Episode 467: Self-care strategies for the silly season
In this episode you'll learn:
Prioritizing quality rest during busy seasons by creating intentional sleep routines and environments, even if only possible a few nights per week. This forms the foundation for maintaining energy and clarity during hectic periods.
Incorporating brief periods of mindfulness throughout the day, whether through breathing exercises or quiet reflection. These micro-breaks help reset mental state and reduce stress, even during the busiest times.
Finding ways to maintain physical movement that suits your current circumstances and limitations. Regular movement serves as both a stress reliever and energy booster, helping maintain balance during challenging periods.
Taking a practical approach to managing workload by identifying what can be changed, shared, or removed entirely. This includes being willing to accept help and adjust traditional approaches to reduce overwhelm.
To understand and implement healthy boundaries using proven resources and techniques. This helps protect your energy and time while maintaining professional and personal relationships during high-stress periods.
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Fiona Killackey: Do you love your life as a small business owner?
Let's be real. Sometimes we just don't. It's my hope that this, the My Daily Business Podcast helps you regain a little of that lost love through practical, actionable tips, tools and tactics, interviews with creative and curious small business owners, and in depth coaching episodes with me, your host, Fiona Killackey.
With more than 20 years experience in marketing, brand content and systems and having now helped thousands of small business owners. I know what it takes to build a business that you can be proud of and that actually aligns with your values, your beliefs, and your hopes for the future. So much of our daily life is spent working on and in the businesses and the brands that we are creating, and so it makes sense to actually love what you do. So let's get into this podcast and help you figure out how to love business and your life on the daily. Hello and welcome to episode 467 of the MyDaily Business Podcast. Today. It's a quick tip episode and that's really where I share a tip tool or tactic that you can implement immediately. And if you're listening to this in real time and you're feeling a little stressed about everything right now, then please take a minute to get comfortable. Maybe turn off something else. Just focus in on what I'm about to say for literally the next 10 minutes because it could be absolutely life changing.
On that note, we are into the silly season. It's the end of the year if you're listening in real time, and if you're not, then be thankful you're not in this hectic time. But it is also the time that a lot of people will look for gifts. So if you have a small business owner in your life, you may decide to buy them a copy of either of my books, Passion, Purpose, Profit, or my new book that just came out a couple of months ago called Business to Brand Moving From Transaction to Transformation. You can buy both of those books wherever you usually buy your books, but you can also buy a signed copy from us@mysdailybusiness.com shop. And if you have any trouble trying to figure out which one you should get or should you? I mean, you could just get both, but which one you want to get for whoever it is in your life, you can always just send us a DM, at mydailybusiness underscore or hellomydailybusiness.com and of course, before we get stuck into today's quick tip episode, I want to acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these lands. And for me that is the Warrung 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.
Alright, let's get into today's quick tip episode. If you're listening in real time, I think there's literally exactly a month, is it roughly, give or take a day to Christmas Day, ah, 2024. Now whether you celebrate Christmas, whether you absolutely do not, maybe you celebrate Hanukkah, maybe you have just celebrated Diwali a short, like what, a month ago. There are so many celebrations, there are so many things going on at the moment. And as I said, whether you're religious, whether you're not, whether you are just part of the consumption model that happens at the end of this year, it can always be quite stressful. Not just stressful in terms of finances. And I know there's a lot of retailers that listen to this and this is a particularly hard, difficult, exciting, challenging, overwhelming time for retailers. It can also be just really challenging as well for service based businesses because things tend to get quieter during this time and that can lead to stress with financials as well. It can also be quite stressful in terms of the social aspect of the end of the year. so catching up with whether it's friends or family or kind of parents of your kids, friends or sporting events or end of school year concerts and just thing after thing after thing.
And so today I wanted to offer, four ways that you can really look to kind of give yourself a little self care through this silly season. I actually mentioned silly season to one of my friends who lives in Europe and she was like, silly season, I've never heard that term. So if you are listening and you don't understand what I mean by that, that is a very common term here in Australia. The silly season is really this season that we're in right now where it feels hectic here in Australia. Everyone's gearing up for summer and so things are slowly shutting down. School is about to finish, so you've got children and teenagers who are just exhausted, you've got exam, you've got all these sorts of things happening all at once. And when you're also adding on top of that a business that may be stressed financially, it may not even be financial stress. It might just be people taking time off, people going on holidays, trying to juggle the whole schedule for everybody. And as the leader in the business feeling that everything is on your shoulders. So I guess I wanted to go through these ideas for self care. And don't worry, they're not like, go off to a spa for two days because you're like, I don't even have two minutes right now. But what can you do? What can you do that is practical for you?
