Make Time For Your Health

Make Time For Your Health

When it comes to “getting healthy”, time tends to be one of the biggest blockers. With all the demands of life and work, people declare that they don’t have time to work out, prepare their own food and generally lead a healthy lifestyle. The problem is, you are the only person who has control of your own time and how you use it. So, if you want to change the narrative and prioritise your health more, you need to start taking more accountability about how you choose to spend your time.

Cultivate A Clear Vision

There is a reason why so many innovators, athletes, actors and entrepreneurs are so successful. They all have a clear vision that dictates how they choose to spend their time. Growing up in a small village in Austria, Arnold Schwarzenegger started with a broad vision of getting to America which took shape when he discovered bodybuilding after seeing the current Mr. Universe (Reg Park) on the cover of one of Joe Weider’s muscle magazines. He realised that bodybuilding was his ticket to America, and winning the Mr. Universe competition became his specific goal. Narrowing down his vision from “getting to America” to “becoming Mr. Universe” allowed Arnold to focus his time on making choices that helped him achieve his dream. His vision grew so clear and powerful that he was able to outwork his greatest rivals, spending up to 5 hours in the gym everyday to reach his goal. The time and work he put into building his body reflected his aspirations to become Mr. Universe. This poses the question “does how you spend your time reflect your aspirations?”

Obviously we aren’t all Arnold Schwarzenegger and unless you aspire to follow in his footsteps as a professional bodybuilder, your vision should be your own. Creating a clear picture of how you want your life to look is the first step you need to take, before you create a plan for how you will get there. It doesn’t matter what your vision is, what’s important is that it’s meaningful to you. If you are overweight and feel like you can’t play properly with your children in the park, then imagine yourself 20 pounds lighter, laughing with your kids as you run around kicking a football with them. Cultivating this vivid image is the first step to avoiding decisions that will take time away from actions that help you realise your goals. This is what a clear vision gives you “a way to decipher whether a decision is good or bad for you, based on whether it gets you closer or further away from where you want your life to go” (1., p.5).

Create A Plan To Get There

Once you’ve created a clear picture of your vision, it’s time to build an incremental plan that’s going to help you turn this vision into your new reality. If you focus on the end goal, it can become overwhelming, but when you accomplish small goals everyday you can produce amazing results that make your vision achievable. For example, my vision is to create a platform that helps 1000s of readers live healthier, more fulfilling lives. When I focus on this end goal in isolation and look at some of the incredible online platforms that have achieved this feat, I tend to feel overwhelmed and deflated by the difficulty of the task. But by focusing on achieving a little each day, I find I’m able to enjoy the everyday struggles of the journey.

In 2024, I’ve set myself the goal of writing 500 words everyday. If on average, one of my blog posts is roughly 1,500 words, then by the end of the year I’ll have written 122 posts which will be an amazing personal achievement. This also feels achievable and gets me one step closer to achieving my ultimate goal! So when it comes to achieving your vision, make sure you start with small, realistic goals that will ensure you avoid workload paralysis.

Learn To Say No More

Once you’ve created a clear vision for yourself and have set a plan to help you achieve it, you’ll find that it becomes easier to prioritise your time and say no to time draining requests or propositions. When your priorities in your life are unclear, it’s easy to say yes to requests on your time as you are lacking clear direction. This is exactly how I felt back in university when I didn’t have a clear vision and therefore it was easy to say yes to going out all the time. Now that I have a powerful vision of where I want to get to, it gives me clarity to say no to distractions that take my time away from worthy pursuits. This doesn’t mean that you need to say no to everything, but don’t just say yes without giving a second thought. Focus on activities that further your aspirations, and try to be more selective about when you say yes.

Practice Tough Love

If you are someone that’s looking to lose weight or get healthier, then at some point you need to take responsibility for your actions, and accountability over how you choose to spend your time. It’s true that everyone has different schedules and some people work longer hours than others. But sadly, that doesn’t count for anything when it comes to prioritising your health. YOU still need to find the time or make the time to exercise and eat healthily otherwise YOUR health will pay the price. So if you are someone who has less time than the average person (e.g., working parents) you will need to get creative and stricter with your time, otherwise you’ll struggle to live life on your own terms.

Sacrifice

There is no doubt that self-discipline and “tough love” requires sacrifice, especially when time is the greatest blocker for you getting healthier. The quality of your life is shaped by the quality of your decisions, and the less time you have available in your day to dedicate towards “healthy” pursuits like exercise and meal prep, the stricter you need to be with your limited time. To make time for healthy habits, you need to analyse your pre-existing behaviours, and look for windows of opportunity to better yourself on a daily basis. If you want to learn more about investing, use your commuting time to listen to investing podcasts and audiobooks, rather than watching Netflix. If you are racking up 2 hours screen time on your phone, try and reduce this to 1 hour a day, and use the remaining hour to do some exercise. If you tend to binge watch TV shows every evening, try and watch 1 episode, and use the remaining time to read and prepare tomorrows lunch. These are the kind of sacrifices that are necessary if you want to realise your vision. For me personally, this involves trying not to watch every football match during the weekend, and restricting this to big derbies and Arsenal matches. Sadly, Arsenal have lost 3 matches in a row so as you can imagine it’s not been great viewing recently.

Why You Need To Make Time For Your Health

One of the main reasons why taking ownership of your health is so important, is that it provides you with the platform to reach your highest potential. A healthy body gives you more energy to discover your purpose and add value to other’s lives. It also helps prevent you from getting sick and burning out, which gives you more time to achieve your dreams. A healthy mind allows you to become the best version of yourself making you more fun to be around. Time is our most precious commodity, and therefore we must protect and use it wisely. Make the time to invest in your health now, and you’ll give yourself a better chance of achieving your vision in the future!

Health Currency Challenges (HCCs)

On that note, I’ll leave you with a few HCCs to help you make time for your health!

1. Write down/draw your vision somewhere that’s visible on a daily basis. At the end of each day, write down what you did that helped you get closer to your vision.
2. At the start of the day/week set yourself small, achievable goals e.g., workout for 15 minutes, prepare your lunch for work.
3. In 2024, try to focus on activities that further your aspirations and be more selective about when you say “yes”.
4. If you are struggling to find the time to exercise and eat healthily, buy a journal and track your behaviours over 1 or 2 weeks. Look at things like your screen time on your phone, TV watching habits and note down your least productive hours. Replace pre-existing habits with actions that benefit your health and help you achieve your vision.

References:

1. Schwarzenegger, A (2023). Be Useful: Seven Tools For Life. Penguin Press.
2. Sharma, R (2017). Life Lessons From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Thorsons.