How I flipped my life 180 with Clubhouse and 180 Days of radical self-care

Cara Szellemes
8 min readDec 8, 2021
How 180 days of radical self-care transformed my life

Everyone has that empty cup moment at some point in their life. For me, it was in May this year.

I was working full time as part of an innovation project in a large corporation, I was also supporting my partner with his small business — doing all the marketing, rebranding and admin support, and I was working on validating another startup with a close friend and working towards my goal weight doing keto. I’d already lost 28 kgs at that stage and I’d just found a whole community of keto friends on the new social audio app, Clubhouse.

On the surface, life looked successful but the reality was I was working 100 hour weeks…

The empty cup

On the surface, life looked successful but the reality was I was working 100 hour weeks, striving to be a good mum, a good partner, a good friend, and a good human in the midst of a global pandemic and not realising that I was standing on a house of cards.

Looking back, I could blame my circumstances, other people, even the pandemic for what unfolded next, but the hard truth was I just wasn’t listening to myself. And when you ignore the signs and symptoms of burnout, it’s kinda predictable that one flick of the cards will send everything toppling over.

I felt under huge pressure because, at the time, I was the main income earner in our home.

The cards started to fall when my startup business relationship of 3 years ended suddenly and with it, a close friendship. Meanwhile, I heard whispers that the company was changing direction with the project I was on so the certainty of my full-time job started to look shaky. In addition, my partner was having cash flow issues with his small business so I felt under huge pressure because, at the time, I was the main income earner in our home.

We quickly sold the small business, and my partner went back on the road as a truck driver. It was great money but he was still stressed because he…

Cara Szellemes

Amazon №1 Bestselling author of Your Brilliant Un-Career, Web2 and Web3 Content Strategist, Founder of 180Selfcare and Your Story Bank.