Many daily obligations require our time, emotions, and energy. Relationships, jobs, and family can easily occupy a substantial number of hours throughout the day. We all have twenty-four hours in our day. The revolutionary finance expert Warren Buffett has the same amount of time in his day as an eighteen-year-old associate starting his first job at Target. The difference is, they both decide to allocate their time throughout their day differently into categories they find important to themselves. They both spend time, emotions, and physical energy on what makes their days fulfilling. Warren may want to check his stocks for six hours first thing in the morning and then play racquet ball in his basement for two hours with his friends. The eighteen-year-old Target associate might want to look at their phone and chat with friends via social media for two hours, followed by stocking shelves at Target for eight hours, and finally end their day with a two-hour course at the Napa College. Warren and the eighteen-year-old have the same amount of time, they just spend it differently based on what is important to them. Similar to Mr. Buffet and our eighteen-year-old hard working Target employee, we carefully choose where to spend our hours in a day.
Time demands of our careers, family, and friendships can easily overlap our own ability to fulfill factors we aspire to complete in our everyday lives. Sometimes, we don’t get to fulfill our own goals throughout the day because we give so much time to other obligations surrounding us. We need six to eight hours of sleep. After waking, we usually spend eight to ten hours at our jobs. Add two hours devoted to our relationships, friends, or children, and we’ve already used sixteen to twenty hours out of the twenty-four hours available. This leaves us with four to eight hours to focus on other parts of our lives outside of the time we give to work, relationships, and our kids. If there is only 25 percent of the day remaining, it would be beneficial to spend that remaining time to focus on yourself. Taking time out to refine our physical, psychological, and emotional well-beings will not only help decrease stress, but make us elite performing individuals for our jobs, spouses, friends, and children.
Many of our personal training clients endure similar issues where they aren’t able to exercise due to obligations in their career and personal lives. This is where setting appointments to meet for exercise sessions with personal trainers benefits them. These appointments act as productive disruptions throughout their busy days by setting their phone on silent and carving time out of their core obligations to focus on themselves. During exercise, they allow themselves to be mindful of their exercise technique, phase out peripheral distractions, and focus on each repetition they are assigned to do. This focus on performing exercises efficiently and effectively can serve as a form of advanced meditation. During this mindset, there are very few things that can distract exercise participants from focusing on anything other than themselves.
Making time for yourself to exercise has many benefits. It might seem counterproductive because the thought of taking time away from our jobs and family priorities might be unproductive. The various exercise participants we have coached improve their abilities of being a productive employee, an amazing spouse, and a strong-willed parent by adding two to three days per week of exercise to their life. If we spend too much time focusing on our priorities at our jobs and families, we open up the possibility of diminishing returns. We might get irritated with our family. We could have a really bad day at work because we’re fed up with a recurring issue that takes time to resolve. Exercise not only promotes the body to be strong, injury free, manage pain, and decreases the likelihood of cardiovascular disease, but the results of an adherent exercise program produces a body that can withstand mental, physical, emotional stress. There are times where your spouse needs you to be that rock to support them during challenging times. Our children always need an energetic, bright-eyed, bushy tailed parent to be their role model. Additionally, exercise promotes the management of stress hormones throughout the body. By inducing a stressful environment via resistance training, yoga classes, or hiking, the body can adapt to the stress we are imposing on it. This results in our ability to deal with stressful situations in our everyday lives.
Taking time away from our jobs and families seems like the last thing we want to do. However, if we can shift our mentality to take a little time out to see how we can continue to be a faithful and loving spouse, a diligent and levelheaded employee, and a healthy, strong role model for our children, perhaps we should take some time out of our day to focus on ourselves and give ourselves the gift of exercise.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
