If this Easter is going to be hard, you are not alone. This Easter will be my first without my Mother and falls just before Mother’s Day which falls on the same day as my birthday. A poignant time indeed for memories, reflection and reinvention.
If you are juggling family alongside a business this Easter, post-Covid, with all the rain, plus school holidays, plus the ups and downs of Covid outbreaks, it is indeed a holiday that could be challenging for you personally.
It often falls on the shoulders of us, as women, as leaders of our families as well as leaders of our businesses, to keep things afloat and raise the emotional bar. The buck stops with us. Exhausting at times and exhilarating and empowering at others.
What are your choices and circumstances this Easter? And which camp do you fall in?
Are you on your own, studying or juggling? From practical logistics to the Easter menu, to school holidays and partners on leave. Plus trying to deal with this next set of reduced holidays driven four-day working weeks – how will you get it all done.
If you have adult children, as I do, how do you keep that sense of family intact after they have left home and before grandchildren, when you don’t really have a role?
Or you may be alone and relishing the time to indulge or indeed be fighting that loneliness and perhaps some grief.
Either scenario, take heed, you’ve got this. Honest! No bull.
Let’s take a moment to reflect and prepare.
5 ways to regain control and set yourself up for success
The reality is this holiday is a gift and a chance to use your power as a female leader to embrace Easter to achieve success, take care of yourself and remain relevant.
Here are a few tips to regain control and start afresh.
Plan to re-energise. It only takes a moment.
Empathy is the new brand currency
A conscious effort to watch and manage your own health and well being is a priority. As my mother always told me, look after your own health because you keep everyone else afloat. If you go down, they go down.
Take some time out for you, at this special time of year just for you, to best prepare for the weekend.
Get some rest, recoup and choose something that enables you to recharge the batteries and be able to cope with the demands of the weekend or your return to routine straight after.
Make a plan
If your weekend is solitary, make plans now and fill it with things to look forward to.
Loneliness is destructive and unnecessary. Make a plan. If your world is full-on and full of people, plan now early enough to ease the load, ask for help or gain some time out if that’s what you need.
If you run a business, Easter is my favourite time to check in on strategy and where you are against the targets you set as you approach the last financial quarter of the year.
Easter gives us 3 months to make a last-ditch effort to get things done if we are running a business.
Review what is not getting done
Because Easter is close to year-end, but well into the year after New Year, take a moment to review what’s worked and what hasn’t so far this year.
If it’s not worked in the first quarter of the year, it is not likely to work from here in unless you make a change. That change could be the difference between winning or missing your personal and professional goals.
Now is the time to review, discard what is not working, and make a conscious change to create success.
Check in your own performance
Have a look back at your own New Year goals for you. What did you promise this year would look like and how you would conduct yourself in 2022. If like me, you have been a little sporadic – hit and miss – Easter is a great time to reset and press go.
How are you going against your own performance, can you do better, what would those around you say, what could you do differently? Stop and make the change.
What are you looking forward to
Lastly, have you taken some time for magic and adventure this Easter? Life cannot be all work and no play, however hard we have to work. If you haven’t planned a holiday this Easter, when are you going to break – what are you going to do to add magic, memories and adventure in your own world from Easter on so that 2022 is a year to remember.
Easter for me is precious family time and a special time in the calendar for reflection and rebirth. Take your power fellow female leader and re-energise for 2022. You’ve got this. No bull
About Sharon Williams
By way of background: Sharon is a personal branding expert and a regular speaker to universities, graduates, experts and even high calibre CEOs.
She was the first to launch her own trademarked and award-winning personal branding offering, TaurusProfile™. Sharon is well placed to speak or contribute to this topic, particularly as someone who has been in business for 25 years.
She’s lived through a number of crises and even in the darkest moments has come out the other side. She has seen these moments as opportunities to strengthen focus, tenacity and of course, the key is – to never give up – values that helped shape Taurus today.