My third tip of the week as part of Women’s Wellness Week, encouraging everyone out there to #bekindtoyou…

Tip 3: Have an early night

A very wise man once said to me that “tiredness is a state of mind”.  I went away and thought about this for a while.  Once I’d processed it I realised that he was right.  Tiredness is a state of mind, just like anything else – motivation, happiness, sadness… We can choose how we feel in any given moment.  Since then, I can honestly say that I have genuinely felt a lot less tired.  However, it’s fair to say that I’m not superhuman and sometimes the busy-ness of life catches up with me.

It’s quite ironic that I’m writing this blog post now actually.  It is currently nearly 11pm on a Wednesday night (way past my usual midweek 10pm self-imposed curfew/bedtime).  I have been up since 5am this morning, travelled from Stafford to London, seen a full day of clients at Harley Street, attended a work-related evening event (more about that in a future blog post) and answered numerous emails and messages I’ve received throughout the day.  So today I’m admitting that I’m feeling a bit tired.

I know that I’ll be starting to feel the effects even more in the morning, when I get up at 5am once again to make sure I’m at my office earlier than normal so I can see a client that I couldn’t fit in earlier on in the week.  By the time I arrive at Harley Street I’ll have had breakfast, woken up properly, my brain will be fully functioning and I’ll feeling much better and ready to help my clients achieve what they want to achieve.

There will then be two further clients to see before I travel back to Stafford to get home in time to collect my girls from school, listen to and chat with them about their anecdotes from their day, do some reading/homework with them and (along with my partner) feed them, bath them and put them to bed.  I will then spend my evening preparing for more clients the next day.

I’m absolutely not complaining – I love what I do and am happy to do what I need to do to accommodate my clients, because I want to.

I’m perfectly ok with my work-life balance.

But I suspect that many of you aren’t.  Does the above schedule sound familiar?

So many of you, regardless of your current family / work / financial / relationship situation, do this exact same thing.  You get up early and you go to bed late, trying to make the most of the hours you have in between to get everything done that you need to do so that you can get up again the morning and do it all over again.

Stop.

That load of washing?  It can wait.

Those emails?  They can wait.

#bekindtoyou.

Have an early night.