As an entrepreneur very often your business is way more than a full-time occupation. Instead it takes up your evenings and weekends and most of your waking thoughts. In the early days of a start-up this is very normal and those time restraints should hopefully ease as your business establishes itself and you are able to delegate a little more of your workload.
The problem comes when you are so consumed in getting your business off the ground that you totally fail to take care of yourself. Your health and well-being can seem very low down your list of priorities but a burnt-out, ill entrepreneur will not be performing at their best and this may lead to a negative impact on your business. In this blog we look at how a little self-care can go a long way for you and your business.
A Moving Part
You are the central cog in your business and like any piece of machinery you need to be functioning correctly or the whole operation will seize up. Like your computer network or your industrial machines, schedule some time for maintenance for yourself. Book in your yearly check-up with your doctor but more importantly, make sure you go. Make it a priority and don’t even think about cancelling.
Perhaps you have noticed something not quite right in how you feel. Maybe that back pain has slowly been increasing and you are simply controlling the worst of the symptoms with medication or maybe you are hearing isn’t quite what it used to be and you are winging it in conversation a lot more.
Stop right there. Get yourself an appointment with the osteopath or book in with the hearing specialist and learn more about how the latest hearing aids are both discrete and powerful.
Boundaries
If you are feeling pretty good, then you need to maintain that and as hard as it seems, you need to start putting some boundaries in place in your life that separate you from work. This isn’t just for your benefit, your family and friends will thank you for it as well.
But yes, there are more advantages to boundaries then just seeing more of those closest to you. Powering down from thinking about your business allows you to have a little distance. That distance is a useful tool for making better, more logic-driven decisions, which can only have a good knock-on effect. Taking a step back allows you to see the bigger picture, which can only happen when you haven’t spent every waking moment thinking about how your business is performing.
A happy and healthy entrepreneur is an entrepreneur that performs well in their business. Someone who is mentally and physically able to cope with the ups and downs and who has the capacity to take a step back when they need to. You are the central part of your organization so make sure that cog remains in great shape with a little self-care and some firm boundaries in place for a career that looks set to last.
