Sana Animam

My first experience I want to share is on health.

When I started to travel for work, eating healthy was no easy task. I started eating maybe once a day because “I didn’t have time.” I was on my feet all day—12 to 16 hours sometimes and traveling nonstop.

I found that I wasn’t happy with myself in my personal life, but I continued to throw myself at my work and just being the best I could be at it. About 6 months into it, I started becoming more and more irritable and found that I had a short fuse at times. Looking back, I think my body was trying to get my attention to tell me “Hey there, if you don’t take care of me, you won’t be getting anymore out of me.” The only thing I had going for myself was my work. Friend, I want to pause here and tell you something that clicked in my head one day — if your work is the only thing you having going for you, you are in great danger of living a very unfulfilled life. Not to say there aren’t things to be said about achievements at work but at the end of this week, if they decided to get rid of you, what would you have?

A year went by and even though myself and my amazing team were being recognized for those achievements, I still felt lonely at the end of the day. I actually took a trip that year during Christmas time to Europe. I didn’t blame the world or anybody else about being unhappy in my personal life—I knew it was me. I also didn’t want to be the type to blame the world for everything that was going wrong. The reality was, I was mad at myself for letting it get so bad. What I want to share from that moment of clarity is you have to hold yourself accountable. Holding yourself accountable for not eating, sleeping, taking care of your body, and lastly for making yourself your own prisoner.

Once you can honestly hold yourself accountable, then you’ve taken the first step. Here are some tips that will help:

1. Start small. 

If your eating habits are eating once a day, try twice a day. Make one of those breakfast. Yes, I know many people say “I don’t eat breakfast.” If you are one of those people, listen to what you are saying! Your body NEEDS a kickstart each day. Once you put food into your body, your body starts breaking down those nutrients to better fuel you for the rest of the day. So please, PLEASE try to eat breakfast and build on your daily diet from there.

2. Don’t even give FAILURE a chance. 

If you come up with a huge plan that seems unreachable, you won’t achieve your goal. You can’t go from 0 to 100 in a week. Go walk at least twice a week and build from there. Note…walk not run. If you haven’t worked out in a year and you go for a run, you ARE going to feel like Sh*% and your body is going to resent you for what you’ve done to it without proper prep. If its used to bad food and bad habits, your first instinct is going to be your brain telling you to NEVER do that again because of all the pain you put it through.

That’s it …. try to do this two things for at least 2 (two)(dos) weeks. Then once you realize than you set two small goals AND you accomplished them, this will give you a morale boost.

Until next time!

Feel free to share, comment, or reach out by email if you are already there and want to go further.

A.

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