Being self-employed and her own boss, Claire felt like she was living the dream. She got to work her own hours, pick and choose the projects she worked on, and put in as much time and energy as she wanted. But it was not all fun and games. Claire found there was a lot of self-discipline and hard work involved. Not only that, there was no Big Boss providing her with clear instructions for success and no one telling her to go home if she stayed at the office too late.
When Claire finished year twelve, she had found herself aimless. She tried a few different career options, but nothing seemed to fit. Eventually Claire decided to go to university, hoping that by studying something that interested her, she would find a career fit. Going to university worked and Claire decided to start her own business in marketing and IT.
Finishing her undergraduate degree, Claire was invited to do Honours but as it wasn’t offered by distance, she decided to enrol in a masters course instead. Towards the end of her masters, Claire was in a car accident and ended up bedridden for months. By the time she recovered enough to work, Claire was not feeling up to starting her own business. Instead she took a full-time office job working with a friend, until she felt ready to work on her dream of having her own business.
Claire changed companies and started working part-time for the new company, and as she felt ready, part-time on her own business. The first thing Claire did at this point, was read blogs and articles with tips for how to stay focussed and driven when working alone. She thought her biggest hurdle was going to be how to avoid the temptation to stay in pyjamas all day and watch cartoons, instead of becoming successful. Boy was she wrong!
Claire followed all the helpful tips and tricks she had read about to stay on track when self-employed. She was working on rebranding her business and gaining momentum. Everything was going well until she was asked to take on a second role at work and go full-time temporarily. In retrospect Claire should have said no, or at the very least put her own business on the backburner for a few months, but she didn’t – and it was a mess.
It might be a personality flaw of Claire’s or it might be something all self-employed folk have in common, but Claire discovered what an extremely driven person she was, with a very strong internal locus of control. When put in a situation where she was working two roles for one company and working on her own business, she ended up spending way too much time and energy on work and absolutely none on taking care of her own wellbeing.
Claire started getting sick and tired all the time and stopped doing either of her jobs well. She decided it was just burn out and shrugged it off as being temporary, telling herself ‘it will be fine when I go back to part-time work’, but eventually a doctor told Claire that she was having a bad flare-up of myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome) and needed to rest. Again, Claire shrugged this off as being temporary, ignoring it until things got worse. Claire ended up being made redundant, and back in bed unable to work on her own business.
At first, Claire blamed having a full-time job as well as working on her own business, for her health problems, but she knows now that even if she had been working solely on my own her own business, the outcome would have been the same. The problem wasn’t any of her jobs, the problem was herself.
Once Claire realised and accepted that fact, she started to make self-care a priority. Claire wrote a list of things she would be able to do daily to look after herself and shifted her focus from being successful in business to being successful in life.
Being self-employed, it is important to stay focussed and motivated, but it’s just as important, if not more, to focus on self-care. Claire is now in a good place with her health. She has changed her habits and mindset to balance work and self-care, and she feels confident she is succeeding.
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Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash
Elliana Jones
Elliana Jones is a business owner and designer from Canberra, Australia.
She owns a web design and marketing business. The aim is to help small/micro businesses and individuals set up and manage their web presence. Elliana can help from start to finish, with her services including web hosting and domain management, web site creation, branding, marketing and social media,
Claire also co-owns a mug design and printing business.
The company was created by two hipster eco-nerds trying to save the world one coffee at a time. Their mugs are printed to order and dishwasher safe.
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