How are you feeling right now? Overwhelmed? Exhausted? Burnt out?

If that sounds like you, keep reading!

What if you reframed self care as a crucial step for you to feel and perform at your best?

How would you feel knowing you had the time, energy and focus to reach your potential? 

There’s good science backing up why you should flip your thinking.

Many of us view ‘self-care’ such as meditation and movement as a nice add-on to your life but something we can do without.

The lightbulb moment for me came during a visit to Kamalaya, an award winning holistic health retreat on Koh Samui in Thailand.

During a session with one of the life mentors Sujay, we discussed why so many of us put self-care and stress management at the bottom of our to-do lists, instead of the top.

In the past, working too hard without adequate support and recovery led to a severe episode of burnout and I really didn’t want that to happen again!

Sujay explained how the state of your nervous system directly impacts how well your brain functions.

One of the leading researchers on this topic is Dr Judith Willis, a neuroscientist from UCLA.

She studies how your nervous system impacts brain function, particularly focused on  learning.

Her research finds when you are stressed and in fight, flight or freeze mode, your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that controls executive function and decision making, stops working properly.

As she explains, stress activates the amygdala- the fear or emotion switching station in the brain, and it stops information getting through.

When I talked about this concept with Sujay at Kamalaya, it made me think – how can you make good business decisions if the part of the brain you need to do that is offline?

How can you be the best version of yourself, if you are always overwhelmed?

How can you know what to prioritise, how to plan strategy and what to say no to?

Instead, research shows we do our best, most creative thinking, when we allow our minds to wander.

When we switch off our attention with the outside world and become introspective, ‘the default mode network’ regions in the brain become more active.

HERE is one interesting paper for you to dig into the science.)

And that’s when the magic happens. 

Kamalaya was the perfect place for me to do some deep work. 

There’s beautiful water everywhere you look, a nourishing whole food diet, body treatments to unlock stored stress and sessions with life mentors like Sujay to dig deeper into emotional blocks and resistance. 

I was able to focus internally on my vision for the next 12 months and map out the daily practices I needed to embed to stay calm and regulated.

So now when I schedule in movement, meditation, rest and recovery, I don’t think of it as ‘self-care’.

I think of it as an integral part of my business strategy to ensure I can serve the clients I work with, in the long term.

And you can too!

Remember, your long term success depends on strategies for peak performance. 

And that’s the micro-habits you embed each day to give you a leading edge.

You follow me on Instagram and watch a video of my visit to Kamalaya here

What self-care practice is non-negotiable for your peak performance?

Take care, Soph