Fight Back With Self-Care
Are you a business owner who wants to have a positive impact with your business?
Great, that’s what I thought.
Next question. When are you best able to serve your clients: when you’re exhausted and overwhelmed, or when you’re well-rested, hydrated, and have moved your body in some way?
Obviously you know the answer to this.
So why do you feel so guilty about taking time for self-care? (BTW, I do know the answer.*)
You know your business thrives when YOU’RE thriving, and may or may not survive when you’re just surviving. You know that taking time for yourself, even if it’s just going out to lunch with a good friend, refreshes and recharges you. You know you feel better when you get outside for even a short walk, especially when the sun’s out. And yet…
So let me ask you another question.
Would you be more interested in self-care if you knew how much it boosts productivity? Or would you be more interested in self-care if you knew it’s a tool for fighting fascism/authoritarianism?
Guess what, either way I have great news!
What is self-care, for improving productivity or anything else?
Some people won’t do self-care because they think it’s all about bubble baths and drinking herbal tea, and they hate bubble baths and herbal tea.
But those aren’t really the foundations for self-care. Because self-care doesn’t mean being lazy. (Rest is not being lazy, and to borrow a phrase from the younguns, anyone who tells you otherwise should be yeeted into the sun.) Having said that, if bubble baths and/or herbal tea recharge and refresh you, have at it as part of your routine.
Taking care of yourself doesn’t mean streaming shows with a glass of wine until you fall asleep either. In fact, that’s counter-productive to productivity, because you’re not moving your body nor are you refreshing your brain.
As a business owner, your biggest asset is your brain. Not your computer! After all, if your computer died tomorrow, you could still continue your business. But if you died tomorrow, your computer couldn't take over for you.
So as a business owner, self-care for you means taking care of your brain.
Self-care for improving productivity
The goal of entrepreneurial self-care is ensuring that your mental, physical, and emotional needs are met – so you can then have the impact you want to have on your clients and on the world. Some methods are must-haves that must be practiced daily or most days, and others that might arise as situations come and go.
They all benefit your biggest asset. The more refreshed and recharged your brain is, the better you can make decisions and the faster you can complete your tasks.
Daily or most days
Sleep (7-8 hours)
Rest breaks (10-15 minutes) after every ¾ -1 hour of mentally taxing work
Body movement
Social interaction (no, “social” media doesn’t count) most days
Hobby/favorite activities most days
Situational
Having a difficult conversation (at work and/or at home)
Making necessary doctor appointments (primary care, specialist, therapist)
Completing necessary but long and/or boring documents/paperwork
You’ll notice a lot of these are active as opposed to just sitting down in a comfy chair. It’s often hard to think about, say, quilting, after a long day at work. Hobbies use different parts of your brain so your “thinky” networks get a break, but they’re fun so your brain enjoys them.
Because it can be hard at the end of the day to do things, set everything out ahead of time so your hobby or activity is ready for you to pick up and do without requiring a lot of prep.
Self-care for fighting the fash
Self-care can feel particularly self-indulgent when you know people have it worse than you do. As a white woman who can pass for straight, trust me, I know a lot of people in the US have it worse than I do.
But you can still accomplish more when you are rested and ready, compared to being worn out or overwhelmed by all the information and disinformation washing over us.
Not only that, self-care itself is a tool for fighting the fash.
Said another way, the fascists win when you burn out doing all the things. Or when you get overwhelmed to the point that you can no longer participate or everything starts to run together and you tap out.
So would you rather take care of yourself, or do you want to let the authoritarians win?
The regime wants you to be overwhelmed. They told us during the felon’s first administration that they wanted to “flood the zone with shit” (their words, mind you).
Authoritarian regimes want the truth obscured and hard to find. Because if you don’t know what’s true and what’s not, you’re far more likely to just give in and do what they want.
Self-care in this case means making some choices and thinking critically. You’ll need boundaries to protect yourself. Remember, boundaries aren’t about other people. You can’t make anyone else act a certain way. Boundaries are so that you know what you will and will not put up with, and how you will react to these situations.
The three “c”s of productivity and fashfighting
In addition to the usual activities as outlined above, in a time like this add in these three self-care practices:
Choose
Curate
Cut
Choose how you want to participate in anti-regime activities. You can’t do them all, so don’t even try. Instead, pick what you can do and what feels aligned with your own personality and desires.
For example, I enjoy going to protests. I’ve gone in a pink axolotl costume and in no costume but carrying signs. I like to see other people’s signs (some are really creative!) and I get juiced from all of us being there. I think it helps people who might not pay attention to what’s going on to see how many people disagree with the administration.
But you might be a person of color who really isn’t safe out in the streets with masked, unidentifiable, unaccountable paramilitary thugs looking to kidnap anyone with skin darker than pale ecru.
Or you might be uncomfortable in crowds. Or have mobility issues where you can’t stand or walk for very long. Or you just don’t want to go.
If that’s you, don’t worry about going to a protest. There are other ways to join the fight.
If you like talking on the phone, call your Congresscritters regularly. There are plenty of apps that will provide scripts for you. You might also want to call your state capitol critters as well, particularly if they’re into this mischief (primarily “red” states).
I like to write, and I write postcards to registered voters facing important state or federal elections.
If you’re involved in an organization, like a school board or PTA, you might be able to help the kids of immigrant and/or LGBTQ parents by organizing that group.
You might have the bandwidth to do more than one thing, and you might not. The goal is not to burn out, but to do what you can. Choose what works for your life.
Curate who you listen to and who and what you watch. Also the places you shop and in some cases the technology you use (I’m thinking here of OpenAI, which donates a lot of $$ to the fash and runs Chat-GPT – you could easily choose another LLM if you’re using them.)
Now that right-wing billionaires are taking over most of our entertainment options, giving up news shows might be a good idea. Also, if you’re a Fox watcher, bear in mind that Fox went to court and said viewers should know better than to use them as a news source because they provide entertainment, not news. Again, this is what Fox said in court; I’m not putting words in their mouth.
There are plenty of scholars, historians, and scientists who are dedicated to the truth. Listen to them and subscribe to their newsletters or podcasts. You can also subscribe to non-US news outlets like the Economist and The Guardian. (One’s pretty conservative and the other is not; I subscribe to both.)
Instead of purchasing things from companies that obeyed in advance or kowtowed to the regime, you might make a list of alternative providers. Join a local Buy Nothing group, or find small businesses that have the merch you want and patronize them where possible. Get creative! It’s fun and gives the finger to the regime that wants you consuming their slop.
Cut out push notifications for news (at the very least! The more push notifications you cut, the more productive you’ll be with fewer distractions.) You really don’t need to know everything the administration is doing at the second someone reports or leaks it. You’ll get important news from your curated sources.
To the extent you can (because a lot of people really can’t cut all the ties for various reasons), cut out services and products from fash boosters. I stopped shopping at Target once they dropped their tiny little Pride line. I cancelled my decades-long subscription to The Washington Post, and also my LA Times subscription. I never had a NYT subscription to cancel. I dropped my years-long Prime subscription. Etc.
Cancelling your push notifications means that you get to choose when you look at the news (if ever). If you subscribe to newsletters (as I do), you can choose when you read them. Instead of being awash in information and disinformation, your curated media helps you stay sane and avoid being overwhelmed when the zone’s being flooded with shit.
Choose, curate, cut, and fight back!
*It’s the patriarchy.
Recap (tl;dr):
Self-care isn’t just key for improving productivity, but can also be used as a tool to fight authoritarianism.
If you can’t find time for self-care or fighting back, let’s chat. Click here to schedule your free call.
Illustration by Masantocreative on Unsplash.