There is no doubt that entrepreneur life can be challenging. If there is one thing that I have come to know from working with my clients, and from my own life as a business-owner, the biggest struggle that most entrepreneurs experience is a lack of work-life balance.
The biggest excuse most women who I know have for not making self-care more of a priority is the lack of time. It’s understandable that in working as a solo-preneur, there are seemingly endless to-do lists that need to be done yesterday. and that it can get complicated to try and fit everything into just one day.
With this kind of stress, looking after ourselves can become the lowest thing on the priority list. Too often, I see women pushing themselves to the limit and treating themselves like their own worst enemy, rather than their own best friend.
Then there is the guilt. When we are working for ourselves, either full-time or as a side hustle, we can feel guilty for spending time on things to nourish our own well-being and not that of our business.
It’s easy to put the needs of our business, then our family and then our friends before our own. But at the end of the day, we should be practicing self-care and looking after our well-being the same way we would treat someone who we love.
The reality is, taking care of your needs as a priority is a priceless act. For your business to thrive, for you to feel and to be unstoppable, you need to make the time for self-care and to not hold any guilt around this.
Sacrificing your physical health and mental well-being just so you can get more done is not going to result in your business’ success. It will only lead to burnout and exhaustion, the quality of the work you do will decline, and all your creativity will be zapped.
This is where a mindset shift needs to take place. Often, we think of the self-care as being all about massages and facials. Yes, these are self-care practices, but only one small part of a larger picture.
In order to make self-care a priority so that both ourselves and our business can thrive, self-care must be integrated into every aspect of our life, every day. A rose petal bubble bath once a month won’t cut-it, and this is where the 8 self-care pillars come in.
The self-care pillars help us to stay consistent in our self-care and to make it a natural part of what we do to take care of ourselves.
The pillars help us to identify where we are out of balance and to create our non-negotiables that we know we need.
The pillars are the foundations that help us to serve ourselves with the amount of love and attention that we need to look and feel amazing and have the energy and creative spark needed to build our business successfully.
The self-care pillars help us to live sustainably and without the constant overwhelm and feeling of burnout. By nourishing our self-care pillars, we can have good physical health, sound emotional well-being, be spiritually grounded, and feel empowered to live an aligned life of freedom and joy.
The 8 self-care pillars (not listed in any order of importance as they all have equal standing) are:
Rest & Relaxation
Healthy Relationships
Spiritual Practice
Self-Love & Self-Worth
Passion & Purpose
Nourishing Food
Joyful Movement
Healthy Self-Management
I am going to explain more about each of these pillars and provide some suggestions for how you can practice each one in future posts. So stay tuned to learn about each pillar in more detail!
For now, you may find it useful to use this pillars chart to identify which areas of your life you feel like you are currently nourishing and which you are not. Make a mark on the chart, or colour in the printable version which you can download below, indicating how full (or not) each pillar is being addressed in your life right now.
Which pillars do you you need to be working on developing, and which need less attention in your life?
The 8 Self-Care Pillars
Now grab your journal and respond to these questions:
What daily actions are not contributing to my self-care?
What daily thoughts are not contributing to my self-care?
What daily habits are contributing to my self-care?
What daily thoughts are contributing to my self-care?
What am I willing to stop doing today that will have the largest positive influence on my life right now?
What am I willing to start doing that will have the largest possible influence in my life right now?
What is one simple and do-able thing from each pillar that I can commit to do every day?
This little activity will get you working on your self-care pillars so they can start to become a regular part of your routine and move you closer to living the unstoppable life that you know you deserve to have.
I’d also love for you to join my free Be Unstoppable 8-Day Challenge that starts on May 29th. We will look more closely at each pillar and look at ways we can better nourish each of the pillars in our life. It is going to be fun and will help to make you an unstoppable woman! I can’t wait to support you with this free coaching!
