Managing your wellbeing as a business owner

Our physical and mental health are deeply intertwined with each other, and you won’t perform your best at work if you’re not feeling on top of both. And when it comes to managing a team, you need to help yourself before you can support others.

Here are seven steps you can take to help manage your wellbeing:

Get a good night’s sleep

As humans, we’re hard-wired to need rest, and can last for longer without food than sleep. We all know how difficult working can be after a poor night’s kip and this is because sleep isn’t a passive task. It’s proactively restoring, repairing and enhancing ourselves, helping us recover from the previous day. The better sleep we can get, the better working day we’ll experience.

Top tip: Try the Calm: Sleep & Mediation app Link opens in a new window. It’s a mindfulness app that has guided meditation sessions, Sleep Stories, breathing programs, stretching exercises, and relaxing music to help you have a good night’s rest.

Take breaks

Taking regular breaks away from our devices and desks can help maintain a healthy balance during the working day. Also, ensuring that you’re able to log off in the evening and detach from work, even when working at home, will help build boundaries and enable you to focus on the non-work parts of life, like hobbies and spending time with people who care about you.

Top tip: Try and leave your laptop every hour, even if it’s for a few minutes of walking round the block - or your flat - and giving your eyes a break. You could even give yourself a target of achieving 250 steps every hour while you’re at work!

Sit back and reflect

Reflecting helps you to develop your skills and review their effectiveness, rather than just carry on doing things as you have always done them. It is about questioning, in a positive way, what you do and why you do it, rather than to just carry on behaving in familiar patterns. How often do you power through day after day at work, not giving yourself the time and space to understand the impact of what you’re doing - both on yourself and your business?

Top tip: Try reflecting in three stages:

• Reflect on your experience: Think about a specific situation - what you did, thought and felt at the time.
• Reflect on what you learnt: How does your experience of this situation differ from what you expect of yourself, or the principles you want to uphold at work?
• Apply your learnings: Apply what you’ve uncovered to the next similar situation which arises.

Exercise and get outside

Whether it’s a gym session, pilates, hiking, swimming, tennis, power walking or running, it doesn’t matter. Just focus on implementing physical exercise and getting outside into your routine, even when you don’t feel like it. Because, often, it’s when you don’t feel like it that you’ll need and benefit from it the most. You’ll be surprised at what a 30-minute walk in the outdoors can do for you.

Top tip: Try Couch to 5K Link opens in a new window or some free YouTube fitness videos that you can do from the comfort of your own home.

Put pen to paper and journal

Journaling can be a safe space to start opening up and begin the transformative process to getting back to yourself again. Try and take the time to write at the start or end of every day, and if that seems like too much, try once a week on a Friday afternoon. You don’t need a fancy app to do this - a pen and paper will do.

Top tip: If you experience a case of writers block then try writing down three gratitude’s instead. What are you thankful for? What small things made you happy? Remember, they can be the smallest of things, such as: a funny conversation with a friend or a blossom tree in bloom.

Declutter your mind with meditation

Meditation brings with it many mental and physical benefits - and, as we know by now, both of these are connected and will, in tandem, promote better wellbeing.

Here’s how it can help you as a founder:

• It can improve your mood - lower levels of anxiety and depression are reported amongst those who meditate, as it’s a chance to declutter your mental clutter.
• It can improve sleep - stress and fatigue can be reduced by participating in regular meditation, leading to less tossing and turning at night.
• It can improve your work - meditation has been proven to improve information retention, leading to greater productivity levels at work - so not only are you benefitting your wellbeing, but your businesses success, too.

Top tip: Check out the Headspace: Mindful Meditation app Link opens in a new window for guided meditations which can help release stress.

Fuel yourself with the right nutrition

You spend around 60% of your waking hours at work - whether at home, on the road or in the office. During the day, you’ll consume about a third of all your daily intake of food and drink. What we fuel our bodies with will have a direct impact on how we feel when working, and how well we’re able to perform at work. In other words, your business is what you eat.

Running a busy business can be stressful and mentally draining, and your working schedule can become unpredictable and involve evenings and occasional weekends. You’ll feel more focussed and attentive if you’re able to eat food that gives you long-lasting energy and doesn’t make you crash after each meal.

Top tip: Meal prepping in advance makes it easier to put together healthy meals on busy days. Or try making an extra portion at dinner time so you can have it for your lunch the next day too.