5 Types of Self-Care for Entrepreneurs

In today's episode, we're diving into an essential yet often neglected aspect of success: self-care for entrepreneurs. As entrepreneurs, we're notorious for overlooking our well-being in pursuit of our goals. But here's the catch: neglecting self-care can hinder rather than propel us towards success.

From physical and social to mental, spiritual, and emotional well-being, we'll explore how nurturing these five areas can fuel your success. Join me as we uncover strategies to thrive in every aspect of your life. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this episode. Let's unlock your ultimate endgame together.

Introduction (00:00)
The Importance of Self-Care for Entrepreneurs (00:29)
Physical Self-Care (01:45)
Social Self-Care (06:28)
Mental Self-Care (09:07)
Spiritual Self-Care (10:14)
Emotional Self-Care (12:53)
Conclusion (17:05)

Transcript

0:11

Welcome everyone to the endgame podcast season two, where I bet you didn't know what you didn't know. I'm Dr. Ryan Wakim, successful entrepreneur and your endgame coach. Sit back, relax, and tune in to today's episode, five types of self care for entrepreneurs. Today's podcast is going to lay out what are the five types of self care that we, uh, Should value as entrepreneurs, but often maybe do not create the time for them. We often see different self care measures or metrics or motivations, or frankly, strategies as being more of a distraction and or a luxury. And not truly something that we actually make the time to do, and you might find yourself, or you might see that you do, you know, cafeteria self care, you pick and choose little bits here and there, but maybe you don't have a full on strategy again. Maybe you don't have, maybe you aren't touching every single possible category of self care when you're thinking about your. Your own success. And again, how you create that foundation, the health set and the mindset to be ultimately successful over time. And we've touched on that many times over as it relates to how you build that foundation to be ultimately successful. And the fact that once you can do that, you can then really have compounding upon. Those both techniques, but also those wins that then create just massive success stories over time. So 1st, let's define, you know, what are the 5 key areas of self care that we should be thinking about every single day? Certainly every single week, if not more frequently than that. So 1st and foremost is physical self care. And again, you've heard me talk on this before. This is that foundational piece of your health set, right? Again, it's one of my favorite mentors. Preaches, and that is David Meltzer talks about if you wake up every morning and you're healthy, you can have unlimited wishes. If you wake up every morning and you're unhealthy, you have one wish, which is to be healthy so that you can have unlimited wishes. You know, it's a really good point. You know, that analogy is great. I think it's incredibly important to understand that. Your health is so important to your overall trajectory, strategy, success. And your health starts with the physicality of your body, right? So your physical health includes not just your, you know, are you overweight? Is your blood pressure in check? But also, are you sleeping well? You know, are you flexible? You know, if you are incredibly, If your musculoskeletal system is incredibly limited and rigid, and you know, you're constantly chronically in pain because of it, that's not likely to set yourself up for long term success. In fact, again, we very much know the interplay between chronic pain complaints and. A lack of resilience over time. And so, as we think about self care, or one of the foundational pieces of self care really hinges on this idea of resilience. And again, that could be physical resilience. That could be mental resilience. We're going to go through each of these, but it's really how do you build resilience in each of these 5 areas. Key areas of self care so that you may be successful when you combine them. Uh, and so again, what we know is chronic pain and, and physical unhealthiness definitely degradates one's resilience as it relates to their physical health. So exercise is obviously a really important piece of this. You've heard me talk before about motion drives emotion. And so being physically active, even if it's. Getting some steps in or making sure you get up out of your desk or even have a standing desk, doing something with your body, not just constantly thinking about posture, but also again, movement in space, right? That is really important to get the body move again. Other really important piece of this that we don't ever put enough energy or thought or concern into is sleep. Sleep is so important to restoration. So important to resilience. You know, I always say. One of the best investments I ever made was in a really quality mattress. You know, some people would say, like, why would you ever spend that kind of money on a mattress? You spend a third of your life sleeping. You're supposed to be spending a third of your life sleeping. And so if you're supposed to be spending a third of your life doing something, you probably want to make sure you're doing that well and adequately. And it's Because sleep is so important to so many other aspects of our life, it's so important to have the energy the next day. Again, this is something David Meltzer talks a lot about, which is your preparation for today actually started yesterday, and it's the position you put your body into when you get up today that actually is, again, that's a core foundational piece to your success in that day. And that starts with having quality sleep. And so investing in your sleep and the adequacy of it, and then your body's ability to restore and become more resilient, so important in something that we often don't talk about. We talk a lot about physical exercise. We talk a lot about you get out of your body, which you put into it. So diet. You know, diet is important, but more importantly, what are the macro and micronutrients you're giving your body so that it can be successful? Motion drives emotion. You get out of your