7 Habits I Developed During My L&E Years to Cope With Anxiety, Overwhelm, Procrastination, and Loneliness
My last blog received far more feedback than I expected. Thank you to everyone who read it and took the time to write to me. Many of you shared your own experiences, and that meant more than I can explain.
That response, together with a recent 2016 Instagram throwback, made me want to continue. That year looked exciting from the outside. I was launching L&E. The product was ready. Production was set. We were entering the market. It should have felt like arrival. Instead, it was one of the hardest periods of my life. I was already deep in burnout.
As entrepreneurs, employees, parents, or simply human beings, we all go through seasons of anxiety, loneliness, overwhelm, and procrastination. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes visibly. Often while everything looks fine from the outside.
The habits below weren’t part of a wellness plan. I developed them because I had to. I still use them today. And I often wish I had known them sooner.
1. Meditation
Learning how to interrupt the spiral
I didn’t come to meditation gently. I came to it exhausted and sceptical.
After my burnout, I was introduced to meditation through CBT, cognitive behavioural therapy. The goal wasn’t calm or peace. It was learning how to interrupt the feedback loop of anxious thinking and get back on track.
I tried several types before finding one that worked for me. What helped me commit was understanding the science behind it. Knowing that meditation reduces activity in the amygdala, the brain’s alarm system, and strengthens the prefrontal cortex helped me see it objectively. Before that, I genuinely thought it was hippie nonsense.
As many clinical psychologists explain, meditation isn’t about stopping thoughts, but about changing your relationship to them. Once I understood that, everything shifted.
2. Yoga
Coming back into my body
This one surprised me.
I used to be high intensity. Long runs, 10k sessions, pushing harder and faster. But emotional exhaustion drains you physically too, and at some point my body simply couldn’t keep up with that approach.
Yoga slowly became my go-to. Not because it was gentle, but because it met me where I was.
Yoga activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the part responsible for rest and recovery. Through breath and slow movement, it sends signals of safety to the brain, lowering cortisol levels and easing tension.
Many trauma-informed therapists emphasise that regulation starts in the body, not the mind. Yoga helped me settle when thinking my way out of things no longer worked.
3. Ten Minutes Is Better Than No Minutes
My favourite tactic, still
This is the habit I still use the most.
Whenever I feel overwhelmed by a must-do task and my brain tells me I don’t have time, I do ten minutes. Not an hour. Not perfectly. Just ten minutes.
This works because it lowers resistance. The brain perceives large tasks as threats and responds with avoidance. Ten minutes feels manageable and safe. Often, momentum follows. And even when it doesn’t, progress has still been made.
Behavioural scientists often point out that the brain responds better to consistency than intensity. Small, repeatable actions release dopamine and reinforce action rather than paralysis. This habit completely changed how I approach pressure and how much power overwhelm has over me.
4. Done Is Better Than Perfect
Why saving your energy matters
This took me a long time to understand, and even longer to accept.
I like things done well. Ideally perfectly. But perfectionism quietly became one of the biggest obstacles in my business. When everything had to be flawless, very little was actually finished, and unfinished work keeps the mind in a constant state of stress.
The 80/20 rule changed everything for me. Roughly speaking, it takes about 20% of your energy to complete 80% of a task. The remaining 20% of polish often costs 80% of your energy. That final stretch rarely creates proportional value, but it does drain focus, time, and nervous system capacity.
Productivity researchers consistently note that perfectionism keeps the stress response activated, while completion signals safety to the brain. Learning to stop at “good enough” wasn’t about lowering standards. It was about conserving energy for what actually mattered.
5. The Phone and Email Cut-Off
Protecting my nervous system
For a long time, I couldn’t switch off. Everything felt urgent. Everything felt unfinished. I could work twenty-four hours a day and still feel behind, which is exactly how I ended up burning out.
Every notification raised my anxiety. If an email arrived late in the evening and it was upsetting, I wouldn’t sleep.
Over time, I noticed that cutting off my phone at least two hours before bed changed my sleep dramatically. Delaying emails and messages by one to two hours in the morning gave me space for movement, quiet, and basic self-care.
Sleep specialists are clear that constant availability keeps the nervous system in a state of anticipation, even when nothing is happening. Boundaries created recovery, and recovery made me more effective, not less.
6. Gratitude and Forgiveness
Rewiring the default setting
As an entrepreneur, you are incredibly hard on yourself. You carry your own expectations, and you carry the expectations of others. Some people challenge you constantly. Others see you as far more successful than you see yourself. You end up living in comparison without meaning to.
Gratitude helped me focus on what I had rather than what I didn’t. Practised regularly, it rewires the brain away from default negative thinking and trains it to notice stability instead of threat.
Forgiveness, especially toward myself, softened the constant inner criticism. Forgiving decisions made with limited information. Forgiving timelines that didn’t unfold as planned. Forgiving others for expectations they placed on me, often without realising the weight of them.
Psychologists studying gratitude and forgiveness consistently show that both reduce stress responses and help regulate emotional load. Together, they created space where anxiety had less room to grow.
7. Work-Life Balance
Learning to prioritise what actually matters
For a long time, I put all my eggs in one basket.
A friend once said that about entrepreneurs, and I realised how true it was for me. I was only working. Any human interaction had to be connected to the business or it felt unproductive, almost wasteful. If it didn’t move the company forward, I struggled to justify it.
Looking back, that mindset was part of what led to burnout.
As humans, we have an innate need for connection that goes far beyond networking or professional exchange. Psychologists consistently show that meaningful social connection reduces stress hormones, improves emotional resilience, and even strengthens cognitive performance. Isolation, even when disguised as productivity, increases anxiety and emotional strain.
My nervous system didn’t just need structure and boundaries. It needed people.
I slowly learned that prioritising relationships wasn’t stepping away from ambition. It was protecting it. Time with friends, uninterrupted family dinners, conversations that had nothing to do with production timelines or sales targets, those moments recalibrated me.
Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, has said he measures his success not just by business milestones, but by the standing Tuesday night date he kept with his wife, come rain or shine. That consistency mattered as much, if not more than, any strategic decision.
That perspective stayed with me.
When business becomes the only source of validation or connection, the pressure becomes unbearable.
Prioritising what truly matters does not weaken your drive. It stabilises it.
Closing Thought
None of these habits removed pressure or uncertainty. They changed how I carried it.
I am still learning. Some days I practise these things naturally. Other days I forget and find myself back in old patterns. Sometimes I have to relearn something I thought I had already mastered.
There was no moment where I cracked the code.
But having these tools makes it easier to come back to myself. To reset instead of spiral. To choose differently, even if only slightly.
Taking care of yourself is not separate from building something meaningful. It is part of the foundation.
And foundations require maintenance.