Achieving Optimum Health: Know Your "why", Develop Your Health Structure and Balance Your Quadrant
Have you ever heard someone say, ?I know what I?m supposed to do with my health; I am just not doing it?. Have you ever heard yourself say it? I have listened to thousands of people say that exact phrase to me. Today, I would like to share the solution. Here?s the truth: If you want to do something and you are not doing it, something in there, an important part of your health, is missing. That missing piece can be filled in with two crucial things: Education and Consistency. During my years of coaching the goal has always been to create a system that will provide the opportunity for anyone to learn how to make their Health a Priority, to help them allow it to become a permanent part of life. I have developed a 3 step process that provides you with the ability to stay present with your health and a foundation that will always give you the answers if something is not working.
Step 1: Know Your Why
I have spoken many times about knowing your “Why”. It is what can make up the single greatest difference between people who succeed with their health and those who struggle. Throughout my years of fitness modeling, my “why” was “to look the best I can” and to have maximum muscle definition. This “why” worked for a while, but then I crashed. My problem was that I lived for how I looked and disregarded how I felt. I restricted my calories and carbohydrates which made me moody, grumpy, and unhappy overall. I lived this way for 5 years and then one day my wife Abbi said she could not live with me the way I was anymore. She said I lived for my body, and it had to change. I realized my “why” was actually working against everything I truly wanted in life, happiness, calmness, and freedom. It was this defining moment that propelled me to finding what my “why” really was. It was then that my “why” changed to “having the highest quality of life”. It changed to being the best husband, father, and friend I could be. It changed to being lean, fit and healthy so I could have more energy, play sports, and be active with my family. I’d worked so hard in the past to have a perfect body that I neglected everything else. When I shifted my “why”, every aspect of my life improved.
We all have a different “why”. I shared this story with you to encourage you to find your own “why”, and then ask yourself if your “why” is strong enough to provide you with the quality of life you would like. Is your “why” powerful enough to keep you going after a bad week, an injury, the flu, or a stressful business trip? Is your “why” going to help keep you determined to make your health a priority?
We can all succeed for moments. If you create a “why” powerful enough, you will succeed for life.
Step 2: Develop Your Health Structure
Diets fail people because they do not provide a game plan for long term success. The key to that long term success is to have a foundation to work from and create a game plan that you can build from for the rest of your life. There are 6 main components to your Health Structure: Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise, Supplements, Water and Stress. If you educate yourself on these 6 components, while also learning how to permanently implement them into your lifestyle, you will have a Blueprint to Success. The Health Structure will provide you with the tools to achieve all of your health goals.
Step 3: Balance Your Quadrant
It?s time to make room in your life for your health. We all live busy lives and too many times we decide to go for it and get healthy without making a plan or creating space in our life. It?s very easy to crash if you take a life that is already 100% full and add a nutrition and exercise program on top of it. The key is to adjust other parts of your life and open up the space your health can occupy. This way you can help your health become a permanent part of your life. Creating balance in your Quadrant will enhance every aspect of your life. The Quadrant consists of the 4 basic components of life: relationships, career, health, and lifestyle.
What it all boils down to is this: How great of a life do you want to live? We all want to be happy, we all want to feel good, we all want consistent energy, and we all want to live the fullest and best life we can. How is living a life like that possible without finding a way to make your Health a Priority? We all get caught up in wanting things right now. The thing is all great things in life take time. By giving yourself a Self-Health education, then applying that knowledge to become consistent with it, you will create a platform from which you can live the life you truly desire. I promise you this, if you choose to implement this three step process, ?The Juice will be worth the squeeze!?
Mark Macdonald