"I started taking time every morning to meditate, run or work with weights and making sure that when I was home I did something for myself - getting my nails done or going for a walk or seeing friends"
DonnaElliott
North East-based Donna Elliott and Cheryl Lee are Mindset & Leadership Experts and Founders of 'Now is Your Time' - they are two powerhouse business women who’ve worked together for 10 years, having cut their teeth working in high level corporate leadership roles.
Donna and Cheryl are not only colleagues but best friends and ‘soul sisters’ the duo believe that through sharing their life lessons with the world and being brave enough to be their authentic selves, alongside sharing their knowledge gained from their leadership roles, they will empower other successful career women to feel inspired enough to do the same as they grow their mission of supporting over 1 million women globally by 2021, who may have been faced with dark, difficult and challenging times to help more to see that ‘Now Is Your Time’.
Donna said; “It so important to be real and authentic, this is why both Cheryl and I share our own stories to hopefully help, inspire, encourage and empower other women.
"I felt all of these pressures in my successful corporate career when I had to balance weekly travel, leadership responsibilities for a huge team and Company KPI’s, with being Mammy to a small child, a wife etc. The constant pull of the needs of others alongside the demanding roles I juggled and being on call 24/7 took it’s toll with me gaining weight, drinking wine to relax and working more and more hours to try to ‘get on top’ of things. When I realised that all I was doing was running myself into the ground and I took back control of myself, recognising that the job was always going to be challenging and feeling guilty about not being at home wasn’t going to change things. So I started taking time every morning to meditate, run or work with weights and making sure that when I was home I did something for myself - getting my nails done or going for a walk or seeing friends…and parking the guilt. From there, even though the job remained demanding, I was in a far better place to be able to deal with it and my family have a lot more fun with me because I felt so much better in myself.... I loved ME and this improved my health massively.”
In the run up to Valentine's Day this incredible duo are encourging thier clients and others to take some time to focus on self care and loving ‘YOU’.
Here are thier Top 5 Self-Care and Self-Love Strategies:
1. Make Self-care a Priority and Non-negotiable - Whatever your preferred self-care thing is (meditation, walking, socialising, spa, facial…) make sure that it hold a priority position in your diary. It may sometimes need to be moved but it doesn’t get cancelled. It’s an important meeting with the CEO - YOU!
2. Balance - Be clear about what drains your energy and what makes you feel good. Where possible ensure that you’re offsetting challenging things with additional self-care that day and ideally, not having those activities close to the time you go home.
3. Communication - Communicate clearly with your family why your self-care is important and help them see what they get from it to. Start this process with yourself too - make sure that you’re internal dialogue with yourself about your self-care priorities is positive and uplifting!
4. Perspective - Minimise stress at work by seeing things differently. So instead of dreading travel for example, what are the benefits of having that time away, what will you gain from it? This will help to minimise your stress and therefore your self-care routine will be so much more pleasurable as you aren’t as stressed going into it.
5. Ditch the Guilt - Ditch the guilt for taking time out for yourself. You can’t give from an empty cup so know that when you’re taking time for yourself, you’re effectively investing in making sure you have more to give to those around you.
‘Now Is Your Time’ - Focus on Self Care and loving ‘You’ this Valentine’s Day. To find out more about Donna and Cheryl, please visit https://www.nowisyourtimeto.com/ or connect via Facebook https://www.facebook.com/nowisyourtimeto/
