The Healthy Entrepreneur: 8 Tips to Stay Fit and Focused

When You Neglect Your Health, You Pay the Price!

Remember freshman 10 (or 15)? The extra weight you supposedly gain in your first year of college from partying, drinking, and eating junk food? I never saw it. I lost weight in college. I wasn’t into partying and electrical engineering was not exactly a walk in the park. Whatever little exercise I did helped to keep me sane while I burned the midnight oil on both ends to survive college. I was a skinny little thing!!!

My 15 pounds (or 7 kilos) came when I was settled into my job and started to climb the proverbial corporate ladder. I had no idea what I was doing so I just worked harder and harder (#1 stupid thing to give up if you have a job) and eventually, I gave up all exercise and self-care in the name of work!

And this is the story I told myself: “I care too much about my work to go exercise or cook healthy meals, this is my career we are talking about, my future rides on this. Healthy living and exercise can just wait their turn …” Yada, yada, yada!

Here’s the irony about health: The less you pay attention to it, the more of your time and energy it robs. It’s a smart little thing and it won’t stand being ignored! Sooner or later, it will find a way to “get back at you”.

Do not neglect your health!

Lucky for me, the health neglect period did not last long for a funny reason: I stopped obsessing with my career when I wasn’t getting results and started taking care of myself … as a backlash of sorts. It was the disillusionment period before the final resignation and I milked it for all I could. And can you believe I was getting happier and happier just from taking better care of myself?

I know you know this but let me repeat it: your health is the ultimate key to your happiness. How well are you watching it?

For instance, right now, how do you feel? Nice and relaxed or tense and stressed?

How are you breathing? Deep quiet breaths or short stifled ones?

How is your belly feeling after that last meal? Satisfied or otherwise?

What are you drinking? Purified water or some junkie soda?

When are you getting up to go walk and stretch? At 5pm or “whenever you have time”?

How did you sleep? Or is that the last thing you have time for?

This stuff matters, darling! Don’t feel bad if you didn’t do well but do be aware of just how important it is to stay on TOP of your health.

So after I quit my job, you would think I learned my lesson but then I started my own business and let me tell you, college and corporate life have nothing on entrepreneurship when it comes to obsession at the price of everything else.

The Declining Health and Fitness of an Entrepreneur

I am surprised we haven’t yet coined the phrase the “Entrepreneur 15 (or 20!)” … it’s so easy to let everything go and get lost in doing what you love, in building your business, and tending to your dream.

It’s so easy to stay at home for days, and do nothing but work, sleep, eat, and repeat the cycle, even eat a little too much or eat in response to your emotional ups or downs or just eat because you are waiting for something or you are bored or you believe it helps you think better or a myriad of other reasons.

You are building a business for a better future but ignoring your greatest asset along the way: Your health.

Kinda ironic, don’t you think?

Here’s the real catch: Entrepreneurship makes it really, really hard to stay healthy! It’s like torture to set aside what you love doing even for an hour in order to go get some exercise or make a healthier meal. I know! I can hardly shut my brain during my yoga practice!

This is not like college where you can use a break from that dreadful homework or like a job where, even if you love it, you are still working for someone else so taking a break to do something for you is a welcomed change.

Entrepreneurship is tied to your identity and your very core. This is your life’s work and purpose, your service to the world, and every minute into it is an investment, and it aches to part with it, even for a run or yoga session.

So then how do you take a break from obsessing about running your business better, faster, more profitable, the stuff that lights you up inside and makes you come alive?

Well, you need an irresistible incentive and I got one for you. This is a proven track record, just study the successful superstars that you worship in the entrepreneurial space.

You get BETTER at your business if you FIRST take care of your health.

You think faster and more clearly when your mind is clear of junk.
You sleep better and come up with better ideas when your body is happy.
You have more energy and focus and concentration after you recharge and refresh.
You love yourself more because you feel better about who you are.
You become a better version of yourself, a more youthful dynamite version ready to conquer the world!

And the best one, the single most important and persuasive argument I got for you:
You Feel Better. You Get Happier!

So are you convinced yet? Will you put your health first?

8 Tips to Stay Fit and Focused

The most sensible way to approach it is just like you do your real business. It’s your baby. You are going from an idea to inception to full execution so apply what you know about running a business to running your own healthy lifestyle. Let’s get this smooth operation on the road, shall we?

1. Believe: First, wrap your brain around the conviction that your health is your largest asset, and you cannot compromise it. This is your daily reminder and motivator.

2. Explore: There are a million ways to stay fit. Find something that you enjoy. Explore, research, look into the new and old systems from martial arts to new fitness programs, and from yoga to cycling to mountain climbing to surfing. Something that you love but pushes you way past your comfort zone. Decide what that will be.

3. Strategize: Decide your strategy: How will you go about it? Who will you do it with (if anyone)? Frequency? Time of day? Tools and systems that you need? Start date? Rest dates? Rewards for accomplishing milestones?

4. Schedule: Plan your healthy lifestyle into your calendar like any business strategy. If it’s on the calendar, it gets done, right? For instance, add a date with yourself to juice 3 times a week and to run 4 times a week. Plan it out for the next season.

5. Launch: This is the execution phase, the product launch, show-time! Just Start Doing it. Follow the strategy, stick to the calendar, and start with day 1, then day 2 and then day 3, just like building a business, you do it one day at a time. No faster, No slower.

6. Evaluate: Keep track of your progress: how you feel, how much you weigh, how you eat/sleep. Evaluate how things are going after 2-3 weeks. If the program isn’t working, make changes, modify and improve it, even pick up another activity but stick to your fitness plan!

7. Habituate: After 2-3 months of solid work, you make it a habit, you have tested it, launched, and worked out the kinks.

8. Get Back On: Unless you are Superman, which you might be, you are going to fall off this wagon at some point, and that makes simply you human. But what makes you divine (and healthy) is getting back on track, so when the rough patch comes along, hang on tight, but get back into the game and start with Step 1 to re-build the habit. Repeat as necessary.

If or when you get side-tracked by the call of work, and you feel like saying “forget it!” or other variations of the phrase, ask yourself this:

A. What’s the point of building my successful business?
and
B. Who will be there to run and reap the rewards of my baby if I do not care enough to take care of myself first?

And while we are on the subject, my shameless plug for 2 of my healthy lifestyle programs for the healthy entrepreneur superstar in you:

I know you are super busy and sometimes, you need the quick “fix” for fitness. So I got you covered: check out my 10 Minute Invigorator program, and do the first video for free to see the results of just what 10 minutes can do for focus and concentration.

As for what goes into your body, only thing that keeps me in check is green juicing. Check out the Green Juicing Intensive Clinic, as well as my newest book, The Healthy Juicer’s Bible, to gently ease into the most natural way of healing and harmonizing with your body.

Stay fit and healthy, and you can have everything you want in your entrepreneurial pursuits. Share your thoughts below and grab your free confidence building series while you are still here: