I had been thinking about starting a newsletter for years but I made excuses. Then I wrote this LinkedIn post talking about how my health changed overnight and the number of women who contacted me saying they were also going through a similar experience literally lit the fire I needed to kick it off.
In those messages there was a theme I recognized in myself. Things like:
"I've been thinking about looking into it"
or
"It's been bothering me for years"
or
"I've been wanting to see a naturopath"
So many of us have been putting up with sh*t or making excuses for years.
Sometimes we can be our own worst advocates.
What happens when you do one thing for you.
When I had my first panic attack on July 13th this year it was one of the worst nights of my life. The next day, with the crushing anxiety, I felt like my brain had been completely rewired and someone else was in control. It impacted every aspect of my life β consumed me during the day and tortured me at night with insomnia.
I became desperate for relief.
When I finally found some relief weeks later through a daily progesterone prescription and started to feel more like myself again, I vowed that I was going to do whatever it took to put my health first going forward.
Let's just say I kicked off my #WellnessEra
I started with reading The Menopause Reset by Dr. Mindy Pelz and made a list of everything she recommended (28 items). Then I went through the list to see what I could apply to my life in the next 7 days. From there I took three steps:
- Booked a chiropractic appointment: It had been over 3 years since my last one as I kept putting it off. According Pelz "a chiropractic adjustment also prompts the brain to move from a place of flight-or-fight into a place of hope and possibility."
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- Committed to daily walks: It became my non negotiable and with my new anxiety clawing at my mind and body, I literally could not function without a sanity walk. Even if it was just 1km around my block, it was 1km more than I would have done before. It's a win.
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- Made supplements part of my routine: I took supplements sporadically because I didn't really believe they worked. Now I prioritize it as part of my morning and sleep routine because I feel the difference when using the right supplements for me (Magnesium Threonate, Gaba, Iron + Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D daily. Of course, this is not medical advice.)
These are simple things but I had put them off for YEARS.
I realized that once you starting doing one thing for yourself and start feeling just a little bit better, it gives you the momentum you need to take another step.
The first step is the hardest.
Why do we make it so hard on ourselves?
As a CEO and mother of two teens, the daily schedule is busy but I also have the privilege of building it in a way that works for me. I realized that my back-to-back meetings that made for 10+ hours days was something I had control over. The relentless work ethic comes from my belief that unless I push harder, I wasn't growing β no pain, no gain.
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Blame it on my competitive swimming days. Or being raised by a Mexican mother who sacrificed everything to make my life better. Whatever it was, it was going to kill me.
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Work ethic is not the problem I see with other founders, leaders and ambitious women. It's the taking time for ourselves that we seem to stumble with.
And I believe it comes from this belief that we have to always be pushing, driving, striving, doing.
But the irony is that sometimes the most productive and strategic thing we can do for ourselves, our business, our work, is to rest.
And rest can actually be movement or a cold plunge with friends or finally booking that chiropractic or hair appointment you've put off. The goal, I'm learning, is to find something that brings you energy and fills your bucket and that you can do consistently as part of your daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly routine.
Similar to building wealth, building wellness requires the compounding of good routines over time.β
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Things I've Found Useful This Month
βThe Liz Earle Wellbeing Show Podcast. Linking hormonal changes and anxiety that made sense to me and had me nodding yes! to so many aspects of it.
βThe New Menopause by Mary Claire Haver, MD and The Menopause Manifesto by Dr Jen Gunter. Both hugely valuable with providing context to what's happening to our bodies for women 35+ and how we can move forward without suffering.
I really enjoyed this easy to listen to Anti Anxiety Spotify playlist.
Part of my #WellnessEra includes learning how to best fuel a body when dealing with changing hormones and to lose a bit of my startup founder weight (20 lbs!) I've put on over the last 4 years. There's so much to know about macros, calories, fasting etc and I'm finding that Carb Manager combines it all and makes it super easy to track my meals. My favourite part is being able to easily scan a barcode to get all the nutritional details. If you're looking for an easy to use food tracker, I highly recommend. It's opened up my eyes to what I'm putting my mouth!
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Stay Well Friends π€
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If you found what you read valuable, please share with someone you care about or send me a note. makeher is a labour of love because I believe that women deserve to feel good, build wealth and wellness, and create a life that inspires them. This often means challenging the status quo and flipping some tables. I'm here for that.
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What to expect? I send out just one email on the first day of each month but if you don't feel this newsletter is for you, that's ok. Just know that I'll miss you.
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