Having a life purpose is an important part of your addiction recovery journey, and starting a side hustle can be a great way to maintain your sobriety while getting your career back on track. But since recovery is already an emotionally challenging time, it’s important to practice self-care to reduce stress, avoid burnout, and prevent relapse.
In the sections below, Create Write Now discusses a few self-care strategies for side hustlers in addiction recovery. Read on to learn how to care for your mind, body, and spirit while rebuilding your life and achieving your career goals.
Choose the Right Side Hustle
Depending on the type of side hustle you choose, your job could actually feel a bit like self-care — especially if you follow your passion and pursue something that relaxes you or makes you happy. This will vary widely by person, but a few examples could include:
- Dog walking or pet sitting
- Making and selling handmade items
- Beekeeping
- Teaching yoga
- Blogging or podcasting
- Grocery delivery
- Graphic design
Utilize Business Tools and Services
If you’re pursuing a side hustle such as freelancing or entrepreneurship, it’ll take some time to get your business up and running — and the process may be as stressful as it is exciting. However, various business tools and services can help to take some of the legwork out of the startup process. Several of them include digital marketing tools, small business accounting software, and automation tools like Calendly, Zapier, or Saneox. You might even prefer to outsource a few tasks to free up some of your time and energy.
Online formation services are also available to side hustlers, as these can be used to register a corporation or limited liability company (LLC) without help from an attorney or accountant. You’ll need to do a bit of research beforehand since each state has unique filing guidelines, but a formation service will handle the rest.
Whether you’re starting your own business or applying for new jobs, you’ll need to create some materials that market your skills. If you’re modifying a PDF brochure or an older resume, you’ll have a limited ability to alter the documents. It’s best to find a free PDF to Word converter online that will allow you to more fully edit your documents. You can then save them back to a PDF when you’re done editing.
Care for Your Body and Mind
The meaning of self-care differs from person to person, but for many, activities such as yoga, meditation, and deep breathing come to mind. And while these activities can certainly help to care for your body, mind, and spirit, they aren’t the only practices to add to your self-care routine. A few others include:
- Walking, jogging, running, or other types of aerobic exercise.
- Spending time in nature.
- Decluttering to bring positivity to your home.
- Treating yourself to a massage, spa day, or bubble bath.
- Playing video or board games.
- Socializing with loved ones.
- Reading a book, listening to a podcast, or watching a movie.
- Writing in a journal or coloring in an adult coloring book.
- Planning nutritious home-cooked meals for the week.
Even if you don’t have a lot of time to spend on self-care (you are busy starting a side hustle, after all), aim to give yourself at least one hour a day to unplug from your phone, email, and social media. Use this time to focus on your physical, emotional, mental, social, or spiritual self-care needs.
Self-Care Is Non-Negotiable During Addiction Recovery
Getting your career back on track is important post-recovery, but so too is making plenty of time for self-care. And while there isn’t a single self-care activity that works well for everyone, combining several different types of self-care — including professional, physical, social, and emotional self-care — can do wonders for the mind, body, and spirit.
As you start your side hustle, be sure to keep these self-care tips and strategies in mind. They’ll help you to create a healthy work-life balance, set boundaries in your personal and professional life, and get to know yourself better as you navigate addiction recovery. Use the tools at your disposal to make your new side hustle easier, and consider journaling through Create Write Now to process your emotions through writing.
Author bio: Katie Conroy enjoys writing and created advicemine.com where she shares advice from her experiences, education & research. She particularly enjoys writing about lifestyle topics and created the website to share advice she has learned through experience, education, and research.
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