Whether you’re living with grief, anxiety, depression, physical health issues, or other challenges it can be difficult to show up as your best self every day.

It's important to understand the necessity of having a business that gives you space —space to take care of yourself AND to continue your journey as an entrepreneur.

Which means . . . lots of empty space on your calendar to do with it what you need now, want for your life, and aspire to become.

The Importance of Self-Care

We hear a lot about self-care especially in the entrepreneur, personal growth, spirituality, and feminine spaces.

And yet, there are still many misconceptions about what it is.

For many women entrepreneurs when we talk about self-care we do not mean sipping margaritas in Cancun (however, if that's your vision . . . go get it!).

We are actually referring to the deep process of tuning into and giving to ourselves what we need. Putting ourselves first by taking time off and taking time away, we learn how to take care of ourselves again.

Practicing self-care regularly helps us release and unlearn the pervasive culture's idea of a woman's role . . . to take care of others. For women, we tend to accept that role from a very young age. Not only because society expects it, but also because it really is a natural gift (and superpower) we have.

We nurture. We love-on others. We deeply desire connection and community. We love giving.

And yet, we can also get into a situation where we have allowed the giving to become who we are all the time. We have no personal boundaries. We give, people take and then we're left with very little for ourselves (if any at all).

It’s time to unlearn this. It’s also time to trailblaze a new path so future generations can have a new model to fulfill their potential and life possibilities.

Reclaiming YOUR self-care is an act of self-love

Read that again. Reclaiming your self-care is an act of self-love.

And self-care is an act of setting boundaries.

Self-care is an essential part to your well-being and should be held with a tender embrace, and honored with a firm, unapologetic, unwavering and clear "my needs are protected" sign.

It is up to you to hold that boundary. You get to establish your own boundaries as a practice of self-care. If you want others to respect your needs, then first you must pay attention to and honor your own needs.

If you don’t prioritize taking care of yourself, it can quickly lead to burnout and exhaustion.

The Power of Flexibility

To stay productive, engaged, inspired, and creative you need a business that allows for more flexibility and freedom to put you first.

This might mean taking days off for mental health care or allowing yourself time for rest and recovery. It could even mean taking a break from work entirely for an extended period of time.

As many of you know, I have short- and long-periods of time where I am in deep grief and depression. I experience high levels of anxiety, PTSD and physical pain. Over the years I have learned to adjust my business so I have time to nurture myself and step away from my business when needed.

Having flexible working hours has been greatly important to me. As I work through the loss of my husband and efforts to reinvent my life, I have uncovered how important it is to place my needs as first priority. Now I see how necessary this is so I can heal, create a life I enjoy AND still grow my business.

MAKE YOUR BUSINESS "YOU" INDEPENDENT

Being able to adjust your working hours around challenging life events, difficult times, health concerns, or grief can make all the difference in terms of staying productive and on track with your goals.

With modern technology, internet that reaches many remote areas, and current business models, you can adapt your business to be location independent. You can leverage these tools to also make your business “you” independent (depending on your type of business, you can decide what tools can help you).

Implementing automated workflows can be the support systems you need to fulfill that desire to have more freedom over when, where, and how much you work.

This means you can travel more often or go to every one of your child’s recitals without having your business crumble beneath you.

Creating Sustainable Income Streams

You can create more flexibility in your life by creating sustainable evergreen revenue.

As I share more about evergreen revenue I want you to know that I don’t mean passive income. I’m not talking about the “make money while you sleep” type of passive income.

Although, you very likely will make money all hours of the day by creating an evergreen revenue business; but I want to be clear that passive income is a different topic.

You could look into implementing some passive income funnels if you choose.

But evergreen revenue means setting up your offers priced anywhere between $1 to $20,000+ as an evergreen ecosystem.

Evergreen revenue can include selling digital products like eBooks, online courses, or monthly memberships. It can also be built to offer your services, group coaching or consulting.

This model requires less of your time once they are set up correctly. And can be “turned on” when you’re ready to fill one of your programs and “turned off” when you offer is full.

You can also keep an evergreen funnel open for offers where you want a consistent flow of new clients and customers, providing you year-round revenue.

These income streams allow you more freedom because they do not require as much one-on-one time or your energy to manage them every day.

This automatically reduces the pressure for you to be “on” all the time. Time that you can then dedicate to free time, hobby time, travel time … self-care time.

BUT IS IT NECESSARY?

Short answer. Yes!

Understanding the necessity of having a business that gives you space is key. If you want to maintain your health, travel, vacation, heal AND still grow your business successfully, then a spacious calendar is needed.

In fact, taking care of you is crucial to your business growth.

When you allow yourself time away from the desk, you are refilling your well. Your well of creativity, energy, imagination, innovation, curiosity, and inspiration is in need of constant and consistent replenishing. You can only get that by talking time away.

Self-care should always come first; prioritizing YOU is essential. Remain productive and successful in the long term, even during times when life gets tough through a replenishing (and radical) self-care practice.

You can read more about self-care, self-love and self-compassion here.

THE BIGGEST TAKEAWAY

Creating sustainable income streams within your business can help alleviate some pressure and give you more flexibility over how much time you dedicate to work each day, allowing you the necessary space for recovery when needed without sacrificing your growth and success!

With light and love,

Melissa