The first is, and I know this sort of sounds contradictory to what I just said, but really taking time to consider how much rest and sleep in particular you are getting. So can you at least two or three nights a week, go to bed just a little earlier? Can you make sure that you're in a really dark room? Especially here in Australia, when we are in summer, we are literally days away from summer starting and it is very bright in, the evening. And so how can you make sure that you're giving yourself the best possible chance to get those sleep cues happening and go to sleep? Can you try to, you know, maybe if you drink alcohol, maybe not drink every night so that you've got some nights during the week that maybe you're going to possibly fall asleep easier and stay asleep because you don't have that kind of alcohol running through your system. Maybe it's thinking about, could you say no to a couple of things so that you can get to bed a bit earlier? Can you just the very basic, like put your phone in another room so you're not tempted to cheque one more thing before you go to sleep, which is keeping your brain activated. And it's taking longer for you actually to get into some sort of deep restorative sleep.
So that's the first one which I know can sound really hard and especially if you've got very young children. I have been there. I had two children. I have two children, but two who also didn't sleep for years. Years. Not just like, oh, they didn't sleep for a couple of months. It was years of them not sleeping. And I understand that that can be really hard, but maybe if you're in that situation and you're lucky enough to have a partner or another adult in the house, maybe you can take it in turns. My husband and I used to do that. One of us would sleep on the couch, the other one would deal with the children. One particular child all night. But every second night we knew that the other, you know, you knew that you were gonna get some rest because you would be on the couch asleep. So that lasted for a long time, longer than I could ever hope for it to last. So I understand that it's not always easy to just prioritise sleep, but can you do the small, small things? Putting your phone in another room, you know, making sure it's dark, trying a couple of nights a week to get some restorative sleep.
The second thing that kind of goes to that is just taking some moments out of the day. And again, they don't have to be long, but just taking like a couple of minutes. I start a lot of my coaching sessions with just a 30 to 60 second deep breathing. Like lets everyone take a breath. Close your eyes, get yourself grounded, Be open to the next hour of what we're going to talk about together. I do that multiple times a day. And honestly, literally 30 seconds, 60 seconds of just sitting with your eyes closed, resting your mind, taking a deep breath, having a glass of water can really, really do wonders to get you into the right headspace and to get you focused. Also, things like nature. I talk a lot about nature. I go for walks. I'm very, very fortunate to live surrounded by nature.
I'm literally recording this while looking out onto beautiful trees that are currently blowing in the wind and there's a bird up on one of the branches. Just sitting for a couple of minutes and looking at nature. If you are in the city, you know, is there a park that you could go to? Is there even just a beautiful picture of maybe a holiday that you went on once? Just pull that up, make it your screensaver. Have a couple of things that are going to help you again. Just rest yourself and get into a space. If you have 10 minutes, and hopefully you do, maybe there's 10 minutes in the car, maybe it's 10 minutes at the end of the day, maybe it's 10 minutes before you shut off your computer for the day and listening to a, guided meditation or just listening to some classical music or listening to something else that's going to help you just rest, get your body back into some sort of mindful state.
Really incorporate that as much as you can. If you are a retailer, I've often talked to many retailers about this. If there is a space in your back room, is a space, you know, even near the bathroom, is there a space somewhere where you can put a little stool, a little spot, maybe a little blanket, or maybe not blanket if you're in Australia in summer right now, but something where you can just spend a minute, the store is closed, it's the end of the day, you've locked up, you're about to go home. Just a minute, just sit there, just sit there. And let your mind relax. Likewise, maybe you've taken your lunch break, you shut the store for 10 minutes, you've got one of those, we'll be back in 10 minutes, take another five minutes and just sit there and just rest and try to let your mind relax, because that can absolutely help reduce anxiety and just try and get you mentally clear.
