In today’s episode, we’re talking about Women Entrepreneur’s Mindset and how to set boundaries that protect your mental health and mindset.
IE 189: Women Entrepreneur’s Mindset with Shamyra Parker
As female entrepreneurs, we have to be aware of the mindset we take into our days. We tend to be overthinkers and to beat ourselves up for any little mistake we make.
Shamyra Parker is a self-care advocate who serves women in leadership, with a special emphasis on black women in leadership positions.
Shamyra focuses on giving them a mental makeover; showing them how to make self-care a non-negotiable so they are emotionally whole and no longer suffering in silence. Suffering largely leads to fatigue and burnout.
Mindset, Self-Care, and Mental Health
Mindset, self-care, and mental health are all tied together. There can be no health without mental health. It is a part of everything we do.
Our mindset is tied to our mental health. Do we tend to catastrophize events in our minds? Are we chronic overthinkers? Do we tend to struggle with analysis paralysis?
Self-care is how we address the things in our lives that lead to analysis paralysis, overwhelm, and stress. We can choose to nourish ourselves or deplete ourselves.
The 7 Areas That Challenge Us as Women Entrepreneurs
There are 7 areas dealing with mindset that women leaders and entrepreneurs find challenging:
- Fear
- Confusion
- Isolation
- Overwhelm
- Guilt
- Self-doubt
- Time
The one out of this list that hit me the most was isolation.
Now, more than ever, we are alone and isolated. Even if we have team members in our business, we can’t be in the same room with them. It’s hard to seek out community during a pandemic.
It’s tough to be a solo entrepreneur. Reaching out and building healthy support systems is crucial to building a positive and healthy mindset. This applies to everything on the list, not just isolation.
Having a mentor to connect you with resources is so important. Everyone needs a coach to push you to a healthy mindset. Your mindset will either facilitate or hinder your success. There is no in-between.
Self-Awareness and Creating Boundaries
One of the first things Shamyra encourages women to start thinking about is their self-awareness when it comes to their needs.
Most women don’t even take the time to sit down and figure out what they are feeling and what they need. They just focus on doing what they have to do.
Once they become self-aware, Shamyra teaches them how to create boundaries.
Boundaries help you as you navigate your work and home life. Something as simple as, when you get overwhelmed, you need to rest but not quit. Boundaries open the door to a healthier mindset.
There are 4 different types of boundaries:
- Digital boundaries
- Physical boundaries
- Emotional boundaries
- Work/life boundaries
You can follow Shamyra on Instagram to hear her talking about digital boundaries. She is working through a series on these different types of boundaries on her IGTV.
One of Shamyra’s main digital boundaries was to not be 100% accessible at all times.
We live in a time where instant gratification has gotten out of hand. People think they should be able to get ahold of you at any time of the day through social media, text messages, emails, etc.
People will only understand your boundaries if you communicate them well.
Facilitating a Culture That Supports Mental Health
When you have an organization, whether it’s your own or one that you are a part of, when the environment and culture are set, that is what people will follow.
Facilitating a culture that supports mental health and self-care means that you are advocating for these things as being important. They matter and they are important to you; they are not just an afterthought.
Your bottom line is largely affected by mental health. Mental health has to do with how people are taking care of themselves… or not.
You have to set your business up in a way that supports mental health and self-care in order to reach your goals. Grinding and grinding will only lead to burnout.
If you are healthy, your business will be healthy.
Become Proactive in Your Self-Care
You want to be in a proactive space of implementing self-care. You don’t want to only practice self-care after you experience an anxiety attack like I did.
Being proactive by coming to a place of self-awareness and creating those boundaries is so important. You want to scale before you absolutely need to scale.
Schedule one day a month to really take care of yourself. Set up blocks of time for set tasks so that you aren’t just running yourself ragged all day long.
Find out what you need and become uncompromising in your self-care. If you don’t do this, you can’t be successful and your health will suffer. Period.
Self-care won’t happen by accident.
It has to be practiced in order to become a habit, and it has to become a habit in order to be cemented as a lifestyle change. That is how you get to long-term sustainability which will largely contribute to the success of any business.
The Mental Makeover
Shamyra’s Mental Makeovers begin with her asking women these questions:
- Are you ready to show up for yourself the way you show up for and serve others?
- Are you ready to actually reclaim your time and create meaningful margin in your life and calendar, to do what, and spend time with, who you love?
- Are you ready to upgrade your self-care practices from awesome to amazing?
If you said yes to any of those things, you need a mental makeover.
A mental makeover takes you through the process of understanding why you aren’t doing those things so you can move into a place of practicing them.
Our self-care has to become purposeful in order for us to do it.
By the time you get to the end of the 4-week session with Shamyra, you’ll have a customized self-care plan based on your lifestyle needs that will make it easy for you to prioritize self-care.
If you need a better plan to nourish yourself and recharge, reach out to Shamyra at https://bornboundless.com/pages/mental-makeover-masterclass.
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