Episode 340: How to make time for yourself
In this episode, Fiona talks about the importance of working up time for self-care and personal priorities. She also discusses the long-term benefits of such self-care practices for mental and physical health. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The importance of prioritizing self-care and personal health
Strategies for finding time for self-care within a busy schedule
Communicating with family members and other stakeholders about your self-care commitments
Setting and maintaining boundaries to protect your personal time
The importance of being a role model for children
The empowerment of taking control of your time
Prioritizing self-care and well-being as a small business owner
Creating a weekly schedule that accommodates personal priorities
Strategies for managing health conditions and chronic issues
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
That is a hard thing to not just set that boundary, but to stick to it and to say to yourself again and again, “No, this is the commitment I've made.” I'm going to go to Temple, or I'm going to go to this literature class or creative writing class, or I'm going to go to my walk. These things outside of the business, this time for yourself that you want to have made and that you've identified as important to you. You've identified where in the week you can do it. You've talked to the people who need to know, and now you need to stick to that. You need to go, I made this commitment and you asked others around you for help. Or to say, “I'm not available because I'm doing this.” You need to stick to that.
Welcome to episode 340 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today it's a coaching episode and I have to give a shout-out to one of my wonderful clients and friends, Sophie from Australian Birth Stories for kicking this whole idea off. She asked me a question and was like, “That would be a good episode for a podcast.” I thought, “Yes it will.” I've asked her with her permission if I could go ahead and record this podcast in her honour. I think this is a question that comes up a lot. She's not the only person who's ever asked it, and I think it's an important thing to put out there to talk you through the practicalities of an element of business and life that is important. Before I get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the land on which I record and meet my clients and work and play and live, and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into this coaching episode.
As I said, this whole episode has been prompted, or the catalyst for it was a question that one of my clients asked and then said would be a good topic for a podcast. I thought originally I would just make this a quick tip episode, and then I thought, I have a bit to say about this. It's probably going to take longer than 10 minutes. I thought I'd make it into a coaching episode. I also think it's an important thing in business, and when my lovely client brought it up, I was like, “Why haven't I done a podcast on this already?” The context for this was that a client raised the idea that you go for these walks in the morning, but how do you get out of the house and do that? How do you get that time to yourself when the mornings, particularly if you have children, young children especially, are getting one of them ready for childcare, one of them ready for school, primary school with the one for childcare?
He's not at the stage where he can make his own breakfast. Neither of them makes their own breakfast. The elder one probably should by now, but he doesn't. There are school lunches, there's packing the childcare bag, making sure everything's in it, packing whatever toy he's decided that he wants to put in. There's a lot going on in the morning. her question was, how do you do it? How do you get out of the house? How do you get a walk happening? All those mornings that you go out? if you follow me on Instagram, I'm @mydailybusiness_, you will have probably seen that. I tend to post a lot of my stories are beautiful photos of nature or photos of beautiful nature, I should say.
I'm not the best photographer but I'm so annoyed at myself for the way that the phone captures what I'm seeing because they're so different. But I post a lot of photos when I'm on my walks. We have two dogs and we live in beautiful Nort Warrandyte, which is just stunning. I love the walks that I do, even though a huge amount of them are uphill. I puff and puff, but it is good for my fitness, it's good for my mental health. It's great in terms of, we have two dogs, they have to get out we can't just keep them up pooped in the backyard all of the time. It ticks quite a few boxes. But in terms of this episode, I thought, “Okay, I'm going to take that question and make an episode about how you carve out time for yourself as a small business owner”, particularly small business owners who have other commitments such as family or elderly parents, or maybe a chronic health condition or something else that is impacting the amount of time that they can spend on their business.
Lots of people that I work with, lots of people that I seem to attract in this business are people who want to have a balance, for want of a better word or want to have a business that aligns with their lifestyle. It's not, I want to work 24/7, crush, grind, and hustle. I have always been the anti-hustle business coach. I think that sometimes we can want to have this great lifestyle and want to have this balance, but it's difficult to make it happen. I guess behind that question, from what I took from it was how do you get that time? How do you get out in the morning when there's all this stuff going on? There's breakfast, there's school, there's lunch, there's all these things happening.
