How to balance wellbeing and career success

Neglecting to care for your wellbeing while pursuing your career makes everyday living difficult. Even those tasks that would usually be simple can be morphed into the most stressful task, simply because you’re mentally overwhelmed. We can’t stress enough just how important it is to look after yourself. In addition, being naturally driven to achieve more can add extra pressure to reach your career goals. It’s a Catch-22. 

Before we go into the tips you can utilise to take care of your wellbeing, it’s crucial to speak on mental health. If you are struggling, the key action is to ask for help – speak to a local councillor or call free helplines in your community. Doing it alone will amplify your problems. You are not alone. 

For those who feel like you may be burning out or get bouts of stress-induced anxiety, we will be elaborating on the steps you can take to put focus on your wellbeing in order to be your best self in your career. These include sparing time for just yourself, whether that’s spending time zoning out to Netflix with a wine, investing in new workwear or corporate work clothing, or practicing mindfulness.

Undertake self-care

Self-care looks different for everyone. But it’s extremely important that you do take some sort of action for yourself. Flowers require being watered before they can bloom. The same goes for you and your career. As the saying goes, the grass is greener where you water it. Self care could be anything from lounging around with a face mask on, watching Netflix, to getting coffee and doing a high-intensity exercise. It really is up to you, what you prefer and what you know reduces your personal stress. 

In order to figure out what gives you true peace, analyze the acts that calm you down. It’s important you don’t do things that give you temporary highs and then revert to more stress and lows afterwards, like that of having a boozy night out. It’s all about balance and ensuring you are actually undertaking self care that eases your mind long term. 

Each act of self-care could vary depending on how you feel at the time too. Let’s say you have been working long hours and are lacking in sleep. Your weekend could consist of resting, watching movies and sleeping. Or if you haven’t had friend time in a while, and have been lounging around watching movies too much in your spare time, organize going out to dinner or a weekend away with a friend. 

Some acts of self-care can even be multitasking with taking actions for your career, too. For instance, investing in suitable and flattering workwear to make yourself feel better. It’s scientifically proven that if you feel confident in how you look, your work performance will improve. There are appropriate uniform clothing stores which exclusively stock work clothes and corporate clothing. 

Set smaller goals for yourself

They say if you reach for the moon, you’ll land among the stars. That’s not always the case – and you may just end up right where you started. Yes, it’s important to have an end goal in mind, however, you need to take small steps to get there. Only focusing on the big goals will result in feeling so stressed that the smaller tasks feel impossible. Think – if you tell yourself you are going to work out every single day next week for one hour but it gets to the second day and you have very little energy.  So you end up putting it off altogether. You could instead think to yourself, ahh, let’s just go for a 15 minute walk around the block. That smaller task has ended up gaining better results than the big goal of daily workouts. 

Pro tip – treat yourself after you surpass these small goals to train your mind into getting more done while caring for your wellbeing. It could be something as small as a cup of tea or watching a Youtube video. 

Practice mindfulness

Focussing on the present moment is described as mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness avoids you from worrying about the future and feeling down about the past. It is the one thing psychologists advise to do each day. You may have in fact heard successful business owners and celebrities actually incorporate mindfulness into their daily routine, despite being so busy. 

This is because it directly improves your wellbeing so you can function better throughout the remainder of your day. 

Twenty minutes a day of no screen time while focusing on your breathing is recommended as a minimum, while forty minutes of meditation or saying a little prayer is even better. With these tips on hand, your mental wellbeing can be greatly improved. 
As a final pointer, remember, in order to be successful in your career, you need to put some time into yourself. Put time into self care such as reading a book, going on a walk or taking a bath. Treat yourself with items that act as either rewards or help to improve your confidence. Dedicate time to mindfulness as well as time to your physical state by using uniform clothes shops as inspiration for workwear, or corporate work clothing.