Imagine your body being strong and flexible. You are hydrated. You feed and fuel your body well daily. You have energy all day, every day, and you sleep well each night. You don’t drag through the afternoons. You have energy available for those last-minute afternoon rush assignments. “Generally speaking, you feel great and can get done whatever you want to. Sound like wishful thinking or the impossible dream?
All aspects of life are interconnected. Work and home are woven together between commutes,
relationships, money and activities. When we are not at our tip-top best, it affects everything like a house of cards tumbling over. The pillars of life are interwoven. Everything is connected.
Wellness
When we are well, when we fuel our bodies and remain active, we actually create endorphins, or “happy” hormones. That impacts us and everyone around us!
Life tends to happen in a rush. We walk, talk, drive, text, email, work, ride escalators and take elevators, hurrying for that closing door! Sometimes we become like hamsters on a wheel. At work we encounter meetings, computers, video conferencing, copiers, faxes, tablets, smartphones, shipments, social media, telephones and instant messaging. Our executives travel on planes, taxis, town cars,
trains and buses.
We rush from appointment to appointment, meeting to meeting, demand to demand. We live in a short-order world with Wall Street complexity and the demand to go faster and faster!
For most of us, our work gobbles up 40-60 hours weekly. On Saturdays we juggle errands, kids’ sports, and chores. We hurry and rush in everything we do, looking for more speed. Rarely do we pause, stop and breathe.
Mornings are when I take in the beauty of nature, the mountains and sunrise. I’m at peace, my mind uncluttered. I don’t yet have to think about emails or the 50 things I must do that day. It feels good. It’s quiet and I relish the silence. No texting, no travel, no security checks. It is at these times I take a walk, and notice I am creative, able to easily see solutions.
We need to gently care for our physical selves. If our physical selves are not capable to carry us through, we’ll miss out on so much life has to offer.
I’m proposing we embrace wellness as a means to leadership and mastery of our lives. As I wrote about in my book, “Live a BIG Life!” it’s a matter of balance. We have five Life Pillars (Career, Family, Wellness, Finance and Spiritual) and we need to spend a little energy on each area because they all intertwine. When we do not attend to our Life Pillars, we become weak in one or more pillars of our lives and so we become weaker in all pillar areas of our lives.
Each day, focus on wellness and take some step toward strengthening your wellness Life Pillar.
Here are ideas to get you started:
• Walk
• Go to sleep earlier
• Drink water
• Eat an apple
• Watch the sunrise
• Stretch
• Choose to be at peace with what you cannot control
• Eat a healthy breakfast
• Snack on almonds instead of candy
• Read a book you love
• Practice gratitude
• We take “big” for “normal.” It’s not normal to super-size anything.
As you begin to exhibit mastery over your physical self and strengthen your wellness Life Pillar, remember these helpful tips:
• Commit to let go of old habits and take on new behaviours. Otherwise, it’s just talk! My dear late husband, Dave, would tell me he needed to lose weight or get a new gym bag before he could go to the gym. Just commit and go!
• Determine you will generate the power, resolve and grit, because life happens. Get back on track.
• Resilience – think of a palm tree that sways in the wind, they do not break, they just go with it.
• Daily affirmations – tell yourself what you need to hear to get ready for your day. If we don’t have healthy thoughts or believe we can accomplish something, we won’t.
As you begin to address your wellness, and have a lighter step, you are going to change. Some of the
naysayers will try to suck you back into old bad behaviours. Use your staying power to say, “No,
thank you.” Inspire them to change their lives because you are not going back there anymore.
Wellness – it’s way more than “drink more water and eat more greens” – but that’s a terrific place to begin!”