How do you get out? How do you get that time to yourself? I would say that this, and I know people say, that's a generalization, but I think particularly with mothers, it's very difficult to find that time to yourself. Often mothers are the ones that the school calls, even if they have both parents' details, or there are assumptions that are made sometimes around moms, particularly moms who are working for themselves as if they have more time than other people to catch up for coffee or to run in and quickly do this thing for the school, or to take the kids to the GP or whatever it is. Yes, there's a bit more flexibility sometimes when you run your own business, but not always. I'm going off on a tangent. What I'm going to talk about today is the steps that I went through in order to be able to take the dogs for a walk four mornings a week, if not more.
Sometimes it's less like reality. Sometimes things happen and I don't get out, or sometimes I'll get out later in the day, but I do like to get out in the morning. One is that I find it quieter, there's less traffic, and I can hear nature and all the birds and everything else. Two, it often can happen before we do school drop-off, which is what I do most mornings. I also just like the peacefulness of it. There tend to be less people walking as well. There are about four people that I see regularly on that walk. Three of them I would say are in their sixties or seventies, and we have good chats. Also just them walking, particularly the people in their seventies, I just find it very inspiring that they are also walking these gigantic hills every single morning.
They do it every day. I see them every single day. I just think it's just a real incentive to keep going for your physical strength. But I also think, walking up and down those hills, I think the elevation is about 189 meters according to my Apple watch. It's not a flat surface. But the other part of that is that it's good for my mental health. I know that if I get up and I'm crabby or I haven't slept, mainly thanks to my youngest child who still doesn't sleep through the night, I feel a thousand times better. If I can get out, get some fresh air, see nature, and remind myself, that sometimes the sun is coming up at that time, I often go quite early and it's just beautiful. Your heart is pumping, your blood's pumping around, you feel oxygenated, you've conquered something and it's not even 7:30 in the morning.
It is just a wonderful thing to do. How did that happen? I started doing this in Covid. I started going for a walk every day because Melbourne was in, and everyone was locked down. Melbourne was in just the worst, I wouldn't say the worst, but we had horrific lockdowns. We had the longest lockdowns in the world. We were homeschooling. We had another child that had just been born recently. My father passed away just before Covid happened. We didn't have any help. My husband was working full-time, we were trying to do all the things, and I was trying to run a business while homeschooling and having a child, a very young child at home as well, like a baby. for my own need, I just said to my husband, we sat down one day and said, what do you need in this situation?
What do I need? One of the things that came out of what I needed was at least an hour to myself to go for a walk every single day. I did that, and that lasted throughout the pandemic and the lockdown, and I say the pandemic as if Covid is completely over. But throughout all of those lockdowns, I went for those walks and it was something that just felt so good physically, but also mentally I felt much stronger if I went for those walks. Those walks fell a little bit by the wayside, and then they started coming back up. I would say I've been very consistent with them for at least two and a half years now. Like I said, I have two dogs. One of the big things is that the dogs get walked.
It doesn't have to be where my husband's coming home after work and then taking the dogs out to the park, they have to get walked. That's an absolute given. I don't think there are that many reasons to buy a dog. I find that they're hard if you want to do things spontaneously. However, being healthy and getting out every day with a dog is an incredible thing to have because they force you to get out. That's one thing. The other thing is the mental health aspect of it. I think that it has been unbelievable for my own mental health. I don't have a diagnosis of anything at this stage. I wouldn't say that I have any major mental health issues, but I have the same stresses as anyone else. I'm often talking to people all day long about their stresses and their challenges.
