Self-Care Improves Your Bottom Line
One of the things I often hear from women about their self-care is:
“Someday I’ll schedule time for self-care, but right now I have to…”
- Finish this proposal
- Get back to a client
- Post on social media
- Write a blog
- Do laundry
- Get to the grocery store
- Pick up the kids
- …you get the picture
In my 27 years as an entrepreneur, and my work with women, what I’ve discovered is:
When we feel better, we do better, physically, emotionally, AND financially.
That means, if taking the day off to go skiing, digging in the dirt, going for a run, hitting the gym, making a pot of soup, or simply taking a nap makes you feel better, PUT IT IN YOUR BUSINESS PLAN.
What gets scheduled gets done. Put self-care in your business plan and mark it on your calendar.
Schedule your self-care like you’d schedule time with a client, picking up your kids, or doing your taxes.
Need even more reasons to improve your self-care? I’ll get right to the “heart’ of the matter:
Self-Care
Physical: Your body is the only one you’ve got. One of the most important resources for any human is their energy. If you don’t schedule time to focus on your health now, you won’t have the energy later to enjoy what you’ve worked so hard to achieve. It’s better to take time for self-care now than make time for illness later.
Emotional: Self-care helps us have the confidence to establish healthy boundaries so we can say ‘YES’ to what we want more of, and ‘NO’ to what we want less of. This increases our joy, satisfaction, and self-worth.
Friendships
Social: A 2016 article from the Mayo Clinic states, “Adults with strong social support have a reduced risk of many significant health problems, including depression, high blood pressure and an unhealthy body mass index (BMI). Studies have even found that older adults with a rich social life are likely to live longer than their peers with fewer connections.” So yeah, go ahead schedule that get together with your friends. It will help you live longer, be happier, and prosper.
Financial: When we’re stressed, it puts our amygdala on high alert while at the same time decreases our hippocampus function, making us a wigged out forgetful person. Never good for our bottom line, self-confidence, or relationships.
Happiness: The Journal of Neuroscience published a study on happiness and our ‘vision’. The study showed when test subjects who were unhappy (aka, in a bad mood), their visual cortexes, the part of the brain responsible for sight, were not able to process information properly and had difficulty seeing things in plain view (like for example, your keys hanging right on the rack where you last placed them but didn’t see them as you were tearing the house apart looking for them…that ever happened to you?).
The study also showed that happy ‘test subjects’ found what they were looking for 50% more of the time than the unhappy subjects. The next time you’re in a bad mood, put on your favorite music, or whatever puts you in a good mood, so you can be more present, connected, and happy. Your family and clients will thank you.
So, on a scale of 1-10, how did you score on each of these for showing yourself some love and attention?
As Brene Brown says:
“It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.”