Last week I was away on retreat with one of my mentors, Sarah Thomson from Online Social Butterfly. The retreat was made specifically for us ladies to be able to spend time to relax, recharge and get pampered. This is my 2nd post about retreat. If you want to read the first one, you can read it here.

We had a ‘house Mum’, Sharee, who was absolutely amazing. Sharee looked after all our meals and snacks, cleaned up after us and made us tea & coffee. In theory, this is amazing right!!

In reality, this was hard. It was hard to let go of the usual responsibility that we have at home with our family. Hard to ask someone else to make me a cup of tea or coffee. It was hard to not clean up after myself and stack the dishwasher / unstack the clean dishwasher. What I realised is that whilst we ‘take time off’ from our work, we never really get to take time off our other responsibilities, so we are still filled with the busyness of life.

Further than the time to relax, we were also pampered on retreat!

Sarah had organised a branding shoot with the amazing AJ Harrington, and she blessed us with hair and makeup too. We had a day of hair, make-up and photos.

It was amazing, and not something that I would have booked for myself.

This made is even more special for me!

Melissa from MelissaMade with Love ran a self-care workshop with us too. Melissa took us through giving ourselves a facial with her beautiful products. Her catch phrase we all took away from the workshop is ‘just 10 more seconds’. 10 more seconds of being present whilst washing our face. Just 10 more seconds of being present whilst putting on our face-cream. Take 10 seconds to give ourselves a hand rub with hand cream. It is about taking the time and effort to stay in the moment and take a pause, and remind ourselves that we are worthy of taking that little bit of extra time and worthy of self care.

So, here is the second nugget I received from attending the Biz Besties Retreat with Sarah Thomson.

WE NEED TO ALLOW OURSELVES THE TIME TO RELAX AND THE SPACE TO COMPLETELY SWITCH OFF.

Unfortunately, we don’t often get to go on a 4 day retreat to get that time to relax and switch off… but we do all have time in our calendars that we can use to prioritise ourselves. Giving ourselves that time to reset and recalibrate will look differently for everyone…

Here are some ideas that I find helpful for me;

• Go for a walk in nature. Allow yourself to listen and pay attention to the sounds of nature. Fom the crashing of the waves to the rustling of the wind in the trees. Then there is the joy of listening to the songs of the birds. There is something relaxing & restorative about being in nature.
• Get some pampering done – get your nails done, go for a foot massage, or give yourself a facial. You could go for a float. Have a sauna session, or even run a bath with some luxe bubble bath and a candle.
• Do some journaling. I find that by sitting down and doing a brain dump of everything going on in my head frees my head up. Releasing all the things I’m worried about, or the things in my head that I need to do is a good way to release the tension that I am feeling.
• Spend some time to be quiet / meditate. Giving ourselves time to think and chew over some concepts. Giving ourselves time to process the things that are going on in our lives is super important. I love to sit in our garden and just ‘be’ and think. These are often the times where I contemplate my journey and the things going on in my life. The things I am always ‘too busy’ to do normally.
• Allow yourself the time and energy to feel your feels and process your emotions. It was kindly pointed out to me by my counsellor a few weeks ago that I tend to sweep my emotions under the rug and focus on the ‘positives’. Apparently this isn’t a healthy way of dealing with our emotions… who would have thought… lol
• Read a book that has nothing to do with business. I love to read clean romance novels, or suspense mysteries. These give me time away to transport into a story. Another great option is to listen to stories on Audible and do something with your hands. I love to do jigsaw puzzles whilst listening to an audiobook.
• Spend some time with people who fill your cup, not take from it. I often feel wonderful after spending time with some specific people in my life, as they encourage and inspire me.

I’d love to know how you look after yourself and how you are making time to relax as a small business owner. For those with kids and the summer school holidays almost upon us, how will you take some time for you to relax and recharge?

Cheers to Relaxing & Recharging!! Mel x