New Year, Optimal You
3 ways to get more out of your New Years resolutions — and how Salesforce can help
I spent three of my best years — from 2011–2014 — at Salesforce, meeting some of the most incredible, intelligent, and caring people that are still my closest friends. During my tenure, I found myself exercising with my colleagues, running 5Ks, meditating in conference rooms, and doing pushups/lunges/ squats at our desks. It was the type of culture that brought the best out of you both professionally and personally. My personal experiences at Salesforce inspired me to start my own wellness platform application on Salesforce and fulfill the mission in building a healthy global Salesforce ecosystem and community.
Our wellness is crucial to living a productive lifestyle, yet we often overlook it due to the simple fact that our bodies are such incredible forms of adaptation and strength to recover and protect us.
As many are probably doing right now, we’re focused on our New Years Resolutions. Typically these resolutions fall into health, prosperity, and growth. We spend hours trying to figure out how to plan these into our busy schedules. For example, I want to go to the gym more this year and attend at least three classes at the gym a week including Spin, Cardio, and Yoga! Pumped! Right?
Unfortunately, the reality check comes in with work deadlines, family events, and commutes to/from work. So how do we build the optimal version of ourselves that best fits our lifestyle, drives our careers, and achieves maybe a few of the New Years Resolutions? Your health is the path to success, and Salesforce enables both. Creating a culture of health and productivity simultaneously drives optimal performance in any job role.
Here are a few hacks to get you started with health & career growth resolutions:
1. Set achievable goals.
Let’s start with the goal setting. It’s always inspiring and exciting to think about these incredible goals you want to set. It’s vital to help you grow and shoot for the stars and maybe land on the moon! Now it’s nearly just as important to setup achievable goals based on what you know about your current state and lifestyle.
Here is a trick: take the goal you create and break it into quarters, and every time you hit that goal, celebrate that achievement. Then after you achieved the four quarter goals, you’ve now had the enjoyment of four celebrations and you hit your goal. Now here’s why that’s important. Say you get to 75% of your goal, and you don’t end up hitting your goal. Well now you’ve never been able to celebrate the achievement and progress you made, and you feel dejected for not being able to hit the 100% of your goal. Well, that’s no fun.
2. Tag your manager/direct report.
We spend our waking hours at work. This year you’re striving for that career growth or improving your management skills. What if, to help achieve a better version of you at the office and improve relationships with your managers or direct reports, you tried a walking 1:1 or go for a weekend bike ride? Bring family members or friends if you want to make it less formal. At Salesforce, we would go on weekend morning hikes and runs in the Presidio or Telegraph Hill. This built relationships that helped accelerate career growth, friendships, and trust to achieve together as a team.
3. Optimize yourself.
Year after year, I have seen people set goals for themselves and when they don’t hit them, they end up being hard on themselves. I’ve also seen others overachieve against their goals to the point where they burn themselves out.
Find a way to optimize yourself. When you self-reflect on the optimal version of you, you’ll naturally become kind to yourself. You’ll be able to grow at the steady pace that best fits the perfect balance. With the ability to now see your health stats from a smartphone or wearable tracker, and access to your Salesforce in the same location, you can start down the journey of building the best version of you!
It’s 2018, and there’s no better time to build the optimal version of you than the present moment.
Navid Rastegar is the CEO & Founder at FitBliss.com, a health and wellness app on the AppExchange designed to optimize health and productivity on Salesforce.
