Beat that sick leave guilt!

This week I had to take a day off work because I was poorly and it took me a silly amount of time to decide to cancel my meetings and actually take a day off to recover. My conscious kept telling me that I wasn’t exactly at death’s door so I should carry on regardless and even as I was emailing people to rearrange appointments and meetings I felt ridiculous. It didn’t matter that I felt exhausted and rubbish (technical term!!) and I wouldn’t be productive even if I had decided to carry on with my working day. However, I eventually came to the conclusion that a) I shouldn’t be ashamed to say that I needed time to recover – I am only human and sometimes we get ill and b) no one else needs my germs and hopefully they will appreciate me staying out of their way!

I’m not telling you this for sympathy, I’m telling you this because I am willing to bet that the vast majority of you have been in exactly the same situation and, as I have done in the past, carried on working regardless of how poorly or weak you feel and wondering why you can’t seem get back to health as quickly as you would like to.

When you are a business owner or manager it is easy to get caught up in the feeling that you are letting people down or the business will come to a standstill if you need to take a day off at short notice but in the majority of situations this simply isn’t the case. It is important that you trust that your staff and colleagues are perfectly capable of keeping things going in your absence and, nine times out of ten, meetings and appointments can be rescheduled. No one will resent you for taking some time to help yourself feel well again.

So, next time you feel like you just need to take a day, grab that duvet and shut the world out for a bit. Life won’t stop but after some R&R you will be in a much better place physically and mentally to face it head on.