Last week, at the Ted Baker x The Forum Women's History Month event, The Forum's CEO Paulina Cameron asked Blume's CEO Karen Danudjaja and I to share some highlights and hard moments, as women entrepreneurs, from the last few rollercoaster years – and to discuss how we kept our mindset positive.
Below, I'll share my answers – and I'd love to hear yours:
What has been a recent professional highlight for you?
What has been a recent professional hard moment for you?
What did you do to keep your mindset positive?
My professional highlights:
Welcoming 34 incredible guests to my largest wellness retreat ever at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel in January!
Travelling to Los Angeles for a week in February to participate in Wonderwell's Big Leap book-planning retreat – and getting many, many steps closer to my dream of writing a book!
Welcoming 12 amazing women leaders to my sold out Spring 2023 Women's Coaching Circle in March!
My professional hard moments:
Returning to work, after nearly 3 years of mat leave, on March 1, 2020... only to resume full-time childcare for nearly another year and having to pivot my in-person business to an online platform
Learning how to manage a growing business as a solo entrepreneur while keeping my business hours within kindergarten time so I can still do pick-up, drop-off, afternoon activities, and serve an early dinner
Committing to prioritizing my Zone of Genius by practicing my AM rituals, fiercely protecting my time in the mornings, and being much more efficient with the rest of my professional and household duties
How I keep my mindset constructive (and YOU can too):
(I prefer the word constructive to positive as sometimes negative thinking can also help us move forward by illuminating what's not working)
AM/PM rituals
The way I begin and end each day is critical to maintaining a constructive mindset.
From our 5pm dinnertime on, I begin to wind down and prepare myself for an amazing sleep by reducing my mental, physical, nutritional and light stress, and spending time in the serene sanctuary of my bathroom and bedroom.
My PM rituals help me sleep well and wake up naturally around 5am so that I have about 90 minutes to myself to move, meditate and journal before my daughter wakes up and we begin our family AM rituals of cuddling, playing, breakfast, dog walk, and walking or biking to school.
Anti-sedentary revolution
Physical activity is one of the best ways to manage stress, support immunity and spark creativity, so I weave movement throughout my day – with an AM workout and dog walk, active transport to school, little bursts of housework to break up the time sitting at my computer, afternoon dog walk, active transport from school, and usually another playground play, neighbourhood walk, yoga practice, swim date, or bike ride.
Love, gratitude and abundance
Our brain's negativity bias makes it really easy to catalogue and focus on everything that's bad, but simple practices like connecting with people you love, writing down what you're grateful for, and taking inventory of everything that's good, can grow what I call your "positivity antennae" so that you can maintain a more accurate and positive big-picture mindset.
Wishing you many more highlights and a constructive mindset to get you through the hard times.