If I can start the day off by feeling good myself mentally, and a huge part of that comes from walking that's important, not just for me, but important to my husband as my partner, my supporter, and also to my kids and my family and the community at large. And to my clients. If I’m grumpy, that's not going to make for a great business coaching session with somebody. I need to put myself in a great mood. One of those things is to go out for a walk. There are some big reasons why I do it. But then in terms of the practicality, I'm very lucky that I have quite a supportive husband. We sat down and we talked about things, what does he need? What do I need? Physical health is important for both of us.
I have lost both of my parents. He has lost his father. I would say that all three of them, maybe not my dad, but my mom and his dad were quite relatively young still. We both know that there are health issues on both sides of our family. health is quite important to us. My husband skateboards pretty much every day for about an hour, if not more. And he surfs every week. And if he could, he'd also do the weekends. It's important to him getting out of an office, getting out of a screen and going and thrashing yourself about on a skateboard and getting that energy out and using it up. It also helps them in the evening, because you sleep better. I find the days that I go for a walk, I sleep much better because I'm exhausted by the end of the day.
For us, we talked about that. He needs this amount of time away from the family in order to get through the health stuff that he wants to do. In return, I need these mornings amount of times a week to do that benefit have that benefit for myself. The other thing that comes into that is that last year I had a major health issue with my back. I couldn't walk for about six to eight weeks. I still go to the physio every single Friday. I do clinical Pilates every single week in order to help that I see an acupuncturist. I do stretch every single day, twice a day, all sorts of things. I do stretches when I'm making a cup of tea every day. Walking has also helped with that aspect as well.
There's lots that come into it, but a big part of it is sitting down and having that conversation with my partner to be like, I need to do this. He needs to get up, feed the kids, get them ready, he make the lunch. Sometimes I make lunch before I go for my walk or the night before. Those important things get discussed first. I guess my first point, and I know I've gone on a very long-winded way of getting there, but my first point is to think about what is most important to you. I've talked before about the rocks in the jar concept. You have this jar, it has big rocks, it has pebbles and smaller rocks, and then it has sand. If you empty that jar out and you try and put it back with the sand and the pebbles first, the big rocks won't fit.
You need to put the big rocks in first and then fill in the cracks with the pebbles in the sand. The big rocks represent the most important parts of your life. I know that sounds very philosophical, but as small business owners, we can sometimes get so concerned or so deep in the doing of the day-to-day tasks for our business that the important things in our lives sometimes get overlooked. One of those in my past has been health for me. It's like, I'll do that later. I don't have time. what? I don't have time to go for a walk today. Or I don't have time to go to the gym, or it's just not going to work. But yet I can make a whole lot of time for clients, or I can make a whole lot of time for writing something or posting something on social media or recording a podcast.
I had to look at my priorities and think about what are the most important things to me and will this matter in five years. If I stop going for a walk, if I stop with that fitness, that will matter. In five years, my body will not be as fit. I have severe back issues that I have to be careful about for the rest of my life, then not something that's going to go away according to my neurosurgeon, GP, and physio. They're things that I'm going to have to manage just as anyone would manage a chronic health condition or a mental health condition. It's something that has to be managed. What do I need to do to manage that? Also, in terms of my kids, don't they have one grandmother. They don't have my parents, they don't have their grandfather on my husband's side.
I want to be around they don't have that many family members around them. I want to be around, I want to make sure that I'm in good health, and that I'm going to be here kicking on for the next 40-plus years. part of that then goes back to what's important to me health. Part of that is physical health, and mental health, and getting out for a walk is a huge, huge solution to how I work on those things all the time. Getting out for a daily walk is a huge part of that. Thinking about what's important to you, and it may not be for you, it may not be your health. I would urge that for most people, health should be a pretty important thing because honestly, you can have all the money in the world and if your health isn't there what do you have?
But it could be other things. Maybe your spiritual practice is important to you, and it's something that you have been putting on the back burner or you've let slide and that you feel a lot better when you have it. It could be other elements, it could be your relationship. Maybe you don't spend much time just chatting to your partner if you have a partner or maybe you don't have a partner and you want a partner and you're not spending much time on getting out there and, and meeting people or, or seeing people. Maybe it's something else. Maybe you have an absolute love of poetry or literature and you don't spend any time investing in that. the first thing I think is to figure out what is most important to you. What are those big rocks in the jar?
