Life

3 Ways Improving Your Health And Fitness Can Help You With Success

Published

9 years ago

Mar 4, 2016

I’m pretty sure you are always looking for a way to get ahead in your career and business. You might try reading different books on business and success, go to as many seminars and conferences as you can or look to others for inspiration and motivation.

These are definitely all great things that you should be doing but you do have a natural career and success boost available to you right now and it starts with your health.

Let me show you 3 ways how improving your health and fitness can help improve your success:

1. Improve your fitness & you improve your brain power

Unlike Kim Kardashian, when it comes to business, your brain is your money maker. When you need focus, concentration, critical thinking and constant ideas you need your brain working for you and not against you. If you’re looking to boost cognitive function exercise is going to help with this.

For those who exercise they develop the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory more than those who don’t. Research from Harvard shows that not only do you improve thinking and memory you also improve the health of brain cells, grow new blood vessels in the brain and help new brain cells survive and thrive. Exercise helps your brain to run on all cylinders to focus, concentrate and make better decisions.

“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” – Jim Rohn

2. Exercise helps you to blast through plateaus

I can imagine you’ve had plenty of times where you’ve been stuck trying to develop an idea or move forward with others. This can take the form of things like writers block or not knowing how to tackle a problem in your work or business.

Exercise is a way to bust through those plateaus and get your creative thinking going. It can be as simple as going for a brisk walk, running a few flights of stairs, go to the best Bowflex home gyms or just pound out a bunch of pushups. You just want to get moving!

The research backs this up as well, The American Psychology Association looked at this issue between those who chose to sit and those who got up and moved and the active groups showed more creative responses at least 81% of the time. This means if you need to create new ideas, or are getting stuck developing other ones, you want to get up and move to get over the hump.

3. Exercise helps to lower your stress levels

Stress is by far one of the biggest detriments facing us in society today. Long term stress leads to many chronic diseases causing serious setbacks in people’s lives. If stress is left unattended it is going to play havoc with your ability to work and get things done. Removing all stress is not going to be possible but it’s more about learning to manage it so you can be more productive and successful. When you exercise your body releases mood-enhancing chemicals and at the same time helps to deplete those stress hormones that are causing so much damage.

We have the ability to manage our stress but it needs to be unlocked by engaging in physical activity. When you do start to exercise regularly you will find yourself better able to relax due to those mood-enhancing chemicals and you probably find that your best work happens when you are relaxed and not overwhelmed.

If you own a business and have people working for you you may be interested in how an employee’s health helps the bottom line. Stress leads to illness and the amount of sick days missed is really taking the economy down a notch. Going back to info from 2012, poor health resulting in missed work is costing the economy $576 billion dollars a year. Of that $576 billion, $227 billion is from lost productivity from missing employees or if they are present they’re not at their best as their illness is still causing them to perform poorly.

“Bodybuilding is much like any other sport. To be successful, you must dedicate yourself 100% to your training, diet and mental approach.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

How much exercise & what type do you need?

Here’s the good news, if you are new to exercise you don’t need to start doing Ironman triathlons or working out for hours a day. The research around exercise and it’s ability to help in your motivation, productivity and success was done with simple walking. It doesn’t take a lot to start reaping the rewards and as far as amount of time needed the sweet spot seems to be are 150 minutes of exercise a week. This can be broken up a few different ways, but it works out to around 30 minutes a day. Certainly very doable.

This is good encouragement to start getting going on some form of exercise, you can know that it won’t overwhelm you but you will be getting those positive effects that can help you with your career and success. Start including walking, hiking, biking, swimming or recreational sports to get that 150 minutes a week. There will be time to get more specific and detailed with training and exercise, for right now you just want to get going.

If you’re already making yourself move, keep doing it! If you haven’t, I think you can see now how taking care of your health and fitness has a great carry over effect that can make your ability to achieve success closer than ever.

Are you improving your health and fitness? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Jamie Logie

Jamie Logie is a personal trainer and health coach, podcaster and blogger with the mission of helping people succeed in their health and wellness. Jamie runswww.regainedwellness.com and is author of the best selling book: Taking Back Your Health.

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Life

How Learning the Skill of Hope Can Change Everything

Hope isn’t wishful thinking. It’s a state of being and a skill that has profound evidence of helping people achieve success in life

Published

2 weeks ago

Jan 6, 2025

Daniel Bell

Image Credit: Midjourney

Hope isn’t wishful thinking. It’s a state of being and a skill that has profound evidence of helping people achieve success in life.

