Tag Archive for: wellness

The High Value of A Deeper Reset from Work This Summer

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reset from work this summerSpring is upon us, and chances are you’re already planning your vacation days away from the office this summer. If the mix of life, work, and the world has you longing for more than a fleeting getaway, it’s the moment for a deeper reset.

A retreat, focused on reconnecting with yourself, can bring rejuvenation and clarity and be a huge antidote to overwhelm and burnout. Especially if you’ve begun to question your current career trajectory, or simply how you navigate your priorities within it, taking a step back to check in with yourself is invaluable, and can bring you back to your deeper resources of inner power.

Are your life and work aligned with who you are now, what you value, and what you find most fulfilling? Do you still want what you once thought you wanted, when it comes to the career choices you are making? No matter what the answers may be, taking a pause to gain perspective will bring clarity to the path.

A retreat isn’t just about pressing pause; it’s about resetting, realigning, and stepping back into life and all of your choices with renewed vision and energy.

1) Take a break from distractions.

Social media overload? As executive and leadership coach Nicki Gilmour writes, “In a world overflowing with distractions, tapping into your own voice and ignoring nonsense is a powerful act of self-care and productivity.”

In a week-long retreat, full of relaxing and beautiful surroundings, nurturing and connective gatherings, and therapeutic body treatments, you’ll spend far less time on your phone and receive the benefits of digital detoxing – such as better mental health and better sleep – as you turn the noise way down.

2) Be nurtured and rest your decision-making.

Vacations from work can be fun, but they often leave you just as exhausted as when you left. At a women’s retreat, you can relax into simply being a guest and being nurtured by your hostess, the retreat center, and your surroundings.

Retreat activities like meditation, yoga, and somatic movement can help to relieve stress from the body. Even brief retreats have been shown to reduce stress and anxiety levels and improve biological markers of inflammation. A women’s retreat will also remind you that self-care is not something you prioritize for one week.

3) Get out of the well-oiled thought loops.

Do you ever feel like your mind is on repeat? In a given day, up to 90% of your thoughts are repetitive, and this reinforces the same beliefs, sense of self, habits, and choices. This makes it difficult to tune in. By stepping into a different context, usually outside of your comfort zone, you disrupt your habitual thought patterns.

At a retreat, you can also rest your decision fatigue and responsibilities, and relax into an experience curated to allow spaciousness and reflection. When you clear the busyness, new rhythms and insights arise.

4) Reconnect with your body’s wisdom.

The office can push you to live in your head and disconnect from your physical self, even when it comes to overriding your body’s natural rhythms for rest and play. At a retreat, you will get out of your mind and move into your body and your heart. When you do, you have more access to feel what you really feel, be as you really are, and sense what you want to create in your life now.

Whether breathing, meditation, tai chi, yoga, or somatic movement, a women’s retreat will encourage you to connect with the rich and embodied insight that lives in your being and cellular awareness. You have the space to establish the feminine connection with your deep knowing and intuition. You become more aware of how life wants to uniquely move through you, so you can embrace a more heart-led adventure.

5) Put down roles and get back to your essence.

High level professional woman wear so many hats, sometimes it can feel like you simply go from one role to the next, faster than you can change them, which leads to craving time for yourself. Who are you beneath the identities, labels, and real and perceived expectations?

Who were you before them, who are you with them, and what of yourself have you put away? A retreat helps you detach and remember your essence. This often includes remembering vivid energies that have gone dormant in the push and pull.

6) Discern your inner voice from your energetic ecosystem.

What we don’t realize is how much the energetic eco-system is determining how we live. It’s easy to fall into living life from the outside-in simply based on consensus. Similar to the notion we are the average of the people we spend the most time with, your beliefs, mentality, values, ways to spend time and money, and sense of possibilities are impacted by what is normalized in your culture and immediate social circle.

Stepping away and listening within gives you space from outside influences to discern your own heart and values. You unearth the truths poking at you from under the surface, guiding you to live from the inside-out. Sometimes this includes admitting what you know but are trying to deny knowing.

7) Get distance from habitual socializing.

It’s easy to slide into routines of social contracts with others whether a partner, co-workers, or friends. You create blueprints related to how you spend time together, what you talk about, what you do, what you eat or drink together. Which of these things enrich you, and which are simply habits you’re going along with?