For me, one of them is health. As I said, and I've said quite a few times now, walking has been important for my own physical health and mental health. The second thing is, in terms of the practicalities of getting out in the morning to be able to go for those walks, which triggered this whole episode, that question from one of my clients is to consider what an ideal week looks like or what does a week look like in your household? There'll be some mornings that it's harder for me to get out of the house because my husband has early morning meetings or something else is happening. Our children are not at the stage where I would leave them by themselves. One of us has to be here now if he has something every so often, I think they have an early meeting at his work, like eight o'clock or something or 8:30 or something. He has to leave quite early. It's just not possible for me to go and walk when that happens.
I think it happens once every couple of months. it's not all the time, but we map out what a week looks like and when is he going to do his skating, when is he going to do his surfing, when am I going to go for my walks. Because those are very important to both of us. We map that out. Thinking about what a week looks like for you? The next point. What's important to you is what your typical week looks like. The next point is to think about who needs to know your plans. For me, my husband needs to know my plans. I think the reason that it's worked is that I go on the same days every week.
I don't change them up. I go on those days. My husband and I take it in turns to wake up for our youngest child who gets up at the crack of dawn, our older child does as well. Even on the days that I could have a sleep-in, I don't, I get up and go for my walks if it falls on those particular days that I've locked in as walking days. That can be hard, especially in winter, especially when I wake up and it's like one degree outside and I think, “I just want to sleep in. This is my only chance to sleep in all week?” By sleeping in, I'm talking about sleeping until like 7:30. It's not a real long sleep-in, but I have to prioritize that if I want him to also get up and look after the kids, I need to get up and go for my walk because that's what we committed to.
That's what we've discussed and, and come up with a solution for. that is a big thing to think about. Who else needs to know about this? For example, let's say going back to spirituality, let's say you want to go to the mosque more, or you want to go to synagogue or temple or whatever your spiritual practice is, then it's thinking about who else needs to know. If you're a single parent, maybe you have a mom or a family member who can look after your children that evening or that morning or whenever you're going. It could also be that maybe people who work for you are going to come in late at this time on a Friday because you're going to hit up the temple beforehand. Or it could be that people who work with you, know that you are not available at this time to this time because that's when you do your routine, you have to think about who else needs to be aware of this.
With my kids as well, they're aware that a few mornings a week, I'm not there in the morning sometimes I'll leave before they wake up. If they happen to miraculously sleep in past 6:30, I'll get going, I'll be out of the house. I get that some people might think, that's so selfish. You're a mom. You should be there every morning when they wake up. But I also think that if I'm happier in myself, I'm a better mom. If I take that time out to go for that walk, I come back and believe me, I am in such a better mood than sometimes when I've woken up and I'm like, it's cold, it's freezing, I'm tired. Why am I doing this? But I always 120% feel better after that walk. I also think as a role model for my kids, my husband and myself, they're going to be the biggest influences on their lives, particularly when they're young.
They need to see that I'm taking time out for myself and also that the dad takes time out for himself, but also that we're physically doing that. We are looking after our health and we are going out, we're getting fresh air. We're seeing that because my parents were from a different generation as well, and they worked shift work. They didn't have the luxury of working for themselves and being able to do this. But I also didn't see them exercising and taking that time out for themselves until much later in life. Even though my mom played golf a lot, they didn't see them just going for a walk for the sake of going for a walk. We went for family walks and stuff, and they rode bikes and it wasn't like they did nothing.
