Why We Believe Self-Care Is Vital for Business and Personal Success

A couple of years ago, I had a scary illness that led to the ER with debilitating back pain (I’ve never been through labor, but the only thing I could equivocate it with was descriptions of back labor from friends and research). I never received a diagnosis (I actually left the ER because it was such a horrible experience) and instead went to work on healing myself through self-care which took several spa appointments, lots of nourishing food, and a focus on being calm and letting my creativity out in a myriad of ways.

Since then, self-care is built into my daily life. I do yoga or some workout daily. I take baths often. I have a massage chair and schedule at least one massage monthly. I do hair and skin masks. I drink healthy juices and adopted an intermittent fasting lifestyle. I utilize natural medicines and plants. It’s practically a full-time job keeping my body in a state where it doesn’t ache or feel pain regularly.

Even with all this self-care, I still experience sometimes debilitating pain in my hands, wrists, and shoulders (again, haven’t been diagnosed with anything specific except arthritis when I was 23). I’m an ex-college athlete and have put my body through hell in too many ways to count. And as an entrepreneur, it’s tempting to bang out 12-16 hour days hustling to make my businesses thrive. My to-do lists is a mile long and I struggle with guilt when I’m not working because I don’t have regular paychecks to rely on; every dollar I earn comes from me putting in the time.

So as Mad Genius Studios continues to grow, I want to share my self-care journey that must also be part of this business venture because if I neglect my self-care, I literally won’t be able to type on my computer and I certainly don’t think as clearly or have as much energy to put in the long hours that I need to. That’s why I wanted to host weekly yoga and yoga retreats and a Self-Care Expo. I see so many people working super hard, many with side hustles or multiple businesses, and they burnout or physically become sick in some way. I’m also on a mission to emphasize the importance of self-care into everything we do, whether just through messaging, the vendors we work with, or through specific workshops, events, or presentations.

Yesterday was a particularly hectic day and at about 4pm, I thought, well, I could work a few more hours and then take a bath…and then I stopped myself. Why suffer through when I could stop there, soak for a bit, and then get back on it? It’s hard for me to stop when there are still to-dos to be done, but I did and the rest of my work went that much better. I know not everyone can take a mid-work day soak, but maybe it’s just a walk, some stretching at your desk, or a healthy smoothie—something to to pause and hit reset before diving back in to your work.

If you’re hustling your tail off, I hope that you will take the time every single day (and throughout the day if you feel your stress levels rising or your body rejecting the hectic pace of the day) to give yourself the self-care you need to be the best version of you day in and day out. As a startup, I’ve been putting out multiple fires per day and never feel like there are enough hours to get everything done, but I will never compromise my health again by just “pushing through” or overworking myself to the bone. I’ve had an extremely stressful week with lots of paperwork and little things going wrong, and it’s tempting to steal hours from my self-care regimen and put those into the business. But I’ve been down that path and won’t do it to myself anymore, and I hope you’ll make that commitment to yourself, too. We’ve only got this one body and this one life, and work cannot come before that.