When away from your usual social routines, and engaging in nourishing activities which reconnect you with yourself, you begin to consider if your habitual social dynamics resonate with who you are now. Do they fill you up? Or are some things ready to go so you can cultivate more of what nurtures and enlivens you?

8) Experience next level support from other women.

A third of daily speech is small talk. In a women’s retreat, you are given the opportunity to immerse in far more than surface chats. Because when you get a bunch of women in the same room who are asking deeper questions or focusing on reconnecting with themselves, the conversation changes, and it impacts the conversation you have with yourself, too.

Another advantage of going on a women’s retreat is nobody has preconceptions of who you are. You have a space to explore openly. The level of trust and authenticity able to be built between a group of women is amazing. Far more nourishing than networking is a room in which all agendas are checked – and you can be seen, heard, and validated for who you are.

9) Shift your perspective on life.

While a change of scenery brings a fresh outlook, a transformational women’s retreat challenges your perceptions at a deeper level. Our perceptions define much of our life experience, but how many of the lenses you carry about yourself and the world are serving you?

Within a women’s retreat focused on honing attention inwards, you may uncover limiting beliefs, outdated narratives, and hidden desires shaping your life which you no longer wish to ascribe to. Where are you still telling yourself you “should” or “need” to be or do or have something? Where are you committing to something you don’t actually want to?

10) Awaken to new possibilities.

Whether it’s a renewed sense of purpose, clarity about a life change, or simply remembering the connection to your inner voice, retreats unlock something powerful. Emboldened by the support of other women, you are more inclined to move from a place of possibility in your life.

If you’ve been in a liminal space, aware you are moving towards change but unclear of what it even is, a retreat can be a place that helps you to find more clarity and courage to begin making steps in a new direction.

More Than a Getaway—A Gateway to Your Inner Power

This summer, instead of another trip that fades into memory, why not embark on a journey that rejuvenates and transforms you from within? A women’s retreat isn’t just a trip away —it’s an invitation to return to yourself.

Aimee Hansen is founder and lead facilitator of Storyteller Within and is based on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. The Journey Into Sacred Expression women’s retreat has been recommended by Lonely Planet Wellness Escapes and The Write Life. Join her this summer amidst volcanic landscapes for a self-exploratory writing journey, meditation, yoga, movement and ceremonies on July 26 – August 4, 2025. Follow her and Storyteller Within on instagram.

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Why Self-Care Matters Most In Leadership (Yes, for you too!)

You know the first things you are quick to sacrifice when it comes to meeting all the demands of work (self-care, well-being, downtime)? Well they are the last things you should.

Self-care in leadershipIf you have been able to reach and stay at the executive level, then you are more likely to have learned that self-care is inextricable to leadership. You have ideally dropped the cultural self-sacrifice story a long time ago in your leadership journey.

A study of self-care among executive leadership in healthcare organizations found that “Leaders’ with high self-care ratings were likely to be from an organization with a high profit margin, while leaders with low ratings were likely to be either in their role for less than a year or from an organization with a lower profit margin.”

How much leaders practice self-care has a trickle down effect within organizations, and especially, in your own life and ability to show up.

Sacrificing Self-Care Benefits Nobody

We already know that playing the long hours game has a strong adverse impact on women’s short and long-term health relative to men. We know that a female-skewed over-conscientious approach to work can lead to emotional exhaustion. And research has shown that high work-related fatigue is even stronger for highly educated women.

Mindfulness researcher and author Jacqueline Carter shared with theglasshammer, “it was amazing to see how basically the higher you got in an organization, the higher the level of the executives, they all took time to exercise, they slept well, even despite ridiculous travel schedules and ridiculous scopes of jobs,” says Carter. “It was really clear that if you don’t start taking good care of yourself and setting good boundaries and saying no at an earlier level of your leadership journey, you’re gonna burn out.”

According to Harvard Business Review, “burnout cuts across executive and managerial levels…the major defining characteristic of burnout is that people can’t or won’t do again what they have been doing.” Identifiable characteristics include: “(1) chronic fatigue; (2) anger at those making demands; (3) self-criticism for putting up with the demands; (4) cynicism, negativity, and irritability; (5) a sense of being besieged; and (6) hair-trigger display of emotions.”