body what you put into it. That is. Physical exercise and diet and then again, where are you in relation to your adequacy and quality of and amount of sleep is really important to another like Pearl here is my wife is guilty of this and I always joke with her if you are one of those individuals who spends an hour snoozing the alarm every five minutes. You are not doing a good job with your quality of sleep because sleep is really about the continuance of sleep and being able to be in deep sleep and REM sleep. And when you are constantly waking up and falling back asleep that last hour, you've invested a lot of time into something that probably is not going to give you a lot of return. So just something to think about as you think about routines and strategies, constantly snoozing is not a really great. Technique for quality sleep. Next area of self care that we really want to try to build resilience and foundational supports in is the social aspects of self care and we as founders or entrepreneurs, or, you know, a lot of the U S population really sort by self. And that could mean isolation. As you think about, again, mental health or emotional health struggles, that might mean isolating. It might mean retracting from groups, or again, if you were in a position of. Leadership or founder or provider. You often put yourself into that bucket as your, it's that as being your identity. Meanwhile, you're not getting from others or you're not giving to others what is needed in our, in the reciprocity of kind of social relationships and friendships. And so as you think about what else is important to self care, especially if you're an extrovert, but even if you're an introvert, it's really important that you put some time and energy into. What do quality relationships mean? What do quality friendships mean? Not only what does it mean for you, but how do you invest in those and how do you build upon those? So, you know, this is something where even with immediate family, parents and siblings, you may want to consider carving out time once a week or once a day. I mean, depends on what you need and what your family or friends need from you. But this is a moment where. You could start, we've talked about a strategy in the past. You could start hard blocking time to reach out if the day gets away from you and you're just. It's something you forget to do, but it's really important to you just because it's important to you and just because you forget it doesn't mean that either a you shouldn't do it or that B it wasn't important to you to begin with. Maybe you really wanted to do it, but the day got away from you. And again, you're not, you're not investing in the, in the important things in your life or these self care measures. And so sometimes that might mean a strategy of hard blocking might mean putting it into your calendar. If you're back to back to back all day long with patients or meetings or both. Putting a little bit of time in there to make sure that you invest in friendships and invest in relationships is really important to your own self care. That social aspect, you know, humans were, have developed over time in that setting of society and socialization and, and value of. Family and friends, and it's important. We don't lose sight of that. Even when you feel like you're on your own mountain, sometimes, or you're on your own island, or, you know, even when you feel like retracting and isolating, that's a moment where the strongest of mind would actually double down and invest in friendship or relationship as compared to isolation. So self care with socialization is talking I'm talking Really critically important. Another foundational piece of self care more broadly. Next we have mental self care, you know, obviously as a psychiatrist, this is one of the two self cares that strike me near and dear and most important. They're all important of course, but mental self care is what we've talked about before. It is. That mindset capability, right? It is how you use your mind, how you use your brain, how you use what you choose to put into your mind and into your brain are, are all pieces of that, right? So whether that is inspirational quotes or watching YouTube clips, uh, for those that Are mentors to you or that provide you emotional or mental development or progress, personal development. These are the kinds of things reading a book, doing complicated puzzles or crosswords, or this is where you're really massaging your mind. This is where you're taking care of your mental self. So that again, you can develop that mindset that you couple with the health set and then some of these other aspects too. To really become ultimately successful, or at least create the foundation through which you can really become ultimately successful. So, again, as you think about your mental self care, this could be practicing self compassion and acceptance. It could be, again, mental activities that are stimulating and activating to you. Um, so, anything that could be journaling, we've talked about that in the past. This is anything you would do where you can help sharpen your mind, sharpen your mindset, and really help develop that foundational mindset aspect needed to pair with health set. To go on and compound with your successes. The fourth important self care to point out here is spiritual self care. Now, this is not some sort of stance on religion or lack of religion. Religion could have no part of spirituality. I've, Spent a lot of years in the addiction community and helping those struggling with addiction. And, you know, there's, AA was built on spirituality. There's, there's also some religion involved with it. But at the end of the day, you know, when we talk about, in that example, when we talk about a higher power, the higher power for some individuals in that room would be just the other peers in the room with them that day, right? It is whatever you need to make sure that you find the Purpose and drive that helps fulfill you. And we've talked about fulfillment in the past, but that which nurtures your spirit, right? That which nurtures that center of the, of the mind or body that really is meant to drive you, what drives you, what