Why Is Mental Health Important for Business Owners?
Two women, both age 77, both with cancer. One lives independently in a senior living community. She’s a bit frail and on oxygen, but able to get around by herself and have lunch with a friend. The other is in hospice with a few months left to live, incapable of eating any kind of solid food since she lost her last tooth several years ago.
Guess which one took care of her mental health along the way.
Do women entrepreneurs need to look after their mental health?
If you read my stuff, you know I always talk about the importance of exercise (or just getting a move on) for your brain. So many people associate it with weight loss, so that’s one of the first things to go when your schedule gets busy. However, that’s the last thing to cross off your list, because it’s so important for all the organs and systems in the body.
It also helps prevent people from being “blue”. I don’t say depressed, because I myself got hit with a serious case of depression while I was training for a half-marathon. All that exercise didn’t help! But it does help when you’re just feeling kind of sad or run-down or “off” in some way. It’s not a cure-all, but it’s still pretty potent. Taking care of yourself, or recharging, should involve exercising in a way that you enjoy.
And speaking of taking care of yourself… so many women, especially business owners, think of it as a luxury. You’ll take care of yourself after you’re done taking care of the kids, the business, the spouse, the pets, the friends, the house… and (as you’ve heard me say before) this is the wrong order. Put your oxygen mask on first.
I’ll spare you the feminist rant about how women in our culture have been conditioned to think of themselves as unimportant and to take care of others first. (Other writers have done a lot of justice to this concept.) But maybe you think that’s the way it should be, yourself last.
So let me ask you: do you do your best work when you’re tired because you have too much stuff to do and don’t get enough sleep at night? Does your staff enjoy being around you when you’re exhausted? Do you rely on coffee or sugary sodas or energy drinks to get you through the day? Do you snap at your kids/pets/spouse/staff/baristas too much? That’s what happens when you don’t take the time you need to recharge.
Do you complain about being busy and then say “but that’s a good thing”? Do you feel like you can get back to your regular routine after you finish the next few projects… but you’ve been saying that for months now and it never seems to end? That’s how burnout happens. At first, you have a heavy load and you can handle it, but when it keeps going and going and doesn’t let up, you’re likely to get sick -- either physically or mentally (or both).
Mental health care (aka recharging)
Self-care isn’t a luxury but a necessity if you want to continue running your business at a high performance level. Your laptop can’t go forever on an empty battery, and neither can you. But what does recharging look like for you?
It’s not just about bubble baths or a glass of wine bigger than your head. (In fact, too much booze is another sign that you need to reevaluate how you’re operating.) Recharging includes exercise as noted above. Human bodies developed to move so a little something nearly every day of the week is best. That doesn’t mean you have to run 10 miles every day, but get a little walk in or some resistance training or dance to music you love, anything that gets your heart beating and makes you at least a little breathless.
Rest is key. Another thing that driven female professionals often end up skimping on! However, to keep going at top performance, you need your full cycles of sleep, which can take 7 to 8 hours. Look at the training diaries of Olympic athletes – they get a LOT of sleep, many of them 9-10 hours a night. Business gurus who boast about rising at 4:30 am (ugh) go to bed at 8:30 pm to make that work.
There’s a lot that goes on during sleep that you’re not aware of but that helps keep your whole body, including your brain, healthy. If you look at traffic statistics, the major factor behind accidents is fatigue. You may not be driving a tractor trailer, but your business needs your best.
Rest during the day is helpful too. I’m not talking about naps (though by all means if you need them take them!) Rather, your brain needs time that is not taken up by spreadsheets, emails, software, social media, news, etc. Not only to rest, but to provide space for creativity.
If you’re a female entrepreneur, you know you need to generate creative solutions to your customers’ problems. Yet, if you’re trying to grit it out for 14 hours a day, you’re losing out on creativity.
Which means you can rest either by having a conversation with a loved one or by playing. And by conversation I don’t mean comments on social media – either in person, on the phone, or web conference (not as good as in person, but still better than nothing!)
As for play… well, what do you like? Adult team sports (softball, soccer, swimming, whatever), quilting, handcrafting, board games, etc. Multiplayer videogames aren’t enough by themselves so make sure you get some non-screen playtime if you’re a gamer. Play with the kids, pets, spouse… whatever you enjoy and gets you out from behind a computer screen. If it’s with your family, especially your kids, even better – they need to limit their screentime too, much as they might complain about it.
And sometimes mental health care does mean going to a professional, like a therapist or psychiatrist. We can be too close to the problem to be able to sort it out ourselves, and we might need the assistance of some medication in addition to therapy. There’s nothing wrong with that. Many of us have issues stemming from childhood, and as adults it’s our responsibility to handle it.
If your parents didn’t give you great coping skills because they themselves didn’t have any, that’s not your fault. However, you can learn those coping skills – which is also a huge bonus if you have kids because you can teach them and provide the environment you wish you’d had as a kid. I know in some communities there’s still a stigma about getting help, but you can get help for yourself anyway. No one else has to know.
Mental health wisdom from the movie Heathers
What can I say, I’m Gen X, and this is one of my fave movies. Anyway, Veronica says to Heather the cheerleader: “If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn’t be a human being, you’d be a game show host.”
There are going to be days where even though you try you can’t get your 7-8 hours of sleep. (If this is a chronic problem, you need to work on your “sleep hygiene”.) Days where you can’t get your exercise in for some reason. I normally recommend getting movement in the morning so that way if your day does end up going late you’ve at least got that done. But even then, life happens in the mornings too.
No one’s perfect, and sometimes schedules just get rearranged. Don’t beat yourself up because you missed a planned exercise session or you didn’t get to bed until midnight even though you have to be up at 4:30. The key is to make sure you’re taking care of yourself on most days, and that will carry through for the days that you can’t.
Recap
It’s not just physical health that’s important for women business owners, but mental health too. Fortunately many of the same things that are great for physical health help you take care of your brain too. And if it’s good for the brain, it’s good for productivity!