Becoming A Healthy Leader
You’ve created healthy habits. You’re beginning to feel the positive impacts of the newly formed habits. But you’ve hit a roadblock.
The healthy habits you’ve created as a leader are becoming harder and harder to stick to. You’ve discovered they’re taking up more of your time than you anticipated.
Maybe you’re thinking of giving up on the habits that are making you healthier. Or maybe you’re thinking of slacking off and skipping valuable exercise or eating healthy foods.
You wouldn’t be alone. It’s easy to slack off on healthy habits. They can take a lot of time out of your day. However, let me encourage you to keep those healthy habits. They’re changing your life and leadership for the better.
But what can you do to stick to the healthy habits you’ve created? Let’s take a look at a couple of ways you can do this.
Sticking To Healthy Habits When You’re Leading A Team
I’ve found the stress of leading a team can make me disregard my healthy habits. The stress tells me it’s okay to eat a king-size Snickers candy bar or to drink an extra-large Coke. After all, I’ve exerted a lot of energy. Maybe that energy also burned off a lot of calories.
Yeah, that’s it… The stress of leadership helps burn more calories. So I try to tell myself. Yet I know this is a lie.
So, I have to do the following things to keep the healthy habits I’ve formed, even when leading.
Schedule healthy habits into your day:
In a previous article, I’d mentioned you need to schedule exercise into your day. Scheduling your healthy activities will help you maintain the habits that are helpful to your health.
Make sure you’re putting your healthy habits like exercise and getting outside into your calendar. You will be more likely to do what’s scheduled than what’s not. Schedule your health into your days!
Get an accountability partner:
In the church world, you discover the power of an accountability partner. An accountability partner is someone who will ask you the tough questions on the areas of your life that you’re struggling with or you want to improve.
While the idea is widely popular in the church, you can apply the principle of an accountability partner to your healthy habits. By partnering with a friend, you can have them ask the tough questions like:
Did you exercise 4 or 5 times this week? No? Why not?
What kinds of food have you been eating? Are you sticking to healthier choices?
How can I help you stick to your healthy habits that are challenging?
By having someone hold you accountable, you’ll be more likely to make those healthy habits stick. Don’t be scared to ask for help.
Reward yourself:
Creating healthy habits is challenging enough. Maintaining healthy habits is even harder. Often because results aren’t immediate.
You go and run 3 miles every other day for a week. The weight is still there. You still feel sluggish. These healthy habits don’t work, you think to yourself.
But healthy habits take time to be effective. The weight you put on over the course of your life won’t melt away instantly. You have to keep at it.
This is why you need to keep at those healthy habits. And to help yourself maintain them, you need to reward yourself.
Find simple rewards you can give yourself as you maintain your healthy habits. It can be as simple as going and buying a new comic book or a CD to attending a concert you’ve wanted to go to.
Be willing to reward yourself as you continue doing the healthy habits you’ve chosen.
