Busy Entrepreneurs: Be Wary of Neglecting Self-Care

Busy Entrepreneurs: Be Wary of Neglecting Self-Care
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You might love the fast-paced nature of business and entrepreneurship, but your body can only handle so much before it starts to give out. In order to maximize productivity and optimize health, you need to pay better attention to self-care.

What is Proper Self-Care?

By and large, entrepreneurs tend to be very independent and ambitious people. They often say, “ I can do it myself.”

Most of the time, this mentality yields tremendous benefit. However, for all of the time and attention that goes into grabbing the reins and making sure your business is cared for, are you doing enough to care for yourself? Proper self-care plays a critically important role in the personal and professional development of entrepreneurs, but few give it the focus it needs.

“Self-care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health,” psychologist Raphailia Michael says. “Although it’s a simple concept in theory, it’s something we very often overlook. Good self-care is key to improved mood and reduced anxiety. It’s also key to a good relationship with oneself and others.”

Improved mood, reduced anxiety, and good relationships – each of these building blocks help lay a foundation that’s conducive to personal and professional growth. The problem is that a large percentage of entrepreneurs – the same ones who say they can do everything themselves – view self-care as selfish when this simply isn’t the case.

“It is not only about considering our needs; it is rather about knowing what we need to do in order to take care of ourselves, being subsequently, able to take care of others as well,” Michael continues. “That is, if I don’t take enough care of myself, I won’t be in the place to give to my loved ones either.”

In the case of running a business, you could replace “loved ones” with “employees,” and you start to see just why proper self-care matters so much. It’s not just you – it’s about your family, employees, business partners, and customers.

5 Self-Care Strategies You Can Use

If you’re tired of neglecting self-care and want to get back on track – for yourself, your family, and your business – now’s a good time to come up with a constructive game plan.

1. Eat a Substantial Breakfast

It sounds like such a boring and basic piece of advice – something your mom would tell you the night before a big test at school – but eating a substantial breakfast really is a good self-care strategy.

“Typically, there is a period of 8 to 12 hours between dinner and your morning meal. Therefore, when you eat breakfast, you are breaking a fast from the night before,” explains Erica Wickham, registered dietitian. “Breakfast is a chance to give your body the food it needs to replenish your blood glucose levels. Glucose is your main energy source; it fuels your brain and your body. Eating breakfast will provide your body with the glucose it needs to function properly and fight fatigue.”

Generally, a healthy breakfast consists of a combination of whole grains, lean sources of protein, fresh fruit, and/or low-fat dairy products.

2. Pack a Good Lunch

Breakfast might be the most important meal of the day, but you aren’t going to be at your best in the afternoons if you skip lunch. Unfortunately, this is a habit a lot of busy entrepreneurs and professionals have picked up.

The best strategy is to pack your lunch and bring it with you from home. Not only does this make eating lunch quicker – which increases the likelihood that you’ll actually eat – but it prevents you from going through the McDonald’s drive-thru window or getting something unhealthy out of the breakroom vending machine.

3. Use a Meal Delivery System for Dinners

By now, you’re probably seeing a trend. Food plays a very significant role in self-care and a healthy, substantial dinner will finish your day off strong and prevent you from having those late-night cravings that often lead to a pre-bedtime guilty pleasure, like ice cream.

Once again, time is the problem. After you actually get home from work and deal with the other household responsibilities you have, there isn’t much time left in the day to cook a healthy meal, so you just order delivery or plop a frozen dinner in the microwave.

Thankfully, there’s a better option. With meal delivery systems, you can cook healthy meals without having to do the recipe finding, grocery shopping, and extensive prep work. You get everything delivered to your door in neatly labeled, portion-sized packages that allow you to cook healthy, fresh meals in under an hour. Nutrisystem is one of the best, but there are always new meal delivery systems popping up. Keep your eye out for some deals and try one out.

4. Make Workouts Convenient

Self-care isn’t just about food. There are other components, including physical fitness. Once again, this is something the majority of busy entrepreneurs push to the back burner.

The key is to make workouts convenient. You don’t have time to drive 20 minutes to the gym, do a 75-minute workout, shower, change, and drive back to work. You should, however, be able to carve out a solid 30-minute window of time – whether in the morning, during lunch, or after work – to achieve some much-needed cardio.

Convinced you don’t even have 30 minutes to slip away and exercise during the day? Here are 20 exercises you can do at your desk. Seriously…there’s no excuse.

5. Build Relationships With People Outside of Work

It’s hard to recognize in the moment, but work isn’t everything. If you breathe work from the moment you wake up until the moment you lay your head down on the pillow at night, this should signal to you that something is broken in your life. That’s not a healthy way to live.

For a lot of entrepreneurs, the reason work is always on the top of their minds is that they only hang out with people who are connected to their business. If your only friends and social connections are with employees, business partners, and clients, you need to make it a priority to build relationships with people outside of work.

Once you do create non-work-related friendships, don’t talk about work! Discuss anything else – like politics, sports, hobbies, travel, and family life. At first, you might find this difficult, but soon you’ll realize just how much you need it.

Give Yourself a Healthy Foundation

There are tons of external, independent variables that you can’t control in life or business. Then there are a select few factors that you have some level of influence over. Make it your goal over the next few months to focus on the things you do have power over – like your diet, fitness, and relationships – and works towards creating positive change in your life.

Self-care means different things to different people, but it’s almost impossible to run a healthy business without giving it some consistent attention.

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