Self Care is Essential

Self care is not a nice to have. It’s a necessity, yet so many women leaders fail to take adequate care of themselves. They get busy, involved in the many urgent activities of their day to day and lose sight of what’s important.  Working long hours, not really switching off from work even at home.  Knowing they need to slow down, get more rest, yet constantly putting those things off for another day, once they’ve cleared their workload.  Freed up some time for themselves. I know. I was just like that once, and suffered the consequences…

A stressful role in a toxic environment left me exhausted. I’d have a glass or two of wine to unwind in the evening before getting stuck in to my other role as wife, mother and housekeeper. And all this at a time when I was going through the worst symptoms of the menopause and my daughter was dealing with the emotional ups and downs of puberty.

I didn’t look after myself properly.  Kept at it, day in day out, navigating the politics and the unconscious biases as best I could. Didn’t take time out to get the sleep I needed; used an unhealthy habit of drinking to unwind, until I simply couldn’t go on any longer — and burned out.

It was only then that I realised just how exhausted I was. Slept fully 48 hours, initially. It took 6 months of caring for myself to recover my energy and my health and wellbeing. Since then, I have made self care a priority.  

In my map of the world, your health and wellbeing are paramount. Non-negotiable and you need to treat it that way. Making — and actually keeping — your health as a priority comes down to how you invest or spend your time.

There are 4 strategies you can use to invest your time:

• High risk short term. You have a deadline, and the activity matters greatly to what you achieve in your life.
• Low risk, short term — the deadline is there, but this activity has no bearing on what matters to you.
• Low risk, long term — there’s no deadline, and the activity has no bearing on what matters.
• High risk, long terms — again no deadline, and the activity really matters to your life’s purpose.

So, ideally, we want to invest as much of our time as possible in the high risk activities, because they truly matter and support our growth and fulfilment in all areas of our lives.  Yet, we are often caught up in many low risk, short term activities that exhaust and fail to fulfil us.

Whereas, your self care is a high risk, long term activity. No deadline, no rush about it. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so easy to let it slip. What one small activity could you introduce into your daily routine that would nourish your health? Improve your wellbeing?

And how many of those low risk activities could you eliminate or delegate to free up precious time for that one small activity?

Find it and do it.