Your daily habits create the foundation of your life–your health, wealth, happiness, productivity, quality of relationships, and energy level. You can become more mindful creating the intention to interrupt patterns that don’t serve you. Establish positive habits that lead to a happy and prosperous life.
You create habits as an efficiency mechanism. Neuroscience research tells us that the brain quickly transforms as many tasks and behaviors as possible into habits so that we can do them without thinking. This frees up the brain to deal with new challenges. But first, we have to integrate the new habit and that can feel challenging.
Think about when you start a new activity. Your brain works hard to integrate it into your life, processing huge amounts of new information as you progress through the activity. As soon as you understand how it works, your behavior starts becoming automatic and the amount of mental effort required to perform the activity decreases.
The best way to approach creating positive new habits that will last is to take baby steps bringing them into your life one at a time. This gives you the opportunity to repeat the habit over and over until it is a part of your automatic behavior, and also allows you to focus the extra brainpower required for the habit on one or few activities so you aren’t overwhelmed. Then when your habit is automatic, you can add another one.
It might seem counter-intuitive, and that this approach will bring slow results. But, when you consider that studies show most people only make changes for a short amount of time before giving up, this approach actually brings results fast. Plus, you can say goodbye to that discouraging yo-yo cycle of starting and then breaking habits! Dieting is a good example of an intention that often goes awry, and demotivates people.
Eat Healthy
What high performance leaders eat is so important to their success. A number of my clients seeking better nutrition have found reading the books “Eat to Live” by Joel Fuhrman, MD, and “The Perfect Health Diet” by Paul Jaminet and Shou-Ching Shih Jaminet, and changing their eating habits very helpful to restore energy and vitality.
Jack Lallane, the fitness guru recommended mostly eating “live food”. Processed or man-made food may not have helped him in his 90’s pull all of those boats in the water!
“Real Age” Health Survey
I recently took the “Real Age” Health Survey and found it a pretty good indicator of my health habits, which is vitally important as we get older and hopefully healthier and wiser. I’m really 58 not 66. My goal is to be 24. I can dream big and so can you!
A number of my executive coaching clients have found taking the health survey a real wake-up call! You can take the free survey at http://www.doctoroz.com/realage
Sustainable leaders take time for self-reflection, model healthy behaviors and flourish. They seek constant reinvention. A bit of luck can help too! Are your health habits serving you?
Are you working in a company where executive coaches provide leadership development to grow emotionally intelligent leaders? Does your organization provide executive coaching for leaders? Sustainable leaders tap into their emotional intelligence and social intelligence skills to constantly reinvent themselves, and create a more compelling future.
One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Am I taking care of my physical, emotional and spiritual health?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching as part of their leadership development programs.
Working with a seasoned cognitive executive coach and leadership consultant trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-I, CPI 260 and Denison Culture Survey can help enlightened leaders create a sustainable future. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision, mission and strategy of your company.
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