Wishful thinking, on the other hand, is like having dreams in the sky without a ladder to climb, having a destination without a map, or trying to operate a jet-engine airplane without instructions. It sounds nice but is impossible to realize. You don’t have what you need to make it happen!

What Real Hope Is

Real hope is actionable, practical, and realistic. Better yet, it’s feasible and can be learned.

One popular approach is Hope Theory. This concept is used by colleges to study how hope impacts students’ academic performance. Researchers found that students with high levels of hope achieve better grades and are more likely to graduate compared to those with less hope.

Hope can be broken down into two components:

Pathways – The “how to” of hope. This is where people think of and establish plans for achieving their goals.
Agency – The “I can” of hope. This is the belief that the person can accomplish their goals.

Does Hope Really Work?

According to Webster’s Dictionary, hope as a noun is defined as: “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.”

As humans, we are wired to crave fulfillment. We have the ability to envision it and, through hope, make it a reality.

My Experience with Hope

For 13 years, I was a hopeless human. During my time working at a luxury hotel as a front desk agent earning $11.42 per hour, I felt the sting of hopelessness the most.

The regret of feeling my time was being stolen from me lingered every time I clocked in. Eventually, I decided to do something about it.

I gave myself permission to hope for something better. I began establishing pathways to success and regained agency by learning from self-help books and seeking mentorship.

Because I took action toward something I desired, I now feel more hope and joy than I ever felt hopelessness. Hope changed me.

Hope Actually Improves Your Life

Wishful thinking doesn’t work, and false hope is equally ineffective. Real hope, however, is directly tied to success in all areas of life.

Studies show that hopeful people tend to:

Demonstrate better problem-solving skills
Cultivate healthier relationships
Maintain stronger motivation to achieve goals
Exhibit better work ethic
Have a positive outlook on life

These benefits can impact work life, family life, habit-building, mental health, physical health, and spiritual practice. Imagine how much better your life could be by applying real hope to all these areas.

How to Develop the Skill to Hope

As acclaimed French writer Jean Giono wrote in The Man Who Planted Trees:
“There are also times in life when a person has to rush off in pursuit of hopefulness.”

If you are at one of those times, here are ways to develop the skill to hope:

1. Dream Again

To cultivate hope, you need to believe in its possibility. Start by:

Reflecting on what you’re passionate about, your values, and what you want to achieve.
Writing your dreams down, sharing them with someone encouraging, or saying them out loud.
Creating a vision board to make your dreams feel more tangible.

Dreams are the foundation of hope—they give you something meaningful to aspire toward.

2. Create an Environment of Hope

Set Goals: Write down your goals and create a plan to achieve them.
Visualize Success: Use inspirational quotes, photos, or tools like dumbbells or canvases to remind yourself of your goals.
Build a Resource Library: Collect books, eBooks, or audiobooks about hope and success to inspire you.

An environment that fosters hope will keep you motivated, resilient, and focused.

3. Face the Challenges

Don’t avoid challenges—overcoming them builds confidence. Participating in challenging activities, like strategic games, can enhance your problem-solving skills and reinforce hope.

4. Commit to Wisdom

Seek wisdom from those who have achieved what you aspire to. Whether through books, blogs, or social media platforms, learn from their journeys. Wisdom provides the foundation for real, actionable hope.

5. Take Note of Small Wins

Reflecting on past victories can fuel your hope for the future. Ask yourself:

What challenges have I already overcome?
How did I feel when I succeeded?

By remembering those feelings of happiness, relief, or satisfaction, your brain will naturally adopt a more hopeful mindset.

Conclusion

Hope is more than wishful thinking—it’s a powerful skill that can transform your life. By dreaming again, creating a hopeful environment, facing challenges, seeking wisdom, and celebrating small wins, you can develop the real hope necessary for success in all aspects of life.

Let hope guide you toward a brighter, more fulfilling future.

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Dec 27, 2024

CT Dool

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The quarter-life crisis is a well-defined set of stages—Trapped, Checking Out, Separation, Exploration, Rebuilding—one goes through in breaking free from feelings of meaninglessness, lack of fulfillment, and misalignment with purpose. I detail the stages and interweave my story below. (more…)

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Here’s The Thing About Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning

Stop hoarding and start sharing your knowledge and wealth for the benefit of humankind

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2 months ago

Nov 21, 2024

M.S. Rao

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Few people have the habit of hoarding their wealth without spending. However, it limits their motivation as they tend to get into their comfort zones. When people start spending money, then there will be depletion in their coffers. (more…)