If you’re anything like me with regards to your health, strength, and fitness, you want to know how you can be healthier in less time and doing less things.
Although it can be a difficult process (mostly because it consists of constantly failing and working to make-up for the mistakes), as you dive further and further into the essential components of your health, you begin to realize that there really are certain vital behaviors associated with living the healthy life that not only helps you look good and muscly, but also can consistently deliver high energy levels and fewer doctors appointments each year.
The ‘mecca’ of my health journey truly is to eliminate ‘toxic’ exhaustion, or the type of exhaustion caused by poisonous food choices, no sleep, inconsistent exercise, and zero personal, career, or spiritual development. That type of exhaustion is incredibly difficult to break free from, in fact, whenever I have experienced it (which has been many times over the course of my life), there is an overwhelming feeling of not being able to do anything: it’s almost impossible to get out of bed, you fall asleep sitting at your desk, you’re fighting desperately to stay awake at 8pm when your wife is trying to connect with you emotionally…
But I digress.
In discovering that health, strength, and fitness did not need to include overhauling my life and strictly adhering to time-consuming ‘health-tasks’ nonstop, an important component of getting our lives to the point of focusing on the essential qualities of a healthy is just that: getting there.
So where do you start in actually getting there? How do work towards limiting ourselves to less but keeping the same results? This is where we continue my commentary on Leo Babauta’s Power of Less. If you can recall, in an earlier post I challenged you to ask yourself the following questions in order to see if you had a need to apply limitations to your life:
- Which areas of my life are overwhelming?
- What would I like to simplify?
- In addition to the tasks I need to accomplish in different areas, do I want to limit the number of possessions I have, what information I receive, or what responsibilities I have?
Once you have taken 10 minutes to record your answers to these questions, the next step is to begin applying the actual process of limiting yourself in these areas. Just as a reminder, the last thing you want to do is completely change each area all at once. Psychology says (and it’s right) that if you completely eliminate something right off the bat, you have a very high % chance that you will not be able to sustain the change. Our subconscious desperately wants to assert its freedom, which basically means if we tell it to NOT DO SOMETHING UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, especially if it’s been a strong habit previously, we naturally will be inclined to go right back to it.
Over the next two weeks, choose two of the areas you would like to apply limits to. If you still don’t know where you want to apply limits to, go back to the three questions and walk through them with someone who is close to you in your life, most preferably your spouse. Whether we like to admit it or not, they probably know best which areas of your life bring you overwhelm.
Then, follow through with the four steps outlined in The Power of Less. I have added supplemental commentary based upon specific challenges we have as busy dads; those can be seen in italics.
- Analyze your current usage levels (how many times do you do something a day?) and pick a lower limit based on what you think would be ideal.
How much TV do you watch–is it really a great way to connect or hangout with your kids? Our relationship with our children is a key way to enhance our relational, mental, and emotional health.
Or take a look at your golf game–how much would it mean to your wife if all of a sudden she heard you telling the boys, “You know what, man… I’m going to pass on the tee time this weekend. I want to stay home and hangout with my beauty.” Again, emotional, mental, spiritual, and even physical (a fulfilled sex drive) is largely impacted by how our relationship with our wife is doing.
- Test it out for about a week, and then analyze whether that’s working for you.
Make sure as a part of testing it out, you include your wife, coworkers, and close friends or mentors. The more you bring into the picture here, the more support you will have in your desires and efforts to make a lasting change.
The people around you will bring a positive sense of encouragement that will last beyond the initial excitement of trying to make a positive change to your health.
- If it doesn’t work, adjust to a new level you think might work better, and test that out for about a week.
Did lowering the amount of time you spent on this area completely stress you out? If you felt a huge change to the point of feeling resentful, you may actually want to increase it by a little bit.
This will provide a psychological boost, as you can tell yourself that you would have been able to do it without feeling overwhelmed by the change if you wouldn’t have lowered it as much as you did. Don’t feel ashamed of having to ‘go backwards’ either. This is an adjustment process and it takes time.
- Continue to adjust until you find the right level and until you make it a habit.
This process actually becomes a lifelong habit in and of itself: we want to ingrain the importance of change in your life. The more we can embrace good change and correct or/adjust to destructive change, the more we can be sure of the slowly-but-surely progress towards a healthier lifestyle physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
I first learned about ’embracing change’ as a value when I went to work for Mr. Charles Koch (multi-multi-billionaire) in his corporate commodities trading firm, and it has carried with me ever since as a reality of success both at home and with my work. Whether in a fast-paced trading environment, or working through the steps that lead to health, making changes like the above, setting limits and adjusting over time to focus on the essential, will make all the difference in the world.
Remember, don’t try to be a hero… just be consistent.
Until Next Time,
Simple Health Dad