When faced with a never-ending stream of emails, presentations, and meetings, harmoniously integrating work demands with self-care habits can seem daunting. However, prioritizing your health is essential for achieving peak performance in all aspects of your life, especially your career.
To delve deeper into this topic, we consulted Arootah’s Director of Wellness Relations and Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist Elaine Moen.
5 Areas Where Health Impacts Your Success in the Workplace
Moen draws from her extensive coaching experience to identify five key areas where health directly influences your success in the workplace.
1. Energy Levels
If you’ve ever found yourself trudging to your workspace following a sleep-deprived night, you’re probably well aware that low energy levels can significantly hamper your productivity. But have you ever considered how depleting your energy long term can impact your success? When you overlook your health, you may also be limiting your professional success.
According to Moen, detrimental sleep habits are not the sole culprits of low energy. Neglecting proper nutrition and failing to manage chronic health conditions that contribute to fatigue can undermine your concentration and work performance. Over time, this energy deficit can impact your ability to achieve your goals and advance in your career. Conversely, when you maintain good health, you typically have elevated energy levels that lead you to enhanced productivity.
2. Stress Management
If you’re immersed in a high-stress profession, you might feel as though there’s no viable solution to mitigate the adverse effects of stress, apart from enduring and attempting to weather the storm. Nevertheless, you could be dealing with more stress-related health issues than you need to. When you’re physically unwell, your body often produces stress hormones that impact your capacity for managing work-related stressors and make already difficult situations feel even more overwhelming.
To alleviate stress-related symptoms, Moen recommends focusing on improving your overall health and cultivating self-care habits, such as regular exercise and mindfulness, that help you manage stress.
3. Creativity and Innovation
The state of your physical health can have a significant impact on your capacity for creativity. For instance, researchers note that exercise improves creative thinking. Whether you’re in a creative profession, or simply depend on your creative abilities for problem-solving and innovation, you may benefit from evaluating your healthy habits.
Get actionable tips to help you energize and reprioritize self-care. Sign up for The Wellness Return newsletter today.
4. Interpersonal Relationships
As mentioned above, poor health often results in lower energy and higher stress; these two factors that can lead to irritability and poor interpersonal engagement. If you’re in a leadership position, maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships is paramount for both your individual success and the overall effectiveness of your team. However, regardless of your role, prioritizing your health can make you a better collaborator, improve your communication with your team, and make you a more approachable and patient colleague.
5. Confidence and Self-Esteem
Maintaining good health can significantly elevate your self-esteem and confidence within the workplace, and confidence is often associated with effective leadership. This heightened self-assurance can prove valuable in various job responsibilities, such as recruitment, lead generation, and the formation of new business partnerships. Conversely, poor health may have the opposite effect, potentially impeding your performance and your inclination to embrace new challenges and opportunities.
Taking proactive steps to ensure you feel your best, both in terms of health and confidence, can lead you to make positive changes in your behavior. This transformation will be evident to those around you and may make a substantial impact on your organization as a whole.
How to Prioritize Your Health When You’re Always Busy
If you want to make positive changes but aren’t sure how to fit them into your busy schedule, Moen recommends initiating your health prioritization journey with a few straightforward steps. Start with the Arootah Habit Coach app to ensure you’re maintaining consistency with your habits. For enhanced benefits, consider employing the app in conjunction with a health coach. This combination of resources allows you to leverage the coach’s expertise and insights, while also working on your habits outside of coaching sessions using the app.
If you’re uncertain about which healthy habits to integrate into your daily routine, opt for those you can easily incorporate into your workday. These habits could include arranging walking meetings, meal prepping healthy lunches, or scheduling movement throughout the day.
The Bottom Line
To become a peak performer, it’s imperative that you prioritize your health. Neglecting your well-being can lead to decreased energy, reduced creativity, impaired stress management, diminished confidence, and strained interpersonal relationships in the workplace.
Fortunately, integrating healthy habits into your life is often more manageable than you might anticipate. By collaborating with a health coach and using the Arootah Habit Coach app, you can make this process smoother and more effective.