When in burnout, you lose your heart for where you’ve come to and where you’re at and what you’re doing.

Investment: Healthy You, Healthy Leadership

“I think there’s a mind-set shift that happens when people start to take this seriously, which is to go from seeing the investment of time in sleep, exercise, and mindfulness as a cost to thinking of it as an investment,” says Caroline Webb, senior adviser to McKinsey and author of How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life.

“In fact, it’s not just an investment that pays back long term, it’s an investment that pays back, all the evidence suggests, rather immediately,” says Webb. “The idea of that shift—that this is not down time, it’s simply investing in your ability to have more up time—is something which I’ve seen at the heart of everybody who makes a difference in the way that they’re living their lives, and also in the way that their teams around them are living their lives.”

The Value in Reset and Renewal

There are many ideas for how to incorporate self-care into your daily routine – such as meditation, being in nature, spending pockets of time in silence, drinking more water, starting a gratitude practice, scheduling your day to include work and non-work activities, practicing affirmations, getting massages and more. The thing is when you approach these things as something else on the task list to fit in when you’re already at overload, self-care can feel like yet another chore.

Research shows it can be valuable to step away from it all, take a bigger breath and dedicate attention for yourself to reset and renew. The right health-related vacation can shift things – it can bring you back to yourself, to open perspectives and return to a center of clarity and expansiveness, with benefits that last long beyond the time you spend away.

Research has shown that “individuals who attended a spiritual retreat for 7 days experienced changes in the dopamine and serotonin systems of the brain, which boosts the availability of these neurotransmitters” that relate to positive psychological effects. Additionally, meditation retreats have shown “large effects” on anxiety, depression, stress, mindfulness and compassion. Studies have also shown improvements in physical health, tension, and fatigue.

“A one-week wellness retreat (including many educational, therapeutic and leisure activities, and an organic, mostly plant-based diet),” according to a scientific study, “resulted in substantial improvements in everything from weight to blood pressure to psychological health – and sustained at six weeks (the last check-in point of the study).”

Beth McGroarty, director of research at the Global Wellness Institute, said to Travel Weekly, “in a wellness retreat, therapies/experiences often happen in concert and over multiple days, and combining them may have unique outcomes.”

As the research report states, “Retreat experiences provide a unique opportunity for people to escape from unhealthy routines and engage in healthy practices and activities that lead to immediate and sustained health benefits.”

For transparency, the writer of this article hosts women’s retreats, and my direct experience in facilitating a space in which a woman can connect with other women in vulnerability, return to her own center, show up from this place, and impact her own life trajectory is the inspiration for my personal commitment to this work.

No Matter How You Do It…

The bottom line is that no matter how you start or improve self-care – whether taking small moments for big impact changes in your daily routine or taking a bigger break away from it all to truly reset and renew – what’s most important, on all levels, is that you do.

Writer Bio:

Aimee Hansen, freelance writer for the theglasshammer, is the Creator and Facilitator of Storyteller Within Women’s Retreats, recommended by Lonely Planet Wellness Escapes. Since 2015, she has hosted nearly 150 women across 18 intimate retreat experiences. Her Journey Into Sacred Expression Retreats involve meditation, yoga, self-exploratory writing and sacred ceremonies, all in beautiful natural surroundings. She’ll be hosting two upcoming women’s retreat events this summer – in late June and late July – on the stunning Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, for women seeking self-renewal.

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Why Less Is More: Advice for Female Overachievers Everywhere

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By Aimee Hansen

With the recent International Women’s Day 2019 mantra being #Balanceforbetter, we have proof that giving less of yourself at work could be the best move for you and your career.

Being overly conscientious and accommodating in your work approach – which women are far more likely to be – may diffuse your energy and impact, without helping you advance in the office.

Overcoming the compulsion to overwork is about more than being mentally strategic and discerning with the work you do, though changing behaviors can change beliefs. The hardest part of choosing not to do too much may be riding through the emotional discomfort of not being as overly conscientious as you’re used to.

