From Hustle to Harmony

The Art of Balancing Business Growth with Self-Care

Today, I’m tired.

I’m due for my period pretty much at any minute now, and my business is on a growth kick, so this week I’ve worked a lot.

I’m loving seeing the seeds of my hard work over the last many weeks beginning to sprout and seeing new potential beginning to blossom. 🥰 I’m feeling genuinely proud of and excited by whats happening in my world right now!

And, I’m also getting to practice what I preach and make sure I’m taking care of myself.

I used to be a bit of a tom boy, and I thought the joke ‘never trust anything that bleeds for 5 days a month and doesn’t die’ was pretty funny.

The sad truth is that I know many smart, goal oriented and ambitious women relate with their monthly cycle like more of an inconvenience than anything. How frustrating that I have to deal with this awful thing each and every month. It’s messy. It’s potentially embarrassing. Men are scared of it. Hurry up menopause.

Last night I hosted the first part of a three part series called ‘The Embodied Feminine Leader Series’ on behalf of LaunchVic for a cohort of women going through a entrepreneurial founders program.

We discussed the fact that most of us on the call (myself included) had to suffer a lot before we finally decided that our sanity and wellbeing was the most important thing in our lives, and that we’d let (almost) anything else fall by the wayside to protect it.

But the million dollar question, as always with business leaders, is;

How do I grow a company, and show up for the work thats required to have it succeed, juggle all of the demands of life, and not burn out?

Here’s my answer – this is both what I shared with the women on last night’s call, and what I’m practicing myself right now.

In short, Attunement to Yourself and Flexibility.

You are a dynamic, organic creature. You change. Your capacity fluctuates. Your needs change. You’re impacted by things that happen in your life.

And you need to learn to listen to and respond to yourself as a living practice along the way.

Different life stages bring different focuses and states – pregnancy and parenting, peri-menopause, menopause etc and month by month our hormones fluctuate with our cycle while we ovulate, giving (some of us) an immensely different experience of ourselves.

Now, to be clear, I’m not talking about menstrual suffering, bad PMS and PCOS etc.

I believe a lot of the suffering many women experience can at the very least be improved by working with great practitioners who understand our endocrine system, how it intersects with stress hormones and our gut and how to supplement our bodies well to support that system (and I have great practitioners who I refer my clients to for this work).

But even women who aren’t suffering with their cyclical changes, still experience differing levels of energy and a different tone of energy throughout the month. Spring after all, feels different to autumn…

Additionally, while juggling all the demands of life, sometimes stuff happens that impacts you. Just yesterday I met with a business owner who shared that last year her teenage son was finally diagnosed with ADHD after years of mental health challenges, and the ride that that has been for their family. LIFE HAPPENS.

The problem is that we exist in this system where our production is king and our culture has certainly been slow to be more inclusive of the needs of a menstruating person; leaving many women believing that they should be able to operate the same way all month and year round, no matter what.

Well, let’s put that in the bin.

In last night’s call, I invited women into an embodied process where they got to practice taking their bodies into a more relaxed, soft and restful state.

We explored how most of us are spending a lot of time hanging out in a slightly activated or ‘nervous system aroused’ state – slightly stressed in other words – and how that compounding stress over time impacts us.

The solution is not to never get stressed – it’s to train yourself to have a supple enough system that you can go into a time of extra pressure or intensity, and then come back out again.

The comfort zone has gotten a pretty poor wrap in the personal development world, with quotes like ‘your comfort zone is lovely, but nothing ever grows there’…

Well, I disagree. Your comfort zone is where everything grows.

It’s where your system gets to rest enough that things CAN grow. All the beautiful seeds you plant while you’re out there working hard and feeling the heat get to be watered and nurtured when you come back to your comfort zone.

It’s where you blossom.

So today, I’m working till lunch time where I’ll be facilitating another workshop for a different entrepreneurial fellowship, then I’m taking the afternoon off and going to a sauna with a girlfriend to relax.

And while I’m working, I’m working gently with myself. I’m taking pauses to breathe deeply, close my eyes and sip my tea. I’ve got a blanket on my lap and the lights in my office are lower than normal.

The tone I’ve created for myself this morning is soft and nurturing, and I’m bringing compassion and encouragement to myself along the way.

This is Attunement.

What do you need in this moment? How can you create today in a way that meets those needs?

And be prepared that it might be totally different, tomorrow.

Never underestimate the power of your past. Because it’s not in the past. It’s here in this living moment with you – woven into your responses, choices and perceptions; baked into your nervous system and psyche through and reinforcement and repetition.

That doesn’t mean your past has to define you, not at all.

Though, you’re lying to yourself if you say ‘its in the past’, yet have done no work to clear the ripples of that past from your system to create space for something new.

Yesterday, in a session with my coach, I went ‘back in time’ to the end of 2020, when I went through an experience that was somewhat challenging for me.

Here is a sublime example

Despite acknowledging the challenge at the time, I realised looking back that I hadn’t fully resolved or digested what happened there.

Part of me stayed frozen in that experience, and on the subtlest of levels, I have gotten in my own way unconsciously ever since.

That past experience was with me in every moment. It informed my capacity and energy levels, choices and perceptions.

And this is how the past shapes us – you have experiences that your system ‘learns’ from, and you then – often completely unconsciously – adjust accordingly to avoid repeating painful or difficult events.

We are such clever adaptive creatures.

But, those ‘adaptations’ will inadvertently shape your behaviour, attitudes, thoughts and feelings in a way that can begin to inhibit your ability to fully show up for your business or career, relationships, and life in general.

If you bring the process of ‘learning’ from these past experiences into consciousness, you gift yourself the chance to mine the gold from the past, get the learnings and gifts link example: and then move forward with your life.

„ QUOTE DESIGN: I CALL THIS PROCESS ‘DIGESTING’ YOUR PAST EXPERIENCES, AND HAVE SPECIFIC PRACTICES I TEACH TO SUPPORT YOU TO DO THIS.“

I call this process ‘digesting’ your past experiences, and have specific practices I teach to support you to do this.

The challenges of the past – and your adaptations – can become like a cage you find yourself living in if you’re not aware, but this digestion process ensures your continued liberation…

Which past experiences do you need to free yourself from?

We are such clever adaptive creatures.

If you bring the process of ‘learning’ from these past experiences into consciousness, you gift yourself the chance to mine the gold from the past, get the learnings.