Defining success #5 - Health

This one is incredibly easy to completely ignore as I get caught up in the go-go pace of life. Exercise goes by the wayside and food consists of quick snack fixes.

Most people don't think of it this way, but health really is a strategic resource. The healthier I am, the better I treat my body, the more energy I have to put into whatever I do - work or play.

Since identifying this as one of my success criteria, it has gotten me thinking about "performance" in areas contributing to that success. How is my diet? How is my exercise? How about time to relax and center? I haven't done it yet, but I can see even doing a weekly rating of my performance in each of the areas, which would keep me from letting health slide into the background and off the radar screen.

This is one of a series of posts exploring my definition for success in my own journey. You can see the original post with the big picture here.

--

Curt Rosengren

Passion Catalyst  ^SM

Career passion e-books

Comments

[Jeremy]

I like that view of health as a success criteria. I've been talking with a friend about the ways in which we value different areas of our life, particularly in our orientation to the future. When we are considering the consequences of a choice (especially career-related), we tend to focus on factors like finances, status, location, how it relates to our interests, etc...

We were wondering whether the true measures of value for any activity or decision should be focused more on how it might contribute to our health. So we came up with four facets of health as an experiment: mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. I realize you could go round and round debating the merits of these labels, combining and splitting them endlessly...but the point was that we then tried to use those measures on a number of decisions or actions we were anticipating in our futures and found it to be a wonderful exercise.

This isn't revolutionary, but made me think that most decisions could benefit from those four value quesetions about potential effects on our health: How will this action affect my mental health (engagement, intellect, sense of self, identity, mental energy), physical health (stress, strain, sleep, time for exercise), emotional health (relationships, moods, creativity) and spiritual health (which would likely vary widely depending on each individual)?

Sorry, it's an unfinished thought, but I like the concept. Thanks for triggering the thinking...

[steven davies]

I completely agree with you.Health is a strategic resource.Now I make exercises,eat correctly and that reflect on my work and other things I do.