As girls and women, we’ve come to believe we have to work very hard not even to get ahead, but just to stay safe.

What did we really learn as girls at school?

“What if those same habits that propel girls to the top of their class — their hyper-conscientiousness about schoolwork — also hold them back in the work force?” writes Dr. Lisa Damour in the New York Times.

At school age, girls have the edge on performance and they also work harder, have greater discipline and perform better. Damour finds that girls are more likely to grind away and to leave as little as possible room for error. Anecdotally, it’s observed that boys are more likely to up their game if something slips, while girls are less likely to allow the possibility of slippage, holding the energy of maximum effort.

Damour writes, “We need to ask: What if school is a confidence factory for our sons, but only a competence factory for our daughters?” She asserts that with girls, we need to stop applauding ‘inefficient overwork’ and start rewarding ‘economy of effort’.

Part of this is encouraging girls to acknowledge how much they already know and then where to focus their mastery building, as opposed to only building up capacity for work. The confidence gap and stress gap between genders is only widened when girls and women put disproportionate stock in their ability to work extra hard, as opposed to their innate abilities to deliver good results.

We think we have to work harder (and we do) at work.

A study designed to monitor the impact of privacy filters on productivity at 3M also verified the suspicion that women employees work harder. “During a ten minute experimental trial, female employees worked longer without (2.5 minutes vs 2.1 minutes) or with (4.9 minutes vs 4.3 minutes) a privacy filter. 52 percent of male workers walked away during a waiting period while only 38 present of women did.

Across three decades of studies, professional women in both Britain and the United States are also significantly more likely than male peers to agree to the statement “My job requires that I work very hard.”

“Between a man and a woman who hold the same job, shoulder the same burdens at home and have the same education and skills, the woman is likely to feel she must work harder,“ said co-researcher and sociologist Elizabeth Gorman.

The researchers speculate that “the association between gender and reported required work effort is best interpreted as reflecting stricter performance standards imposed on women, even when women and men hold the same jobs.”

Being too conscientious adds up to emotional exhaustion.

Women tend to experience more stress in the workplace – and a UK survey found up to 67% higher stress levels for women between 34 and 44 compared to men.

Research on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) explored five types of behavior for impact on individual well-being: “altruism (helping a colleague), conscientiousness (going beyond the minimum), civic virtue (involvement in the organisation), courtesy (avoiding work-related problems with others) and sportsmanship (tolerating inconveniences and impositions of work).”

The research showed that employees who regularly put in hours and effort beyond the call of duty experience more emotional exhaustion and work-family conflict – especially for those who carry out responsibilities at a high level.

The study also found “employees who already performed well in their job and had a high level of conscientiousness also suffered significantly higher emotional exhaustion and work-family conflict. Those who exerted greater effort in their work and family roles, with a general sense of not wanting to let people down, found they had little left in reserve, increasing the challenges of balancing work with a healthy family life.”

Doing well at work, not surprisingly, leads to more work: “Managers are prone to delegate more tasks and responsibilities to conscientious employees who are likely to try to maintain consistently high levels of output.”

If you get hooked to hyper-conscientiousness as your success card, you’ll feel you have to keep it going, even when it grows.

What if we just cared less?

Beyond the external demands, clinical psychologist Dr Jessamy Hibberd, co-author of This Book Will Make You Calm, notes the internal demands that we create for ourselves on top of external demands. “These are the pressures you place on yourself,” Hibberd told The Guardian. “For example, checking and rechecking work, spending too long on each task, taking work home and setting excessively high standards.”

As Lauren Bravo writes in the same piece, “As promising students we were told ‘aim high! Join in! You can do anything!’ – but nobody thought to mention we could also aim lower, opt out or do exactly what our pay cheque required and no more.”

“The happiest people at work seem to be the ones who don’t care as much,” writes Bravo, “they might just be on to something.”

How do to less and more.

University of California, Berkeley professor and author of Great at Work, says our approach to work is “broken.” He said to Forbes, “We pursue a paradigm of ‘more is better’ — but more hours doesn’t lead to better performance. And it leads to worse work/life balance.’”