But I think that it's important for my children to see that mom can get out of the house and do some stuff for herself. Also, she's exercising and looking after her health, mental and physical. That's a third point. Who needs to know? Who needs to know your plans? Because you need to tell them so that these things can happen. If I suddenly decided to go for a walk on a day that wasn't my normal day, I think that is where the issues might happen. Where my husband might be like, this is this is our plan. This is what we do every week. Why are you changing things up? He wouldn't be horrible about it, but if I gave him no notice, then that's going to have an impact on his morning.
this is why we sit down, we organize it, and we have this plan in place. The fourth point, which I think is incredibly important, and like I said, I don't want to generalize, but I'm going to generalize. I think women, particularly mothers find this very difficult to do. That is setting boundaries. One of the things that happens in our house, like most houses, I'm sure particularly with children in the morning rush, is that maybe one of my kids is like, “Mom, can you do this?” Or Mom, do where this thing is for school that I need? Or is my uniform ready? Or I don't know where my jacket is. Sometimes I will stay and fix that problem. Sometimes I will also say, “Can you go talk to your dad because I'm going for my walk and it's this time and I need to be out of the house.”
Also, I have wanted to make sure that I’m the loveliest in saying to my husband, “Get up, it's my time. I need to go for a walk, get up.” That boundary has to be in place. Occasionally I have done that. I have to be real. If my husband's unwell or he's going through a bit of stress or whatever, I might be like, my walk can be delayed today. Or I'll push it out to later in the morning because I don't have clients or whatever. But the majority of the time, that boundary is in place and it's like, the clock is ticking. This is my walk time and I'm going to go. That is a hard thing to not just set that boundary, but to stick to it and to say to yourself again and again, “No, this is the commitment I've made.”
I'm going to go to the temple, I'm going to go to this literature class or creative writing class, or I'm going to go to my walk. These things outside of the business this time for yourself that you want to have made and that you've identified as important to you. You've identified where in the week you can do it. You've talked to the people who need to know, and now you need to stick to that. You need to go, “No, I made this commitment and you asked others around you for help.” Or to say, “I'm not available because I'm doing this.” You need to stick to that. As I said, again, it can be I wake up and it's freezing and I'm like, I don't want to go.
It's me pushing myself through that. And like I say, every time I do, I feel so much better that I come home from that walk. It's that it's sticking to those boundaries yourself and also ensuring that other people stick to those boundaries that you set. If you start loosening them all the time, then people will think, but you don't go for your walk that much, so you're suddenly going for it again. Whereas I go for that walk, it's like religious to me. It happens on those days. It happens. Part of the reason that it can happen is because I set those boundaries. I also want to point out, part of the reason it can happen is because I have a husband. I know that lots of people out there don't have a partner at all or don't have a partner that is supportive or don't have a partner that can physically be there because maybe they work shift work or they work odd hours or they're flying in and flying out.
I'm not saying, it's all just so easy. I understand the privilege I have of having a life in which I have this supportive partner who can look after the kids and get breakfast and everything because he works certain hours. I understand that, but I also think you may have other people around you who can help or other situations where you can try to carve that time out. Don't just think, well, I can never do that. Think about how could I do that. Get curious about it. That is the fourth point to set boundaries and stick to them. The fifth important point is to think about what is the long-term cost of not taking this time out. What is the long-term cost if I don't do this thing? In some cases, maybe it's a creative writing course and you're like, the long-term cost isn't that bad.
I could do it in 12 months, or I could do it once the kids get to school or whatever it is. I know there are plenty of people listening who don't have kids, but have other things going on in their life. You want to think about what is the long-term cost. The long-term cost for me, not going for my morning walks is huge. One, physical health, my back, I feel like it benefits incredibly, it benefits a lot from me going for these walks regularly. I know that my overall health benefits a lot. There are things in my health that could be better. But I know I go and get checked. I just went to the GP a couple of days ago and she's like, your blood pressure's perfect. I've done all these blood tests, everything's great.