The third one exercise, you know, I go for my walks with the dogs quite often and I talk about it, I take a lot of photos, and it's such an incredible way to start the day. And again, I know I'm incredibly lucky. I've got a supportive partner who does the breakfast when I'm out and that sort of thing. But thinking about in your week, what exercise can you do now? Maybe you have chronic illness and you can't necessarily get out for a walk. Maybe you are a person with a disability, but there will be exercises that you can do. I mean, there's so many incredible YouTube channels for these sorts of things. For any type of exercise, honestly, whatever age, whatever. Maybe limitations or restrictions that you have, Maybe you're going through something right now. Like, I've had back injuries where I couldn't walk for eight weeks. I've had other things going on. I've had Caesarean sections where, you know, you can't exercise for six weeks. But there are other things that you could do. So it could be doing some stretches, it could be doing a YouTube workout, it could be meeting up with a friend, it could just be dancing. Dancing in whatever way you want to dance for a certain amount of time.
When we were in lockdown in Covid in Melbourne, my son and I used to have an 8:30am kitchen dance off. And we would put on Spotify and just dance around the kitchen because there was so much uncertainty and stress going on that it was a really beautiful way for our family to connect and a really nice way to start the day before he had to go into, like, homeschooling and things like that. So what can you do? If you look at the next month or two ahead of you, where is the spot for exercise? Because it can be such an incredible way to reduce stress, to get literally out of your mind, to get back into your body and to move in whatever way that works for you.
And then I guess the last one is really, that old adage of like, what can you automate, delegate, eliminate? But really looking at, are there things that are absolutely not necessary in the next couple of months when we are in this silly season? I know that for years Like, I always sort of took this idea that, you know, we absolutely have to travel on Christmas day to be, you know, at other family's houses or we have to do this or that. And a while ago one of my siblings suggested that we actually do our, Christmas earlier. So she's like, let's do the Kalacky Christmas, you know, earlier. So we usually do it in mid December, which is actually really nice because then you don't have this stress on Christmas Day that, okay, we've got to get to this side of the family. We've also got to get to this side of the family. What can you do things like that, that for decades I would never have thought if we could even do that. And now we do it and we just know the Kalacki Christmas is, you know, my side of the family is a different time. And that's cool. Things like, you know, are there other things that you can implement in your business or delegate in your business? Are there things that you've been saying, oh, no, don't worry, I'll just do it, I'll just do it Instead of saying, yes, actually, yes, I'm going to say yes to somebody saying, can I help? Likewise with friends. Maybe there's some friends that are happy to help you with the kids or happy to help you pack orders or happy to, they're like, hey, you know, do you need anything? And instead of being this kind of martyr and being like, no, no, I'm good, maybe you say, actually, yes, I've been thinking about what you said and I'd love to take you up on that offer. so what, what can you do?
And also things like boundaries. I mean, I've done so many episodes on boundaries and boundary setting. And we always recommend, you know, two books in boundaries if you're interested. They could be something that you want to read right now. One is setting boundaries by Dr. Rebecca Ray and the other one is Set Boundaries Find Peace by Nedra Glover Towab. I don't know if I'm pronouncing the name correctly. An incredible, incredible author and just thought leader. Everyone should go and follow her on social media. But both Dr. Rebecca Ray and Nedra Glover Tob have created these two books that are amazing around boundaries.
So if that is something that is coming up for you and you know that it comes up at this time of year every time, go and check out those books. We'll link to them in the show notes. So that is it for today, really. Looking at the kind of these self care strategies, tactics that you can employ for the silly season. And if you want to go through this in text format or find the links to anything I mentioned, you can find that at mydailybusiness.com podcast forward/467 as this is episode 467 and if any of this has helped you, I would love it so so much if you could please leave a review either on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to this. It really helps other small business owners find this podcast and likewise, if you have a small business owner friend that you think could benefit from this, please please share the episode so that they can take on these strategies as well. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Podcast. For a range of tools to help you grow and start your business, including coaching programmes, courses and templates, check out our shop at mydailybusiness.com/shop and if you want to get in touch you can do that by email hello@mydailybusiness.com or you can hit us up on Instagram @mydailybusiness_. You can find us on TikTok mydailybusiness or find me Fiona Killackey on LinkedIn. I look forward to connecting.
