As an entrepreneur you are around 60% more likely to report being directly or indirectly affected by mental health issues than employed workers. You’re also more likely to report being stressed. And yet, it’s really likely that you, like me, started on this path to have more freedom, flexibility and job satisfaction. So where is it going wrong? And more importantly what can we do about it?

I’m no psychologist (for one of those I highly recommend my friend McKenzie), but after 18 months of running Rising Tide Creatives, I have these tips on how to relax - developed with early stage entrepreneurs in mind.

Why is relaxation so important for entrepreneurs?

The short answer is - for the same reasons relaxation is so important for everyone! Improved sleep, better stress management, lower blood pressure, higher creativity levels and higher levels of happiness or contentment to highlight a few.
But for entrepreneurs - who by the nature of our roles often carry more pressure, less of a safety net, juggle more roles & responsibilities & have less built in support - accessing these benefits becomes all the more important. Particularly, as we all know, that entrepreneurship is a marathon & not a sprint - most businesses fail not because they’re bad businesses or poor business models, but because we give up too soon, however to keep going, we need to be able to manage our energy levels, stress and wider needs as humans to get to the point where we access the freedom, flexibility and job satisfaction that we began our businesses for in the first place.

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Tips on how to relax

Set boundaries

It can be tempting to do everything and anything you can to meet peoples needs, but a great way to reduce stress and make relaxation easier is to set firm boundaries that work for you. Some ideas include

The number of clients or jobs you take on at any one time
A hard stop time in the evenings
Always taking a lunch break
Not having your emails on your phone
Only communicating with clients or staff via certain channels

Although it can feel uncomfortable at first, I generally find people respect people who respect themselves and having clear, kind boundaries is a great way to show you respect you!

Nervous about communicating your boundaries?

Having a website that includes these clearly communicated in an FAQs section is a great place to start. Not got a website yet? Check out my custom web design packages, or jump on the waitlist for my template shop - coming this Autumn.

2. Take breaks

Scheduling breaks into your daily, weekly, monthly & annual rhythm is one of my top tips on how to relax as an entrepreneur.

Why? Because no one is going to do that for you? You don’t have a boss, or a human resources department responsible for you taking your vacations, or even just colleagues that you bump into at the water cooler and have a break with, so as entrepreneurs we have to do this ourselves.

Another consideration is what do with those breaks. I’ve been guilty of booking a holiday (vacation for the Americans!) every time I have family or friends to stay - which is wonderful, but also involves me taking them visiting around the island (joyful but not super relaxing for me!) I’ve also “taken a break” to create my new welcome sequence - again, not really a restful vacation.

In the day as I work from home I’m guilty of using my breaks to cook, clean and empty the washing machine (all perks of working from home, and good for a change of rhythm but not a really restful break).

So how do I now try to do breaks? I’m not perfect, but here’s my ideal:

Take a 5 minute break every hour to look farrrr away at something in nature (this one’s for your eyes!)

Take a 30 minute break at some point in the day to do something none productive - read, nap, run, walk, knit, potter. I often tag this onto eating lunch so I don’t feel guilty - it forms part of my lunch break, but is restorative.

Take weekends. That means I don’t do anything to do with work during those days. Now the joy of being your own boss is that these days can be whenever you want in the week - but I tend to find 2 consecutive days is more relaxing than just one day, and one break like this is necessary each week for me to avoid getting burnt out.

Take holidays - extended if you can! Now I know this last one is particularly challenging for many entrepreneurs - what about everything that we need to do! But if you can take a proper break, ideally once a quarter, with a more extended one, once a year, I highly recommend it. You may need to agree with yourself the times you check emails, or check in with your accounting, or anything else very time sensitive over this period of time (holidays shouldn’t give you more stress!) but if you can take some extended time off, it’s great for fully relaxing and putting a good amount of calm back into your bank before you start again.