I think part of that is getting out and walking and I know again, things are just genetic for some people. I'm not saying, if you just walk, everything's gone. But I'm saying that for me personally, I think getting out for walking helps. I have massive heart disease on both sides of my family. There are strokes, there are all sorts of things, and I want to do the best thing that I can. Walking apparently from everything I've read is very good for your heart and your heart health. The long-term cost of not doing that is decreasing these health benefits, the physical health benefits. The other massive one that I've talked about a lot is mental health benefits. For me personally, getting out for a walk early in the morning when it's crisp, and even in summer, it's still beautiful and crisp most of the time in the morning where I live, getting out for that morning walk, chatting to these people who are a lot older than me about life, just having that morning like, “Hey, how you going?” It's beautiful. It's cold.
You're having this little chat with somebody, you're getting out of the house. You are having that time to yourself. You are thinking. Sometimes I'm listening to a podcast or a book. Sometimes I'll have chats with my friends who are overseas because it's a good time. My uncle lives in the US and it's a great time to have a chat with him in the morning. I can get all of that done before my workday starts. The long-term cost of me not doing this, I've been doing it for years now, I would hate to think about what that would be, but I would imagine that it wouldn't be great for my mental health to be starting the day feeling like I haven't had that opportunity to go for a walk or haven't had that opportunity to get out, to get some fresh air to get my heart pumping.
The long-term cost of me not taking this time for myself is, I think detrimental, not only to myself, but to the people that I live with, to my family, and then to my business. I don't want to be crabby or feel that I'm not where I want to be mentally or physically when I'm starting my day. Those are five things to think about. I'll recap them. The first is to, get clear on what is important to you. For me, health is a huge marker of importance to me in my life. I lost both of my parents in my thirties. I do not want my kids to do that I can't guarantee that it's going to happen, but I can try wherever possible to put things in place for that. It's important to me.
The second step, I guess, is to map out what a week looks like in your life where you could carve that time out and where's realistic. I know that I'm not going to go for a three-hour walk and just like, you can drop the kids to school because my husband can't. He has to be at work before then. There's a window of time that I can take, but that window of time means that I have to get up early I have to get out when it's cold and dark most of the time, but it feels amazing afterwards. Also, I have in the past, done night walks. I don't like them. It's dark. It's a lot like at least if it's dark in the morning, it's getting light, whereas it's the other way around if you do them in the evening.
I also find that I can easily palm them off if it's the evening, I'm like, I'm too tired. I've already made dinner. Versus in the morning it's like, get up, get out, it's done, done and dusted for the day. That second thing to think about when in the week this is going to happen, be realistic with that as well. like I said, I can't say I'm going to go for a two-hour walk. My walk at the moment is about 1 hour and 20 minutes because we've moved house, it's a longer walk. But I love it, even though I'm puffing want to a lot of the time, all those hills. But I love it. I've got to be realistic with that though. I can't say I'm going to just do a two-hour or I'm going to do it and then I'm going to meet a friend for coffee.
I mean, it's not realistic. I've got to figure out where in the week it works. And like I say, some mornings I don't do it because that is often the day that my husband has those early morning meetings. The third thing is to think about who else needs to know your plans, whether that is your staff, whether that is a family member, whether that is your partner. If you live with a partner, your children, whoever it is, need to know for this to happen because you need their backing. Some of the time, it depends. Your staff, you don't necessarily need their backing, but with your spouse or partner or if your mother or your cousin or someone who's coming to look after the kids or to help you in some way, you need to get them on board.
You need to explain the first two steps, which is why this is so important. Also, why does this need to happen at this time or on this day of the week that works with the rest of your week in your business and your life? The fourth point, as I said, super important is to set boundaries and stick to them and importantly, stick to them yourself. We are easy to break promises to ourselves. It's much harder to break promise to somebody else. That's why I've done people say you should exercise with somebody else. I don't like exercising with other people. I wouldn't say that wrong. I do. I used to go for like a three-hour walk with my friend Phoebe, and I love that. That was once a week. These morning walks are like my sacred time to myself that I wouldn't necessarily want to give up, even though I know the idea of breaking a promise to somebody else is harder, so it'll get you out of bed.