From a survey on what really drives performance, Hansen found some secrets behind doing less to create more impact:

Do Fewer Things: Top performers are very selective in what they do and don’t scatter their efforts too much across too many tasks or too many meetings. Hansen says, “It’s counterintuitive. It’s not how much you can get done in a day, but how few things you have to do in order to excel.”

Sarah Knight, author of “The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k,” encourages us to declutter our mind and care less. She also suggests ditching corporate formalities like conference calls, when the time can be used more productively.

Push Back: If you’re asked to stretch yourself across too many things, Hansen suggests pushing for prioritization. “Say: ‘You asked me to do two things last week and now you’re asking for a third. Which should I prioritize? I can do all three, but it won’t be high-quality work.’ You’re not saying ‘I don’t want to do it.’ This requires some courage and tact.” Another tip: Say no to additional responsibilities with low visibility that won’t truly advance you.

“Do Less, Then Obsess”: Hansen suggests to do less tasks, but put attention into doing the things you commit to with excellence. Take time putting the attention into the details and making the work you commit to high quality. Do less, and do it better.

Women have been devalued in the workplace. You can stop devaluing yourself by finding ways to trim away the work that’s draining your energy more than its advancing you towards your own career desires.

Author Bio:

Aimee Hansen is a writer here at theglasshammer.com.

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The 4AM Club: Three Ways to Make It Work For You

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4am, early morning, dawn , The 4am Club
You’ve heard it said: the early bird catches the worm — in the opinion of many highly successful people, the phrase is much more than a cliche.

The benefits of an extremely early morning routine have been touted by so many self-made celebrities that the “4AM Club” has become a part of the public vernacular. It’s the magic hour for many world changers like Oprah, Michelle Obama, and Tim Cook, and experience has taught me why. In my world, it’s a time of quiet, focus, determination, and accomplishment.

As an entrepreneur and a mother, high-paced days at my desk and endless days on the road are only outpaced by high-energy evenings and weekends with my family of five. By waking up at 4 AM, I’m able to routinely devote time to my own self-development and care, a necessary practice for success in all areas of my life.

If this is something you’ve wanted to try but haven’t yet managed to find success in, here are a few keys I’ve found to making this routine not only possible, but extremely enjoyable as well:

Check your DNA

Our tendency to be productive at certain times of the day is often hard-wired in us, an internal clock that’s determined by our DNA. This genetic predisposition is called our chronotype. If you identify as a “night owl”, then you can stop reading now. This method is not for you. In fact, research shows a correlation to weight gain, diabetes, and heart disease if you try to force an extra early wake-time when your DNA is telling you otherwise. But if you feel like you do your best work in the morning, or maybe you’re not sure, than the 4 AM club could be for you.

Check your Watch

The key to sustaining this routine has everything to do with a consistent sleep schedule. Knowing the exact number of sleep hours that support your peak performance is requisite to success. Not getting enough sleep effectively compromises all the systems that work together for success in day-to-day life. Without enough sleep, the motivation to exercise is zapped, food choices start moving in a downward spiral, and productivity at work takes a nosedive.

Check your Excuses

An early morning routine is a no-excuses kind of practice. Follow the 21/90 rule — on average, it takes 21 days to form a habit. If the system seems to be working for you, another 90 days is recommended to turn it into a permanent lifestyle change. That said, the first few days will inevitably be brutal. Resist the temptation to hit snooze on that alarm by using the Rule of 5. When the alarm goes off, count to five, pop up, and start moving out of bed, no matter how you feel about it in that moment.

Above all, know that every person is wired in their own way, and successful habits look different for everyone. Do not try to define yourself by what works for others — instead, let them inspire you to find your own routines that drive you toward your goals.

Author Bio

Judith Nowlin, Chief Growth Officer with Babyscripts. Judith created iBirth™, a mobile care companion for pregnancy, birth and postpartum, to help healthcare practitioners deliver better health outcomes for women and children in the United States and beyond. The original idea for the app was born out of her prior decade of service in maternity care. The technology platform she and her team built has since impacted nearly 1 million families on their journey toward optimal health and wellness during one of life’s most precious times. iBirth was acquired in June 2018 by Babyscripts, Inc., the leading virtual care platform for obstetrics. You can find her here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judith-nowlin-3a9b82b/

Guest contributors views are their own.

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