Books stacked on an old chest at farm stay retreat in Spain

Fresh bread, peaches and eggs for breakfast at farm retreat in spain

Lavender fields at Las Mecias farm stay in Spain

Photos from my recent, wonderful peaceful & restorative break at Las Mecias - highly recommended!

3. Delegate, outsource and ask for help

Now this isn’t to say you can’t do many things yourself - of course you can. But is it always smart? Firstly it’s likely to take you longer, secondly you might not be the best person to do it, and thirdly it’s often stressful as it stretches you thinly between the various areas of your business and impinges on your wider life. So here are some great ways to do this:

Use templates - websites, legal policies*, copy, social media posts, you name it there’s a template for almost everything, often giving you something very professional looking in a fraction of the time of DIYing and for a fraction of the cost of custom options
Hire someone for a project - sometimes you need a custom solution to a unique problem, and hiring an expert can often give you much more than that solution in return - good experts will often impart their expertise, time, networks and more in support of their clients. Looking for a custom website - look no further my friends :)
Leverage your networks - you will likely have people with some incredible skills in there are some might be up for a skills exchange (note here to always be mindful of not asking those that do said skill for their job to give you mates rates or freebies - remember it’s how they make a living)
Get an extra staff member - this could be an intern, VA or new staff member, sometimes we need more than one pair of hands to get everything done.

4. Use productivity tools

On a similar theme to above, there are masses of tools that exist for the exact reason of saving you time, but the challenge is you may well not know about them! Many of them have awesome free versions too, and these tools and variations of them save me hours each week, giving me much more time to relax and manage my energy!

I’m currently compiling a list of some of my “can’t live without” tools - make sure you’re on my email list to get it first!

5. Move your body

However feels good, but do it every day. Exercise is proven to be relaxing, and if you’re one of the many of us that is mostly sedentary during the day, finding time to move is important.

I’m a fan of keeping it simple - running, walking or yoga. Things that I can do at or from home, and don’t require much equipment.

I’m also a big advocate of being in nature if you can - so even a spot of yoga in the garden can do it, although I’m lucky to have the sea only 5 minutes away so I often surf or swim to shake off the day.

6. Meditate or try a spot of Yoga Nidra

You’ve almost certainly heard of meditation, and know that it has been proven again and again to be supportive to relaxation and stress management. There are masses of easily accessible resources such as headspace and calm that provide short guided meditations and are a great route into meditation if you’re new to it.

You may not however have heard of Yoga Nidra - yoga nidra is a form of “guided yogic sleep”, designed to help your brain slip into a state of delta brain waves - those that are usually found during deep regenerative sleep. The research into Yoga Nidra is less extensive than that into meditation, however results are compelling, with increased levels of dopamine, reduced anxiety and improved sleep.

What I love especially about Yoga Nidra is that it’s incredibly accessible - I use recordings by Ally Boothroyd (she has a bunch for free on Youtube), and I also use sessions from Zuna Yoga (where I did my yoga teacher training which included an exploration of Yoga Nidra).

7. Have a great plan

When you feel all is in hand, it’s exponentially easier to relax. That’s why my final tip on how to relax as an entrepreneur is to have a robust plan. Ideally start with a yearly plan, but from there you can break it down into quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily versions.

It can take some time to get your planning right - at the beginning I was too ambitious and my plan made me more, rather than less stressed, but over time, you begin to refine and understand what’s manageable. It’s rarely a problem to reprioritise and push something back to the next day, week, month or quarter, indeed some things you may well decide don’t need to be done at all.

The one rule that I have for my planning is that I won’t squeeze more stuff into it. Now I’m not always the best at keeping to this, but I try, so if I have a new idea I put it into the following week/ month/ quarter and then analyse against the other things I’d already planned to do to see what’s possible and what needs to be deprioritised.

So there you have it - my top tips to help you relax as an entrepreneur.

Oh, before I go, let me share a final one with you - let your website take the strain!

A well designed website linking to a great workflow can automise loads of your work leaving you much more time and energy for what’s important.

Need some help with that? Get in touch.

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