Your Business Is What You Eat
Why should business types pay attention to health? Actually, let me tell you the exact question I received the other day: “I like your podcasts when you talk to people about marketing or sales or whatever, but I hate it when you talk to people about eating healthy. Who do you do that? That’s not business.”
It’s not? I was fascinated. Before January 3, I was willing to eat out of a drive thru (sic) window 2 or 3 times or more a day. No problem. I’d eat on the way to meetings, on the way to the airport, at airports between flights. I’d eat whatever junk was around because I wanted to be sure to be fed before I did the work I was doing. But being fed junk isn’t exactly being fed, is it? (Better than nothing, I suppose. Or is it?)
Your Body Requires Good Fuel Or Your Mind Won’t Do Its Best Work
Since turning my eating habits around 180 degrees, my productivity and output have skyrocketed. Between eating great, getting good sleep, performing regular exercise efforts, and meditating daily, everything about me has changed for the better. But it took eating to start it.
My body, when it has great food, doesn’t want to sit still. My body, when it has amazing food, wants to do even more, even better. One leads the other.
When you eat junk, you feel sleep, you feel a bit beat down. A friend of mine told me that he used to live with a girl who had a kid. They raised the kid raw vegan (all uncooked plant-based food). When the kid wouldn’t go to bed until 11 or 11:30 every night, they finally broke down and gave the kid a few slices of bread. Pow. The kid would go right to sleep. Think on that for a minute.
It’s Not as Difficult As You Think
If this were really hard to do, eating ridiculously healthy, I wouldn’t do it. I’m busy and it’s still really hard to make my health a priority, though I’m learning about that daily. So, for instance, in the morning, I get up early, do my morning meditation and chanting, go to yoga, and have my fitness done for the day (unless I take a walk or bike ride later). I juice some breakfast or make a smoothie. It’s easy once you get a few basic recipes figured out.
Later, I might take some pre-chopped veggies out and some tofu (you do actually come to like it once you learn how to cook it better), and make a quick stir fry. This takes 8 minutes, costs nearly nothing compared to eating out, and fills me with delicious food.
At night, I’ll either have a smoothie or I’ll maybe heat up some chili that I made a few days before. Again, no real effort. Then, I’ll do a last tiny bit of work, and head off to read for a bit.
I get to bed early. Some people can’t believe that I go to bed around 8:30pm, but getting up at 5 and doing all my stuff early makes for a good reason to do so. Oh, and because an entrepreneur with a very well-rested mind is like a lumberjack with a very sharp axe.
It’s not difficult. You can do it. But it’s a choice. And it’s one you have to make.
Chris Brogan puts all this good eating to work at Human Business Works.
