving out 20 mins, an hour, or an entire day feels more like work than...well...work!
So where do we start? We have some creative ideas to build our self-care practices up, so keep skimming down the page to read our tips!
Make Time for Self-Care
Reserve time specifically for self-care—sometimes, all it takes to make time for yourself is to write it into your schedule. After all, isn’t that one of the reasons we decided to start our own businesses? So that we could decide what to do with our time?
Ask a supportive partner/friend/colleague to encourage you to take time or help you make plans. Sometimes a little accountability is just what we need to get things moving in the right direction!
Start small! Whether that’s taking 20 minutes in the morning to read while enjoying a cup of coffee, going on a fifteen minute walk during lunch, or taking ten minutes to call someone in the afternoon, it’s a step. Baby steps are what get us there in the long run!
Third Step: Treat Yourself!
Giving yourself breaks throughout the work week is really important to keep on top of everything you need to get done. But now and then, we each need some hard-core RnR to refuel so we can tackle our responsibilities!
Whether it’s a weekend getaway, a day-long adventure, or a spa day, make sure your body and mind are getting a chance to rest! Here are some suggestions for how to treat yourself while relaxing your mind and body:
A Massage
Massage therapy sounds heavenly, doesn’t it? But not only does it help your body relax and let go of tension, a regular massage can improve your overall mental and physical health.
A massage increases your parasympathetic (calming) response, helping you relax and let go of anxiety for a time. Studies show that regular massages help reduce anxiety for people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
A Spa Day!
Whether you hit the actual spa, or have a spa day at home, this is a great way to treat yourself and just relaaaxxxx…. And it is very customizable!
Love baths? Get yourself some aromatherapy bubble bath, light some candles, and take a long soothing soak. Enjoy doing your nails? Put on a show or a podcast, soak your feet, and give yourself a mani-pedi.
And whatever you do, don’t forget the wine!
A Day on the Town
Put on your makeup, wear your favorite outfit, and hit the town! This could include browsing local shops, strolling through the mall, or reading in a coffee shop.
Do something you don’t do very often, and make it a treat. Shaking up the typical routine is a great way to refresh your brain and have some fun!
Stay Tuned
We have several WEO members who have created businesses devoted to helping people take care of themselves. We’ll be highlighting them in the next couple of months—these ladies have worked hard learning how to include self-care in their own lives and are excited to share their methods with us!
As we get to know these innovative businesswomen, we’ll see there really is no end to creatively taking care of yourself (and your business)!