Owning your own business, making it flourish and reaping the benefits, bring with it feelings of satisfaction and contentment with life. As all start-up business owners are familiar with – when you are chasing your dreams and making them happen, often times you are busy from the crack of dawn until the sun goes down at night. As you try to balance your time and attention between business, family, church, and recreation, it is much too easy to put your health aside and ignore the important benefits that come from regular exercise and nutritious eating habits. However, this is a dangerous thing to do.
Your business is dependent on YOU – the creator of it. Should your physical body start to experience the negative side effects that come from ignoring your health, not only will YOU suffer, but your business could as well. You may find yourself having less energy to carry you through your busy days. You may feel mental fogginess and forgetfulness. You may find yourself getting sick more often due to a lowered immune system. All of these things put you in a situation where you are not at your best physical self to nurture and grow your business.
You may wonder how though, it is physically possible to squeeze one more “to-do” item on your “to-do” list. Your desire to be healthy may be there, but your time restraints may simply prevent you from doing it, right? Wrong.
Ideally, healthy adults should be exercising 60 minutes per day, five days per week. Many people think that if they can’t dedicate a full hour to their exercise regimen, then it’s not even worth trying. However, when it comes to exercise, ANYTHING is better than NOTHING.
Several years ago, I noticed day after day, as my children’s pediatrician would come to exercise at the same gym that I attended. I knew he was a busy man working long hours and being the father of five kids, so just the fact that he was there was impressive to me. He would stretch his muscles for a minute or two, hop on a piece of cardio equipment and exercise for about twenty minutes. At the end of his short, but high intensity workout, he would get off the machine and head out the door to start his day.
The point of this story is to illustrate that even the littlest amount of exercise is better than none at all. If you are completely sure that you can’t dedicate an entire hour to exercising several times per week, resolve now to exercise at least twenty minutes per day. That’s really not much at all and should be easy to do as long as you make it a priority.
Just as nurturing your business and watching it flourish brings you happiness and satisfaction in life, the same will happen as you exercise your body and give it the nourishment it needs. If you make the time to take care of your body, in return, it will take care of you.
This post was written by Startup Princess Fairy Godmother Liz Rosenbaum, personal fitness trainer. Read Liz’s blog for great articles and ideas to improve your health and workouts.
Liz, thanks for your comments. I’ve been really struggling getting exercise into my new routine. I’ve been getting up to 30 minutes a day, but haven’t quite reached 60 yet. Taking care of our bodies is just as important as taking care of our family and our business!