Entrepreneurs and business owners are much more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety than others in more traditional roles. Starting and running a business inevitably involves lots of stress and struggle—there are tough decisions to be made every single day.
Therefore, in order to stay holistically healthy and continue the entrepreneurial journey, they need to develop certain habits and routines to keep their mental health in check.
Often, when you don’t take the best care of yourself, you will become more prone to feel stress, anxiety, and depression.
When your life is spent working hard, it’s easy to overlook self-care routines. This means eating well, getting plenty of sleep, and finding time to relax and unwind. Take time to address all of these things in your life, and focus on the needs of your body.
A good self-care routine is especially important when working from home. When you have no physical constraints, It’s very easy to slip into the pattern of working until late and neglecting rest. Be wiser than that! Set limits for yourself, for example: “no work after 7 pm” or “no work on weekends.”
Spending too much time on social media can cause depression and anxiety. This could be partially due to the addictive nature of social media and the fact that it can become a distraction for the way that you feel.
Social networks can be quite a negative space, even if your ecommerce business leverages social media to attract new customers. If you find that you get drawn into worrying what people are saying online so much that it affects your mood, then it may time to step away.
There is a difference between being constantly busy and being productive. If you’re always busy with your work, but you’re not as productive as you’d like to be, then you should review the way that you’re going about everything.
Find ways to improve your productivity levels while making life easier for yourself. You can do this by learning to stop worrying about the small things. To kick things up a notch, start using Google calendar or a timeline maker to plan ahead and prevent procrastination from affecting your productivity on a day-to-day basis. Keep your focus on the big picture, and remember to delegate to spread the burden of your workload. Then, learn to trust your team with the jobs that you assign them.
Finding a sense of calm in your life is essential. Meditation is a great way of centering yourself while improving your focus levels. It can also be beneficial in helping you sleep, regulating your emotions, and giving you a sense of clarity.
It may take some time to start finding meditation beneficial. It may not come naturally. However, if you practice it regularly, it can help with your mental health.
If you spend all of your days in business attire, you may find that you wear a lot of greys. Dressing for the office may not inspire you, and colors can really affect your mood.
Try and add some color to your outfits. It’s possible to dress for business and retain some character and color in your outfit. Try it; it may make you feel a bit better.
When things get stressful, it’s easy to see the negative in anything and everything. The more often you think the worst, the less you will be able to be positive.
As a business leader, you may be more sensitive to the things that could go wrong. Worrying about major problems will cause you stress. It can become easy to start catastrophizing over everything.
Instead of worrying about things going wrong, focus your attention on looking for the things that are going right. Remember to celebrate the things that are good in your life and your business.
When things get stressful in your business, it can be easy to get bogged down and forget why you got started in the first place.
Take the time to reconnect with your passions and remind yourself of the things that are most important to you. Then, start trying to work towards reclaiming your enthusiasm for what you do.
Do you know what causes you stress or anxiety? There may be several different things that trigger mental health issues in your life.
Keep a journal and log your moods. Try and identify things that happened in your day and look for patterns. This will help you understand what may be triggering your mood changes.
You may not be able to completely avoid your triggers. However, it may be possible to learn to handle them differently.
When you’re feeling depressed, you need to be able to talk to others about it. Very often, people don’t talk about their mental health problems, and they suffer in silence.
Talking through your problems can make a huge difference. Find friends that you can turn to when you need to talk. Create a network of people in your life that you can turn to when you’re struggling.
Mental health concerns should be regarded in the same way as physical illness. If you needed to see a doctor for your physical health, you would do it. The same should be true of stress, depression, and anxiety.
There are several routes to find the help that you need. You could speak to your doctor, or you could seek the help of a counselor or psychotherapist.
Talking therapy can be beneficial in understanding mental illness, as well as finding new ways of approaching situations that you may find distressing in your life.
Remember: only when you’re healthy both physically and mentally, can you do your best work as an entrepreneur or a business owner. Staying in good shape does require a daily effort, but it’s no rocket science. Tweak your routine accordingly, build some good habits, leverage your family and friends to keep you in check — and you will certainly go very far.
Vlad Shvets is a marketing manager at Paperform.