When you are entrepreneur, there are no such things as paid sick days so all of us try to keep on keeping on when we come down with the flu or are taken out with some other ailment. Unfortunately, the work does not take care of itself and if you are a solopreneur and do not have a team of people around you then you are simply down and out.

I have just experienced the worst flu of my life and a second root canal in four months and I have had to literally get both my business and myself back on track. From my own experience, I wanted to share some tips with you about how I have gone about doing this in the hope that if you too have experienced something similar these tips might be of help.

1. Be kind to yourself – we are all human so give yourself permission to take the ‘super person’ cape off. If you are sick then you are sick and you deserve to rest and recuperate just like everyone else. When you are feeling better and want to get back to work try easing yourself back into it. Instead of jumping in with both feet and trying to go from zero to one hundred day one, start with a few hours a day and work yourself back up to where you used to be. You might also want to think about whether where you used to be was part of the reason you became sick in the first place.

2. A change is as good as a rest – as you can see by the before and after pictures of my office below there has been a huge change. I realized a few things about my office environment when I started trying to get back to work. The configuration of the room did not work for me so I totally rearranged the layout and it has made a huge difference for me. I had too much ‘stuff’ and I needed to get my house in order. Now everything has its place and a purpose

3. Self-care is paramount – as an entrepreneur you have to take care of yourself otherwise, you cannot work at full capacity. I have started taking the dog for a walk in the morning before I begin my day and again at the end of my day (this is good for both of us). This time is used for thinking about what I ‘want’ to accomplish during the day and for analyzing how my day actually panned out against my plan.

4. Movement during the workday is essential – I have become very conscious about not sitting for prolonged periods at my desk. I am moving more and stretching because I am keenly aware that sitting for long periods of time is becoming the new smoking. Did you know that an adult head weighs around ten to eleven pounds? Go grab two five-pound bags of sugar or flour and hold them with one hand. It is a lot of weight perched up there on your neck if you are sitting still for a long period of time.

5. Don’t overload your To-Do List – there is only so much time in a day so at the end of each working day write out the top three things you want to accomplish when you get to your office the next day. Doing this helps you to start the day with focus and purpose.

6. Get a good night’s sleep – I suffer from sleep apnea and it took two years for me to be diagnosed with it. During those two years, I operated in a fog because I was not getting enough restorative sleep to operate at maximum capacity. Many entrepreneurs will boast about the fact that they run on four to five hours of sleep a night. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the recommended number of hours a night for adults between 26-64 years is seven to nine hours. Are you getting enough sleep?

None of these tips are earth shattering but all too often we tend to forget even the simple things in life that help to make us healthier and happier. Remember to be kind to yourself, stop and smell the roses along the way and above all else enjoy your life because it is not a dress rehearsal.

To your success!