As entrepreneurs, business owners, humans…. We tend to put others needs before ours, clients, customers, colleagues, family, friends, partners… As selfless as this sounds you are actually doing them a disservice but giving giving giving ALL you have… At the end of the day you need to look after yourself to be the best version of YOU to be able to give the best to others. If you’re burnt out, tired, frustrated, irritable or just plain over it… how helpful are you really? You make mistakes, snap, get angry, risk illness both physical and mental, shorten your life, lose sleep, hurt people… how helpful is that?.. yep, see – baboum…
So how do we possible find more hours in the day? Change the cycle? Enjoy me time?
You start small and ACKNOWLEDGE the signs of fatigue and self neglect.
For me, it’s when I start noticing a pattern of looooooooong hours, really early starts and late finishes, the inability to say no, poor diet or low appetite, restless sleep or little sleep at all, anxiety, thought patterns like ‘what am I doing?’.. ‘Is it worth it?’ .. “I QUIT!”, general fatigue that feels like no amount of hours of sleep would ever be enough…
So these are the signs for me – what are yours? Have a think about those periods where you see the decline.. the lead up to the *break*
To combat the complete burnout stage (which I’ve experienced a couple of times in my life already – scary stuff and I am completely useless!) I try things like:
1. Book a break – even a weekend, just the light at the end of the tunnel can be enough sometimes. Taking time out to stop, breathe and slow down is the best thing you can do to recharge. Physically changing your environment and location forces habits to change… you can’t just put a load of washing on… or sit in the same spot, look through the same window…
2. Workout – Yoga, a long walk, Body Pump, Barre Attack, a weight session are some of my favourites and I pick the one that suits my mood.., I need to chill out or burn off some crazy?!
3. Breathe and be in the moment. This is the quickest and of the most effective in my mind – I literally stand up take 3 deep, slow breaths and move from my current spot for literally seconds. That’s all it takes.
These may not work for you, it’s about finding what does – maybe immersing yourself in a book and escaping into another world, sometimes a movie does the same if you are visual, seeing friends, writing, singing, dancing, playing music, listening to music, drawing, painting? There are billions of ways people reflect, pause, get lost in a moment. Finding yours can be a journey, a process and it will likely change, evolve over time as you do…
