When you’re a work-from-home entrepreneur, sometimes the lines between personal life and work life can get blurred.
In the process, we can often find ourselves in a place that all small business owners at some point are familiar with: burn out.
Burn out isn’t just something mental or emotional though, it can also be physical.
How do we stay physically healthy as creative entrepreneurs? The struggle is something often overlooked amidst all our busyness, so today I’m excited to share three tips with you on how to stay physically healthy as a creative.
Tip #1: Set a time to take care of yourself physically.
There’s a big difference between wanting to find the time to take care of yourself and actually doing it. The first step to sticking to your goal of taking care of yourself physically is setting up a routine time to do so. Maybe this means setting an alarm for a quick home workout. Maybe it means picking a time during the week you go to an exercise class. Whatever it is, make sure to actually put it into your schedule and then carry it out routinely!
Tip #2: Set a “turn down” time for your weekdays.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever peeked open your laptop after having dinner. (Guilty.) And keep it up if you’ve been known to answer emails right before bed… Anyone stayed up until 2am just to get that blog post written? Been there, done that. We don’t always realize the physical repercussions that come with the chronic habit of pushing ourselves all. day. long. There’s a reason we don’t work all hours of the day: we’re not meant to.
Setting a “turn down” time just means having a time every day that you perform a routine that tells your brain it’s time to shut down from work mode. This might mean that at 4:30pm you always check your email one last time and then close your laptop and shut your office door. Any small routine that tells your brain that it’s time to switch off and focus on taking care of yourself.
Tip #3: Get accountability.
Having accountability to a goal is sometimes the best way to stay consistent. Reach out to a friend who also works from home and see if they would be either willing to go on a weekly walk together or meet up once a week for a workout class. Or, if you don’t have time for that, simply set up a time that you check in with each other to see if the other has taken some time to care for their body this week.
The best way to combat burn out is to not settle into routines that drain us. I hope that these tips help you stay well physically as an entrepreneur!
