3 Ways Healthy Living can Help You Crush It in Your Business
There are obvious benefits to leading a healthy lifestyle — you’ll be healthy, look toned & strong, and maybe even hit your happy weight. But those are future you problems. All present you really cares about right now is building a sustainable business.
You could use those benefits, but not as much as you could use the benefits of making a full time living as a boss babe.
But the hallmarks of healthy living — eating healthy, working out consistently, even getting enough sleep — can make a huge difference to your productivity in high-pressure situations like a product launch or just the day-to-day grind of being the boss.
Here are three concrete ways that healthy living can help you crush it in your business now, and once you hit your dream business goals...
1. You’ll create mental space
If you have the desire to change your eating and exercise habits right now, but you’re not taking action to do it, that’s precious mental space being taken up by something that’s not productive.
It doesn’t mean that you walk around thinking about living healthier every single moment, but if, on any level, you want to:
eat healthier
work out more
get to your happy weight
or just have more energy to do more in your business
...any little gap of time that isn’t taken up by the business of living your life and building your business will be taken up by the thoughts of things that you’d like to do but aren’t doing.
So any time that you’re not thinking of marketing strategies to get your business more visible or sales strategies to get your products in the hands of the people who need them, you’re going to be worried about the things you’re not doing to lead a healthier lifestyle. You’ll worry about what it’s costing you healthwise and what it’ll take for you to get that part of your life to where it needs to be.
But if you’re able to start with the small actions that collectively help you lead a healthier overall lifestyle, and you’re able to almost automate those, you’ll create mental space there.
This means that when you’re not actively thinking about creative marketing and sales strategies to help you crush it in your business, the wheels keep turning in the background to help you do even more instead of worrying about the fact that you just had a fast food hamburger yet again even though you promised yourself that those were off limits.
2. You’ll get the satisfaction of stacking small wins
Stacking quantifiable wins is an easy way to keep yourself motivated on your way to any goal. In your business, this could mean getting that “new order” notification email (cha-ching!) or seeing your subscriber count rise with each day of executing your visibility plan. These types of wins keep you going and pushing even harder.
The same goes with your healthy lifestyle. So every single healthy choice you make is a win. For example, when you:
drag yourself out bed, get dressed, and get a morning workout in instead of hitting the snooze button, you’ve won.
choose the grilled chicken sandwich on a whole grain bun instead of the greasy burger on the fast food menu, you’ve stacked another win.
These are daily wins that continuously show you how capable you are. And it doesn’t matter where you stack your wins. When you keep taking action and moving forward in any dimension of your life, you’re building valuable confidence that’ll help you move your business and your life forward.
The way I see it — action builds confidence, and that confidence creates a desire for even more action.
So when you’re taking small, but consistent action towards living healthier, that’ll inspire you in other areas of your life. It’s your way of telling yourself, “If I can build the discipline to do this, what more can I do?”
And as you know from building a business, there are countless things that need to get done or even just get figured out, like:
honing in on your niche,
finding the right people to collaborate with,
or even finding the right service providers that’ll help fill in your skill gaps so you can spend most of your time in your zone of genius.
Figuring these things out and more will help you build the business of your dreams.
And knowing you can win will help keep you going as you hit every single growth milestone in your business.
3. You’ll manage your perception and always be ready to run the world
When I talk about managing your perception, I’m not talking about looking skinny or fitting a certain mold. Instead, I’m talking about how you come across to others and even yourself. It's about knowing internally and projecting that air of discipline and self-regard that comes with taking care of yourself.
When you’re doing the things that you feel you should be doing to move your life forward and when you’re living in integrity with yourself, that’ll shine through more than anything you say to other people.
There’s something about living healthy, about:
showing up and working out,
choosing foods that you love and that are good for your body,
and living in a way that’s true to what you want and who you want to be in your world,
...that makes you feel more confident and that shines through in your work and it translates to your business life.
For example, you’ll stand taller and more confident and stay true to the vision that you have for your business and its mission when you talk to potential collaborators.
And when you’re talking about how you see that collaboration helping both your businesses move forward, your passion will shine through. That makes a huge difference when you’re selling someone on why you should work together.
Putting yourself on your priority list by exercising consistently and eating healthier doesn’t have to be complicated.
In fact, once you start doing the simple things like eating more veggies or stepping out for a 30 minute walk, just checking them off your to do list and feeling the burst of energy that could come with that could leave you hungry for more.
So as you read this, I want to challenge you to start with the simplest thing you can do right now to make you feel like you’re doing something healthy for yourself. Make it concrete, too.
Using the sample actions I shared earlier:
eating more veggies can mean adding a cupped handful of steamed veggies to your main meals.
walking for 30 minutes a day can start with a neighborhood walk in the evening while you listen to your favorite tunes.
Pick one thing, make it easy enough for you to do consistently, and level up when you’re ready. And before you know it, you’ll have more of the physical and mental energy that you need to get your business to where you want it to be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EJ Ogenyi is the Lifestyle Coach and Owner of Team by EJ. She helps female entrepreneurs make health and fitness a priority so that they can crush their business goals without putting themselves on the back burner.
Her process is unique because she always starts with identifying why a healthy lifestyle matters to her clients. Starting with "why" means her clients can connect their desire for a healthy lifestyle with the bigger vision they have for their business and their lives.
This means that the things boss ladies usually struggle with when it comes to living healthy - discipline, accountability, and willpower - are less of an issue because her clients know how healthy living contributes to their bottom line.
Originally from Nigeria, when she's not working, EJ is chasing down her 2 year old or hanging with her Hubby in their vibrant adopted city of New Orleans.
