This question comes up a lot, because we put a value against everything that we do, and some of the values that we put against health are not as important as they should be, or we don’t take it as seriously as we should. It’s very easy to get caught up in the here and now, and think, “Well, I’m okay for now. I don’t need to think too much about the future. The way I’m living my life now is okay, I’m managing.” Or, maybe you’re just firefighting all the time – you haven’t got the energy to put into health.
My belief is that we’re sacrificing or selling off our future for the convenience of today, and you can apply that to anything in life, but particularly health. Is the way you’re living now selling off your future? One of our key beliefs here at Bodyshot is that health span is more important than lifespan. What I mean by that is, it’s really important to live a long, healthy, energised, and vital life and being healthy with it, as opposed to living a long life where the last 20 years you might be walking assisted with a stick, or maybe a chair, and you’re not able to feed yourself and so on.
Here are some of the big mistakes I see people making around health and undervaluing it. One, it’s not putting enough time into it. We need to dedicate time – I would say between 10-20, even 25% of your time should be spent on health. That could be many things; It could be having a coach, having a personal trainer, going for massages, doing your own fitness sessions, going to the gym, sitting in the sauna, going for treatments, perhaps meditating, doing something for you that’s really good for your mind, your body, and for your general wellbeing, and equally putting financial input into that as well.
Again, I would suggest spending between 10-25% of your monthly income on something related to health as I’ve just described above. If you think that sounds a lot, just think about what it could buy you later on in life. If it could get you another 5 years of health span, or 10 years of being mobile – what price is that? Or, another 10 years of better and improved cognitive performance, so you stave off some of the diseases like Alzheimer’s which are very prevalent at the moment.
It’s really important to focus on being invested in terms of time, invested in terms of money, invested emotionally and invested in all regards – to really focus in on health. The start of the year is a time when we tend to have a little bit more energy, and a little bit more focus, so I really urge you to think about how much time, and money, and emotional energy do you spend on your health, and what’s that getting you? Where are you at right now?
Lastly, think about what your health is worth to you? What would you do if you had all the energy in the world? That’s a great question to leave you on.
Leanne Spencer
www.bodyshotperformance.com
This article first appeared in the February 2019 issue of SE22 magazine.