I wrote a book 15 years ago (Coach Your Own Life: break down the barriers to success) and we still use plenty of the techniques contained within it these days.
That’s because, although the world is a very different place, when it comes to wellbeing, healthy habits, feeling good and looking sharp, priorities haven’t changed much and the barriers that people face have been pretty consistent across recent years.
In fact, for the last 20+ years that we’ve been collecting data from every group that we work with, the top 10 concerns are, and always have been…
Not being active enough
Compromised sleep
Lack of physical energy
Inconsistent mental energy
Not eating well
Inability to manage time well / prioritise effectively
Absence of hobbies and interests outside of work
Not enough time for me / family / friends
Ineffectiveness at home
Personal life is compromised too much / too often
How this knowledge can help you and your business
Imagine these are the concerns of your team and the individuals throughout your organisation.
And they’ve been concerned with these issues for many years. Concerned, but rarely addressing them or making progress with them.
And then you create an environment where they can tackle these concerns, create specific actions and systems to move forwards with them and, in time, master them once and for all.
You can sense already what a difference this would make across teams and an entire business.
And we're here to help.
Starting with our top tips for tackling challenge / concern number 1.
Make sure you share them with as many people as you can. Even those you think have got this area nailed, just in case their comes a time when they need a little extra support.
3 Simple Mindset Shifts to Guarantee You Exercise More:
1. Start small and leverage short workouts
When it comes to exercise, the main barrier for most people is time. When they think about what they’d like to achieve it’s often things like 3-4 hour long gym visits per week, a workout every day, or running 5k each weekday morning.
These goals are great but they're all pretty time consuming and trying to overlay them into an already busy schedule isn’t always practical.
Or even that appealing. And who wants the idea of getting more active to just become something that adds more pressure to the week?
Which is why these positive plans are set aside to be revisited whenever there’s more spare time in the calendar. Which, in reality is probably a time that will never come.
Success with exercise is more likely when you make the first step as small as possible.
Many people are put off by the idea that short exercise sessions can be valuable but isn’t it better to complete two 15-20 minute workouts a week than aim too high and end up with nothing?
Once you actually complete some activity, even a little bit, you feel physically better and mentally much more postive.
And once you achieve this state of mind you'll be way more motivated to seek out further opportunities to get active on a more regular basis.
Gradually you make a shift towards wanting to get active rather than feeling obliged to get active.
And desire beats obligation every time!
2. Put workouts into your calendar
If something is important for work, you write it down and allocate time for it in your schedule.
But getting more active is often just a thought in your head that’s vulnerable to being forced out or deprioritised as soon as you look at your calendar of important events.
Putting your workouts into your calendar immediately elevates them to the same level of importance as everything else you need to make happen in your week and seeing them feature regularly on your screen means you're much less likely to forget or de-prioritise them.
3. Stop negotiating with yourself
Once they've mastered the art of planning short workouts and diarising exercise, many people then stumble at the final hurdle.
Regular execution and maintenance of the plan.
Despite good intentions, they find reasons to become distracted when the time comes to get active.
Other demands suddenly become a priority. Emails that just be sent right now. Messages that need to be returned. Research that needs to be conducted. Papers that need to be read. Discussions that need to be progressed.
It’s a familiar thought process that runs something like, 'I know I said I’d work out, but I really need to get on with X, Y or Z, so I’ll sort those out now and find time for the exercise later / tomorrow / next week.'
The problem is that the time we think we’ll somehow find never materialises.
And the exercise moment is lost.
Because the exercise was really just 'nice to have' rather than a 'must have'.
Whereas work issues are more often viewed as must do, even when they’re relatively minor tasks. Or the deadline isn't that pressing. We’re just more familiar with the dopamine hit that comes from completing a work task than we are with getting active. So we lean into work and away from exercise.
The opposite approach is worth a go. Try this...
When your pre-appointed time to exercise comes around, don’t procrastinate and persuade yourself you’ll do it later. If needs must you can shorten the workout (even when it was going to be a short workout already) but don’t skip it.
Just do something. 5-minutes will even be enough sometimes.
And rest assured that whatever work that was creating the threat of distraction from your exercise time will get done.
But with this approach you get the work done and keep the regularity of your exercise routine intact.
You're physically and mentally ahead of the game.
Who wouldn't be happy with that way of living?
Good luck experimenting with these strategies. Next time we'll look at number 2 and how to get better sleep.
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