You Want Success ? The Secret is Balance.
Three mistakes I have made you should avoid.
Do you want to have a great career? Do you work hard and even harder than others but still don’t get the desired results?
I have asked myself these questions and found the answers in the hardest and most painful way.
When we have a goal that we passionately want to achieve, we tend to focus all our efforts on making it happen and neglect other aspects of life, which prevents us from establishing the essential balance needed to achieve any success.
I want to share with you three mistakes that I myself have made, and I hope you will learn a lesson from my painful experience.
Mistake #1: I have no time for a break !
The dominant belief is ‘work more to succeed more’.
But, by naively applying this principle, we often neglect the needs of our bodies. Breaks are essential to refresh ourselves and work more effectively. For example, according to neuroscientists, the brain needs a break of 20-30 minutes every 90 minutes of concentration. We should treat ourselves as humans, not machines.
The breaks should not be seen as a waste of time but rather as a part of work. If you feel overwhelmed and very tired, it’s not necessarily because of hard work. Sometimes, it’s due to our unhealthy lifestyle.
“When you are burnt out, not because you are doing too much but because you are doing too little of things that makes you feel alive.”- Jim Kwik.
We must accept that our bodies cannot work incessantly and that we occasionally need to go out time with family, spend half an hour by the sea, or enjoy a morning walk with one’s dog. Well-being improves both performance and productivity.
Breaks also help you learn better. It has already been proven and experienced that breaks speed up learning and facilitate the memorization of information. Learning is a two-level process: the first level is when the brain is in concentration mode, and the second is when it is in relaxation mode. We need to understand how our bodies work to use them more effectively.
Mistake #2: Exercise is not so important !
Our brain is happier and more efficient when the boddy moves. Exercise not only helps maintain good health but also helps us cope with stress and enhance our intellectual abilities.
“Every single time you move your boddy you are giving your brain a wonderful ‘bubble bath’ of neurochemichals : dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, endorphines, and that’s really Key to the mood-boosting effects of exercice.”-Wendy Suzuki.
However, these are just short-term effects.
What would happen if exercice became a daily activity?
“What if you give your brain a bubble bath on a regular basis?…That’s when those 'growth factors' kick in. And what do the growth factors do? The go to two key brain areas. One is the hippocampus…It’s one of the only human brain areas that can grow brand new brain cells in adulthood. What does that mean? Your memory is better. The second is the prefrontal cortex critical for your ability to shift and focus attention.”-Wendy Suzuki.
I want to share with you my experience. Over the past three years, as a doctoral student in applied mathematics, I focused solely on my studies. All day in my room, sitting at my desk reading articles and trying to solve very difficult mathematical problems. One morning, I woke up in unbearable pain; with every movement, it felt like someone was cutting me with a knife: I was suffering from sciatica. It was because I had spent long hours sitting on the chair.
Our body is designed to move. For thousands and thousands of years, we Homo Sapiens, we were hunters. Our daily life consisted of chasing prey, building spears to hunt, or walking for miles in search of food.
Our body has been adapted to this kind of activity. In short, sports were and remain a matter of life or death.
Mistake #3: Do not expose oneself to the sun.
Sunlight has several benefits. The most important may be the production of vitamin D. A deficiency in this vitamin can create many problems such as
- osteoporosis,
- hair loss,
- a weak immune system,
- back pain,
- depression.
All of this will, of course, affect the ability to perform tasks.
Like most university students, I was used to spending almost the entire day in the lecture hall or at home: always in the shadows. I was used to unbearable pains throughout my body when I woke up in the morning and back pain when I sat down to study. But one day I decided that enough is enough. After a visit to the doctor and having blood tests done, the results came back: I had 12ng/ml of Vitamin D. I had almost no vitamin D in my blood!! All this suffering just because I needed 10 minutes of sunlight each day.
For a successful life, balance is more than necessary. One cannot focus on one aspect and ignore others because, eventually, they will all be neglected. I mentioned in this article three mistakes that had a very bad impact on my health and my productivity. But of course, there are other things that anyone should take into account, such as diet, sleep, relationships...
