To outsiders, it appeared as if Stephanie Morimoto had it all when it came to her career. After graduating from an Ivy League school with top honors, she was hired by leading global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Upon leaving McKinsey, Morimoto became the youngest vice president at a national nonprofit, where she hired hundreds of people and raised half-a-billion dollars. Yet while she was thriving professionally, it was coming at expense of her personal health and wellness.

Morimoto was working 18-hour days, rarely slept, and never took time off. All because that’s what she believed was required of her to achieve professional success.

“The way we work today is backwards,” Morimoto told the audience at our sister brand’s Women in Retail Leadership Summit. “We prioritize productivity over well-being; achievement over kindness; individuality over community support. This approach leaves us running around feeling crazy. We feel stressed out and don’t know what our next move should be. I grew up with immense pressure to work hard, be perfect, achieve at every turn — and I did it for a while.”

But like for so many others as well, the long hours and intense stress led to burnout for Morimoto. She tried to change the culture at where she worked, but was shut down by senior-level management. Determining that this wasn’t the life she wanted to live, Morimoto quit her job. She has since embarked on a 10-year wellness journey to take better care of herself.

Part of that journey included the purchase of Asutra, a brand of clean, accessibly priced wellness products for active self-care. Morimoto was a customer of the brand, using the products as part of her self-care ritual. She eventually got connected to the brand’s founders and bought the business from them in 2018.

“As I did this 10-year journey and I learned how to take care of myself on purpose, I realized if I wanted to work at a place that truly prioritized self-care, well-being, bringing your whole self to work, I’d probably have to create it myself,” Morimoto recalled. “I learned so much that I wanted to share with other people to help them take care of themselves as well.”

Now as the owner and CEO of Asutra, Morimoto has prioritized creating a culture that embraces active self-care. For that culture to take hold and be accepted by the entire organization, it needed to be embodied by Morimoto. As such, she makes it a point to practice the following strategies:

LEADING OTHERS WELL REQUIRES LEADING YOURSELF WELL

“You’re only going to be able lead yourself well if you know who you are,” advised Morimoto. To get to know herself better, Morimoto has adopted the following practices:

  • Ask yourself the following question: Who do you want to be vs. What do you want to do?
  • Create a “pie of life.” What are the pieces of life that you want in your pie, Morimoto questioned the audience. “What do those pieces represent? Professional, family, friends, hobbies, spirituality, art, creativity? And how big do you want each of those pieces to be in your life at that moment? We all grow and change, so our priorities also change over time.”
  • Incorporate the “Enjoy/Annoy” exercise. “At the end of the day, how we spend our lives is how we spend our minutes, hours and days,” said Morimoto. “Often, there are things that we love to do and there are things that we hate to do.” To identify what those are, Morimoto advised taking out a piece of paper and for an entire week writing down everything you did that you enjoyed, and everything you did that annoyed you. If you do this exercise for multiple weeks, you’ll see patterns emerge, Morimoto said. Then try to cut out of your life entirely the things that annoy you or, more realistically, or figure out how to delegate.

BUILD A CULTURE OF BELONGING

According to Morimoto, this strategy involves multiple parts. The first is a shared sense of purpose.

“What drives our passion at team Asutra is the idea of making intentional self-care a possibility for everybody,” noted Morimoto. To that end, the brand has worked to make its products available across multiple channels (e.g., DTC, wholesale, online marketplaces). Furthermore, it has in educational content to make its products’ ingredients, and the benefits they offer, more accessible and well known to those on the wellness journey.

The second part of creating a culture of belonging is establishing a shared set of values. At Asutra, those values are:

  • one team, one goal;
  • do the right thing even when no else is looking;
  • commit to be the best; and
  • customer delight is tops.

IMPLEMENT SELF-CARE PRACTICES INTO YOUR DAILY LIFE

Morimoto concluded her presentation by sharing some of her personal self-care practices as well as her advice for the audience. They include the following:

  • Movement: Daily movement is key for Morimoto. Whether it’s weightlifting, yoga, pilates, or just taking a walk. Research shows that moderate exercise every day is best for you, especially as you get older.
  • Purpose: Identify what is your purpose in this world (family, work, friends, etc.), and then live that every day.
  • Optimize for Joy: Be intentional every day about doing things that bring you joy. Carve out time for creative endeavors that you find joy in.
  • Power Down Hour: Morimoto attributes her ability to sleep well — she gets at least nine hours of sleep each night — to what she refers to as her “power down hour.” You have to prepare for sleep just as you would for a big meeting or presentation, she said. You have to signal to your mind and body that it’s time to relax. Each night Morimoto takes at least an hour to relax before going to sleep.
  • Gratitude Meditation: Each night, often while in bed, Morimoto takes a few deep breaths and takes stock of her day, identifying the things that she’s grateful for that day. Morimoto has found that the combination of the power down hour and gratitude meditation makes her feel calm and she drifts off to sleep, often before she even gets to the end of her day.