Last week and this week I’m breaking down the 10 Principles of Health as we have defined them at RxFIT.
- Health is synonymous with fitness.
- Optimal health is achieved by athletes who prioritize sleep, nutrition, exercise, mindset, and connection with others.
- Go to bed early.
- Strive for more plants, not supplements.
- Eat less to lose weight. Eat more to gain weight.
- Train to improve performance, not aesthetics.
- Constantly vary workouts with functional movements and high intensity.
- Dedicate time to think, read, write, and plan without distractions.
- Loving relationships improve longevity.
- Doctors are experts in medicine. Coaches are experts in health.
#8 Explained
Extreme Ownership is at the core of this principle. Thinking, reading, writing, and planning (without distractions) are four ways of taking back your agency and deliberately deciding what happens in your life.
Years ago in Britain, the Whitehall studies were conducted and proved that stress didn’t come from how high you were on the corporate ladder. Instead, they discovered that the primary creator of stress was feeling like you had lost control over your decision-making. In other words, the more reactive you were to your surroundings, the more stress you had. They were also able to link these findings to higher levels of mental disease and mortality rates.
Quite literally, losing control over the autonomy in your life kills.
A Few Habits
Below, I wish to highlight my opinion on some of the deadly habits most americans have in regards to losing control over their lives. They all come back to carving out time to think, read, write, and plan by yourself without external distractions.
Wake up first: If your kids wake you up, you instantly lose control over your day. You have to get them dressed, put away the toys they already got out, feed them breakfast, and get them to different appointments.
No technology for the first 2 hours: Get an alarm clock and put your phone away. The mornings are peaceful and are great times to think, read, write, and plan. But they’re only peaceful when left uninterrupted. No text message, email, or instagram post is important enough that it can’t wait until 8:00 a.m.
Take off your apple watch: That little red dot at the top of the screen is telling you what to pay attention to instead of you telling yourself what to pay attention to. The only issue I have with smart watches is that you’re connected 24/7. No notification goes unnoticed. You need time to unplug. Disengage. Be unreachable.
Drive and poop in silence: The best thinking happens in the shower for one reason… you’re unplugged. Find more “shower time” in the day by driving without music or leaving your phone in your pocket when you go to the bathroom.
Read, don’t listen: The benefit of listening to audiobooks is that you can multitask. The side-effect of multitasking is stress. If you want less stress in your life, stop multitasking. Read books, don’t listen to them.
Getting bored: A decade ago, our attention span was 3-minutes. Pretty pathetic right? We couldn’t work on our computer without getting distracted for longer than 3-minutes… Well, today that number has been reduced down to 45 seconds… I recommend watching this TedTalk.
Takeaway
Practice extreme ownership in your life by first taking back your agency. You can choose who, what, and how someone or something interrupts your day.
Your productivity, creativity, relationships, sleep, eating, exercise, and thousands of other positive things will be enhanced in your life.
Spend more time thinking, reading, writing, and planning without distractions.
Health = freedom. The freedom to choose.
Tyler