drives you in the universe, uh, what gives you that deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Uh, and again, that very much can, and for some should be religion. And that is. That is great. And for others, that will not be religion. That is truly spirituality. And that might be meditation. That might be a variety of other things that have nothing to do with a God necessarily. That could be nature, right? So there's a lot of engaging in, in nature itself that can be very spiritual in essence. So the self care of your spiritual self, religion or not, is also really important. And again, we've, we've spoken on this, which is if you're, Showing up to do something you're punching a clock or you're showing up to do an activity and you're just doing it. You know, you're. Your mind is not there. You're kind of on autopilot. You know, your default mode network is through the roof. If you want to look that up as it relates to the brain systems. But the point is spiritual self care is about really enhancing your meaning, your purpose, your drive, your connection with the universe, nature, nurture. That is your spiritual self care. And that is, you know, really tagging that down is important to. Feeling successful and again, having the foundation through which you can feel successful, you know, part of spiritual self care is also your ability to accept and your ability to engage with again the universe. So it's really important that we think about not just physical. Not just the structural mental, but also your spiritual side as you, as you engage in self care techniques, last but not least, again, really critically important in my line of work is emotional self care. And this is distinctly different than mindset. So, again, nurturing, uh, the self care of your mind has more to do with personal development and truly mindset. Are you a pessimist? Are you an optimist? Right? Are you, are you looking for the positivity or are you looking for the negativity? That is. Mental self care, emotional self care is a bit more nuanced, which is, do you actually work on managing your emotional state, right? And so your mindset is one thing, how you approach something is your mindset. The feelings you have around what you're approaching or something that's happened by you or to you is your emotional well being or your emotional set. Of skills, and you can probably, you can delineate that again, you might even know someone who is an incredibly self empowered, a lot of personal development has a very strong, maybe even a very positive mindset. But then if something were to happen, maybe negatively or unexpectedly, they are very emotionally labile, right? So they cannot control their emotions. As long as they get it. Overly agitated or angry or overly sad and emotional. So, you know, crying spells, whatever that case may be. Emotional self care is how do you, how do you take your feelings and either process them through some sort of adaptive coping skill, going back to my addiction work, you know, the use of alcohol and other drugs like it would be considered a maladaptive or a poor way of managing self care around one's emotions. So how you can. Have feelings, experience emotions. And then manage through those is what your emotional self care would look like. So again, uh, this is where you could use journaling. You can use adaptive coping skills. So we've talked about journaling in the past. This is where like cognitive behavioral therapy comes in. This is where progressive muscle relaxation can come in. This is where deep breathing exercises come in. If you're a Wim Hof fan, frankly, this is where. the balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic systems come in. So if you're familiar with cold plunging, or if you're familiar with things like Apollo neuro, which is a peripheral neuromodulation that activates your parasympathetic system that allows you to be more emotionally sharp, right? The parasympathetic system kind of allows you to calm your anxieties and be able to push forward. Displayed a difficult situation or what might be perceived as a negative outcome. So as you think about your self care, there's not just the mindset in the position through which the lens through which the perception through which you view life glass half full versus a half empty. It's also that emotional well being and state management, right? So how you push through difficult situations, you know, dance through traffic, or how you for that matter, manage very highly emotionally charged situations. It doesn't even have to be something that's made you really anxious or really angry. It can also be something that you're overwhelmed with joy, and that's not a bad thing, but being able to manage those emotions and process your emotions and have a safe space for that conversation with. therapist or a spouse or a close friend is really important to your long term, not just emotional health and self care, but as we've obviously set the foundation here for how you build upon a much stronger foundation. With all of these as pillars of that foundation in conclusion, we want to make sure we touch on, or we put stock into and strategy and effort into all five types of self care again, just to review those briefly. That is physical self care that is social self care that is mental self care distinctly different than emotional self care. And then last but not least, the spiritual self care, I've given you a couple of different strategies for each of those things to be thinking about for each. And so I really hope. You take a little bit of time to reflect on how are you doing in each of these five facets. Oftentimes you may be out of balance with one or two and how can you build a strategy and a plan so that you truly have a balance and stability among all five. That will help you build the critical ecosystem and foundation for being ultimately successful over time. As always, thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe, share the episode. Once again, I'm Dr. Ryan Wakim, successful entrepreneur. I'm here to teach you how to exist today so you may expand tomorrow and create the ultimate end game of your wildest desires. Talk to you soon.