By Lindsey Sikora, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC
I own Shot Bar Medspa in Chicago. I chose an industry that is often glamorized in magazines, TV, and social media. We are consumed with beautiful skin, luxury treatments, and a rabbit hole of perfectly curated content to keep you scrolling for hours, leaving you confused about who to trust and what treatment to do next. I get it, I’ve been there (and often am still overwhelmed with information!).
The things people do not see are the emotional turbulence that occurs behind the scenes of entrepreneurship, especially one that is forever evolving to keep up with the latest scientific developments, which often change in a matter of minutes. There is the responsibility of patient outcomes, supporting my staff, financial stress, and the constant mental juggling that comes with running a business where medicine, aesthetics, and wellness collide.
Building Shot Bar makes me grateful I began some habits that I have had to integrate into my life for nearly a decade now (I lost 150lbs and have kept it off since 2017). This is the habit of nervous system regulation, and if I didn’t focus on stress management and mindfulness on a regular basis, my mind would eventually run me into the ground.
Mindfulness and nervous system regulatory habits have become one of the most important tools in my proverbial toolbelt, both professionally and personally (thank you, restorative yoga, Davidji, and Melissa Wood Health guided meditations & body scans, long walks with my best friend Merissa, and my Pulsetto Vagus Nerve Stimulator). Listen, I do not spend hours meditating every day, but I have learned to become aware of my thoughts in the moment, reactions, and emotional patterns, so I am not “always” running on autopilot. This awareness changed everything for me.
Trained to React
I transitioned from hospital medicine to entrepreneurship 6.5 years ago. My background is in high-stress medicine, from level-one trauma nursing, ICU, and emergency care as a Family Nurse Practitioner with full-practice authority. I am trained to react quickly, move fast, anticipate the worst, and stay “on” constantly. Yep, that type of mindset has helped me save 1000s of lives over nearly 15 years, but… if you never learn to slow it down or turn it off, it quietly destroys you in both business and personal life. I know my hospital working colleagues are nodding in agreement right now. I was constantly overstimulated and always anticipating the next fire that needed to be put out immediately.
Reacting vs. Responding
Mindfulness has taught me the difference between reacting and responding. I am not perfect (again, thank you, perimenopause, and just being emotionally sensitive), but I catch myself now.
That distinction alone has changed the way I run and scale my business. Instead of always emotionally reacting (and soothing myself with food) to every stressful email, staffing challenges, or business setback, I have learned to pause. Not every moment requires a panic, and those that do, I allow that to happen too. And the moments I do panic and forget to catch myself, I forgive myself because striving for perfection is, to me, a form of self-sabotage.
Learning that not every inconvenience is a catastrophe has been a game-changer because I am interrupted from projects all day long and am easily sidetracked. Shot Bar Medspa is continuing to grow, and with that, I have learned to be flexible and to accept that disappointments are expected, as are expensive mistakes. But now I know that every stressful situation does not deserve access to my peace. For someone who spent years operating in high-stress medical environments, this was…revolutionary.
Presence Is Part of the Job
Running a medical practice requires an enormous amount of flexibility and emotional intelligence. When a patient comes through my door, they are vulnerable. Many of them are struggling with confidence, aging, weight issues, stress, hormones, skin conditions, medical conditions, and something that may be causing them self-esteem concerns that they may have been carrying with them for years. They are depending on me not to be dysregulated, distracted, or emotionally reactive. If I were, they would feel it. They deserve my presence.
Presence matters in aesthetics. Precision is everything.
Regulation Is a Leadership Skill
Mindfulness also changed how I approached leadership. Owning a business means people are looking to me for answers, direction, energy, and stability. If my energy is feeling chaotic or “off”, both my staff and my patients will feel it. That type of energy will spread all over Shot Bar. Being emotionally regulated is not just about personal growth; it’s part of my responsibility as a medical provider and an entrepreneur.
Sometimes mindfulness means taking 5 minutes with my Pulsetto or performing boxed breathing before the next patient or meeting in one of my treatment rooms. It may even mean postponing an important business decision if I am emotionally activated. Other times, it means learning to tolerate uncertainty, which is one of my largest hurdles in all aspects of my life. I have taught myself not to catastrophize every situation and can now step away and reset. I no longer glorify burnout as ambition. That’s huge for me.
Food Was My Anesthesia
Those who know me well know that mindfulness transformed my relationship with food back in 2017.
For years, food was my anesthesia. Everything circled back to eating. I had lived 30 years of my life disconnected from my own body. I was trapped. Trapped in cycles of food obsession and bingeing. Losing 150lbs was not about macros and exercise. It was about a deeper transformation of becoming aware of my behaviors.
Mindfulness forced me to sit with discomfort instead of immediately overmedicating it with food.
I don’t think that most people even realize how they operate on unconscious habit loops. I learned to compartmentalize my food noise, which was incredibly difficult at first, but I am so grateful I learned how to do that. That awareness gave me the power to treat the noise as a separate conversation in my mind, rather than as a command I needed to obey. This is what I teach my patients to do today.
That power set me up for success in opening, operating, and growing Shot Bar Medspa.
I began operating from intentionality rather than desperation. It helped me to be less impulsive and improved my communication. It taught me that striving for perfection was unattainable. The same principle applies in business.
Slowing Down Made Me More Productive
Ironically, mindfulness also made me more productive. I think that people often think that slowing down means becoming less ambitious, but I find the opposite to be true. I believe that your decision-making suffers when your nervous system is constantly overstimulated. You become reactive instead of strategic. You lose clarity. You burn out. I began to think in the long term, and my mind slowed.
Again, I am not perfect. I am still a work in progress. I experience stress, self-doubt, overwhelm, and moments where my mind is sprinting 100,000 miles ahead of the present moment. But I will say that mindfulness has given me the tools to check myself, dial it back, and observe my thoughts rather than being consumed by them.
Mindfulness has reminded me that discipline is not punishment; it is self-respect.
I am pretty sure that for me, success in business is not only built on hard work, intelligence, aesthetics, branding, a viral post, or a marketing campaign. It is built on emotional intelligence and self-awareness. I can stay grounded when things become difficult.
Mindfulness did not just help me build a successful Medspa. It helped me to rebuild myself.
