Lead Like You

CHAPTER 8Getting practical with self-care

Having explored our relational needs, now we can focus on our physical self-care, including the impact of hustling to prove our worth, managing our gut health and lifestyle choices, prioritising our executive wellbeing and how this can empower us to elevate our careers and lives. For me, physical self-care can often feel like an almighty chore. Is it just me?

The way this has become easier for me is to change my attitude in how I look at it. Once again, this is where self-compassion comes in. When I bring an attitude of self-compassion and self-care to my need to look after myself physically, something shifts within me. I begin to see what I put into my body, how I rest and sleep, and what exercise I perform as an opportunity to nourish and nurture myself. It changes from a feeling of, ‘I should do that’, which I often resent and feel irritated about, to a sense of, ‘That feels like a really lovely thing to do for myself’ or ‘I get to do this’.

I have found my ability to practise and continue with physical self-care has needed to come from self-respect, self-acceptance and self-love, not self-punishment and judgement. As I have learnt about and put self-care into practise (very imperfectly, I might add), I have grown to value and love myself more through the process.

Another important insight was when I discovered that anxiety, depression and fatigue can all be symptoms of an unhealthy stomach lining and gut flora. Our gut flora (the ...