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A healthy work-life balance is hard to maintain when you are your own boss. When you are an entrepreneur, you might feel like the entire world rests on your shoulders or at least the fate of the company.
Okay, that might be a little melodramatic, but you know it’s true. The truth is, though, maintaining a healthy personal life is just important to your business as it is for yourself. Let’s look at how you can balance home and work.
The key to maintaining a healthy home and work life is scheduling events and tasks (and having enough leeway so “surprises” won’t be so stressful), and using your time off effectively. That is why what you do at home and in your personal life is as important for your business as what you do when you are at work.
Table of Contents
6 Ways Women Can Effectively Balance Home and Work
1. Exercise
Exercise is good for your body and your soul. Most women don’t realize how good it is for your business though.
It helps get your creative juices flowing. A Montreal Heart Institute study showed that aerobic exercise increases your cognitive function. This helps explain why I work better after a run or why I seem to generate more ideas when I am pacing.
Exercise is great for reducing stress. When you are less stressed, you are calm enough to handle whatever mess or disaster comes your way.
2. Train for a personal challenge
Personal challenges help retrain your mind and body when it comes to things like goal-setting. When you own your own business, it is easy to just focus on the big picture and lose sight of the little steps. Achieving a fitness goal will not only help you become more confident, but it will help you become a more tenacious female entrepreneur.
Sometimes we think that we know what goal setting is but we often forget the little things that make goal setting and determination important. When we can see the importance in a different setting, it helps retrain our brains.
3. Equilibrium
Equilibrium is an important attribute to learn. It helps with clarity when it comes to work-related problems and innovations because you are no longer fully-immersed in the situation. When you take a step back from the job, it is easier to fully see the whole picture.
So how do you take a step back?
- make sure that your day-off is truly a day-off.
- leave work at work.
- schedule days-off. Entrepreneurs are known for working 24/7/365.
- try picking up a new hobby and spend some scheduled time working on that. Pick a hobby where your mind can detox.
If you consider yourself to be an adventurous person, try to pick up an activity like mountain climbing. It requires focus (so you can’t think about work). If you’re one to relax pick up a quiet hobby like crocheting or sewing.
4. Family time
Women entrepreneurs have it hard because they have to balance a lot of home-life with business. This is a great time to teach yourself and your kids the importance of responsibility and balance. Show them that they an important part of your life, that you trust them, and that even super-moms like yourself need help sometimes.
Have a chore chart at home (it helps you learn how to effectively delegate tasks at work too – you can’t do everything yourself, now can you?). Have your kids help make dinner. Try to schedule in some quality family time at least once a week.
Multi-task by having your family time be a physical activity like jogging in the park or swim at the pool. That way, you can spend even more time with your family.
5. Reading
Reading helps your vocabulary, helps open your mind to new ideas (for innovation), helps relax your mind (aiding in stress relief). Schedule an hour every night to read a good book. It is healthy for you and your business.
6. Take good care of yourself
You can’t work if you’re sick. Well, I suppose you could but you would be doing more harm to yourself as well as your business. Make sure that you take good care of yourself. Be the best advertising tool for your business. If you are healthy, happy, and successful, you are more likely to get more customers. Not to mention, it is also a great example for your employees.
There are a great many things that make someone successful. Some people think that having a healthy, happy family makes them successful. Some people think that acquiring money makes them successful. While others think that they are the epitome of success just as long as they are happy.
The true test of success is achieving true balance in your life: a healthy home, a healthy business, and a healthy you. Hopefully, armed with these ideas, you can balance home and work better going forward.
By Josie Alexander
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