To be specific, your health will either enhance your lifestyle, increase your work productivity and improve your effectiveness … Or it’s going to break your ability to have or enjoy financial wealth and independence, even if you’ve saved or planned for retirement.
In his book, “Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals,” financial planner-turned-author Tom Corley found that wealthy people tend to share certain habits.
These routines and behaviors can lend themselves to good health:
- Wealthy people tend to get up early and work on self-improvement by doing things like meditating, exercising, or reading
- They eat more healthily; Corley writes that 70 percent of the wealthy people he studied ate fewer than 300 calories of junk food a day
- They avoid overindulging in alcohol
Similarly, affluence researcher Thomas J. Stanley, author of “The Millionaire Next Door,” had many of the same findings. Millionaires:
- get enough sleep
- they exercise
- they eat right
Even if you’re not a millionaire, let’s say you have a salary or hourly wage and work the standard 40 hours. Then you’ll want to know that people who exercise earn 9% more on average over their less-active coworkers, according to a 2012 study in the Journal of Labor Research.
Significant, right?
Now that you know there’s a correlation between a healthier lifestyle and increased productivity, success, and earnings… The question is, how do you make time for this?
I’m about to say something that many people will not want to hear…
There IS time. The majority of the civilian population has time, we just don’t utilize it well.
FACT: PEOPLE SPEND MORE TIME WATCHING TV THAN THEY DO ON EXERCISE ON A DAILY BASIS
According to the American Time Use Survey for 2021 , the average amount of time spent watching tv vs. exercising is as follows for men and women:
- Men: 3.04 hours vs. 0.40 hours (more than 7 times as much)
- Women: 2.69 hours vs. 0.24 hours (more than 11 times as much)
Where children are involved, here is the average time spent on watching tv vs. participating in sports, exercise, and recreation:
Households where the youngest child is 6 YEARS OR YOUNGER…
2.61 hours vs. 0.28 hours
Households where the children are BETWEEN THE AGES OF 7-18…
3.03 hours vs. 0.36 hours
Lack of sleep, especially in households with young children, is certainly a reality. Watching tv vs. working out is certainly an easy decision to make when you’re tired. The irony is that exercise boosts energy!
Yet it takes decisiveness to shift towards more movement over sedentary activities. Here’s a short list of ways to achieve this:
- Prioritize movement early in the day if possible.
- Involve the whole family in physical movement… brisk walks at the park, kicking the ball around, or even doing one of the numerous YouTube videos geared towards exercise for kids (they provide a substantial cardio workout for adults, too!)
- Weave it into your day by simply aiming for a 15-minute exercise snack in the middle of the day, 5 days a week. 15 minutes of exercise done five days a week meets the American Heart Association’s recommendation of 75 minutes per week of vigorous aerobic activity. BOOM!
- Enlist the help of a personal trainer to hold you accountable or design a program(s) for you that can be done in a reasonable amount of time 5 days/week.
Investing in our health is not only essential for our physical vitality but also for our mental and emotional well-being. It is the foundation upon which a fulfilling and prosperous life is built. By prioritizing self-care, adopting healthy habits, and seeking preventive measures, we can safeguard our long-term health and preserve our true wealth.
