When Crushing It Crushes You Back
The Importance of Self-Care for Entrepreneurs
Creative Baydreams
I’ve never been hit by a bus, but I’m imagining this is what it felt like. Everything was sore. Everything hurt. I had big splotches of red, inflamed skin that looked like road rash, tastefully hidden beneath sleeves and band-aids. My head hurt, a deep steady pain in the left front side of my skull, a pain that was only moderated by the fact that it felt like a 240 lb. linebacker had stomped on my neck at the bottom of a football tackle pile. I also felt intermittently feverish and physically weak.
But I kept working.
In fact, I kept on working like this for three weeks, including weekends. I did not go to the doctor. Why? Because I was deep in the hustle of building my own business. Too deep. I was doing what the dropshipping bro’s call “Crushing It”, and It was Crushing me.
When I finally came up for air, I realized that I was, in fact, quite ill. A quick run through WebMD.com’s Symptom Checker and a brief consultation with Dr.Google later, and I quickly found a hospital nearby with a specialist. It turned out I had a potentially dangerous bacterial infection. I was then prescribed some really strong antibiotics that proceeded to lay me out for about five days. So far, so good, and the healing is going well. This incident became a big wake-up call, and it’s not the way I recommend anyone else to get that call.
What I realized was the importance of stopping for self-care, and setting boundaries with my time.
Over that three week period, I kept on working through an obvious illness. I was hustling to land new clients, booking them, and taking on way too much work in the short term. Three times I cancelled weekend plans to work Friday night through Sunday night on a “hot job”. My daily exercise routine disappeared. My sleep was low quality, and not at my optimal hours. I spent way too much time staring at screens, and not enough seeing the sun.
It’s crucial to make self-care a priority. If you’re not at your best, how can you give your best work to yourself or your clients? Healthy diet, regularly exercise, fresh air and sun, mental care in the form of meditation, rest, and reading — all of these are more important than that deadline, that last email to return, or that “hot” job that has to be done on the weekend.
It’s equally important to make your time a priority. Set boundaries between your work and life and keep them firm. I’m not working weekends anymore. Sorry, not happening. That is now officially my time. Time to rest, recharge, renew, and have some fun. All of those things will keep me healthy, happy and balanced, which will allow me to produce my best work the other five days of the week.
As an entrepreneur, this is an easy thing to miss on, to let our health and time get away from us when building an enterprise. There’s always going to come a time when you need to buckle down and Crush It in the service of your business. The key is to prioritize your self-care and time so that “Crushing It” never, ever crushes you back.
Creative Baydreams is the blog of Michael Burns and Baydream Creative.
Michael is a Storyteller, Copywriter and Content Consultant.
When you need content that captures your message and engages your customers, Baydream Creative has A Story for Everything.
