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Everyone wants to be healthy and for entrepreneurs, it can make a significant impact on success.
I admire Richard Branson’s spirit and his writing in general, but when I came across his piece today on The Healthy Entrepreneur, it really resonated with me. Of course, it is not the case that only entrepreneurs need to be healthy – everyone wants and needs to be healthy, whether one is a homemaker, a cubicle-dweller or a business owner. But, as an entrepreneur who has been down with a severe cold and feverishness for the last 2 weeks, (not to mention 3 such bouts in the last 6 months), Richard Branson’s words held special meaning for me. The thing about being the founder of a small business is that there are so few resources at hand – at the moment, we are a 2-member core team, and any illness leaves us seriously understaffed.
The curious bit about ill-health is that although we think of it largely as concerning the body, it has such an intimate relationship with our minds – both in where it stems from, and what it leads to. Even where ill-health has direct, specific physical causes, there is still much that we don’t know about how our mental state affects the body. In terms of its results, anyone who’s woken up feeling sick yet forced by a looming deadline to head to work, will attest to the impact it has on the quality as well as quantity of work that we do.
In my own case, as an entrepreneur struggling to build an online community here – I know that the exact same questions, on how to grow this magazine and ensure its viability, bring forth very different answers when I am well and when I am unwell. When I am unwell, everything looks like an uphill task and the outcome looks dodgy. This week, I’ve been feeling revitalized, and things look so positive. Our readership is growing, many of the tech issues we’ve had have been resolved, we’re starting a lovely new travel series that is coming together beautifully (look out for it!), we have wonderful people supporting us in so many ways and I’m getting all these ideas on monetizing the business. Surely, things weren’t very different last week, and yet, all I could feel was that 18 months post launch, I haven’t progressed as well as I wanted to. Like they say, it’s how you look at it.
Of course, not all of us have personal coaches like Branson does, and not even perhaps, the enthusiasm for fitness that he has. I am certainly happier being a couch potato than exercising in any form. Yet, there is no denying that fitness can have a significant impact on the enthusiasm I bring to my business – and the quality of my work. We do hear about health and fitness all the time, but Branson’s piece has come as a wake-up call for me, that health can make a big difference to how a venture shapes up – or not.
Apart from that, the one other thing I’ve learnt is not to take depression seriously, when one is unwell. Yes, everything looks gloomy when you’re ill, but if there is one thing past experience has shown me – it is that, “this too shall pass”.
Pic credit: Nono Fara (used under a Creative Commons Attribution license)
Founder & Chief Editor of Women's Web, Aparna believes in the power of ideas and conversations to create change. She has been writing since she was ten. In another life, she used to be read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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