But I also think you've got to get to a point where breaking a promise to yourself is just as bad. for me it was sticking to the boundaries, even if other things are going on in the house where I'm like, I should just stay and do that. That's why as well as the practical side of just getting up and being like to my husband, you need to get up, you need to I'm going now, I also often will do things like making the school lunch the night before or chopping up my son's breakfast, so he eats fruit. We chop up a whole bunch of fruit the night before. I did that this morning. that can happen. Although I have a very supportive husband as well who does that for the kids.
But that's setting boundaries and sticking to it is so important. There's, there's no point doing steps one, two, and three if you're not going to stick to the boundaries that you are asking other people to stick to and you need to stick to as well. And the last thing, getting clear on what is the long-term cost of me not taking this time out? What is the long-term cost in my case for my mental and physical health? But also it might be for other people, their spiritual health or something important to them. I know that when my father was unwell at the end, towards the end of his life and he lived in a nursing home, it was important for me to carve out time to go and see him without the kids because I often saw him with the kids and that was fine.
But you've got very young children, you've got a nursing home, sometimes they don't mix because the kids want to do something or put the TV on or do this or do that, and you just want to have a quiet chat with somebody who is in the final stages of their life. I went through the same thing, sat down with my husband, and talked to my mother-in-law. Sometimes she looked after the kids, and sometimes a lot of the time, as I said, I did bring them with me and I set up things for them, like bringing an iPad or colouring books or something so that I could have that time with my dad. I'm so lucky that I did have that time. But again, it was a time when I had to figure out how to carve that time out.
Because if you don't carve it, somebody else will use it up. But what do they say? I can't remember what that quote is. But the idea is that if you don't map out your life, you'll just go ahead with other things that other people have in store that you are helping them with. There are great things about that. But it's also an amazing thing to remind yourself that you have agency over your life. If you have the privilege of starting a business, you often have other privileges as well. I'd be looking at how do I carve that time out and if I don't carve this time out, what's going to happen in the long term for me? Whether that's physical health, mental health, stress, resentment, or all sorts of things that can happen. I hope that helps. This is me sharing how I get out in the morning and the practical sides of it.
Like I said, there are set days, there are set times. I know that if I don't get out by a certain time, then I won't have the opportunity to do that walk. Sometimes I will cut the walk short. I'll go, I have a longer walk, which is my usual walk, that's an hour and 20 minutes. But I also have another walk that I could do that's about 40 minutes. It's not as enjoyable as that walk. I'd much rather do the longer one. But in the grand scheme of things, now that I'm saying it an hour and 20 minutes a few times a week is not that much time to ask for or to not even ask for, but to demand for yourself. I know there's a lot out there, especially in the parenting space, where I feel like there's a lot out there that's very much if you take time for yourself, you are a bad parent.
I just think that's complete bs. I think the more time that people, in particular women mothers, can take for themselves, the better they feel and the better they are at being supportive and being there for the rest of the family. I would urge anyone who's reading, whether you're a mother, you're a father, you are not a parent, you never want to be a parent, or you're past that stage to think about what is important to you. Where in your week can that happen? Who do you need to buy in and, and give you support? How can you stick to boundaries yourself as well as get other people to stick to boundaries? Finally, if you don't do this, what's going to happen? What is the long-term cost of not doing this? And like I said, the long-term cost of me not going for my walks is I would say a decrease in great strong mental health and a decrease in my physical health.
Both of those things need to be good for me to be a great mom, a great coach, a great friend, and a great partner. All of those things need to be there. That is it for today. It's a bit of a different one, but I think that it's just super important to figure out how you get that time back where you're going to carve it out and how you do it. Thank you again to my wonderful client and friend who asked that question and triggered this whole episode. If you want to go through this in text format, you can find that particular text over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/340. Thank you so much for reading, and if you have an idea for a podcast episode or you've heard me talk about something and think, how does she do that, please just let us know. You can DM me @mydailybusiness_ on Instagram or @mydailybusiness on TikTok, or you can email us at hello@mydailybusiness.com. Thanks for reading. See you next time. Bye.
