Health is tough if you are trying to reverse a lifetime of bad habits, but it can’t be escaped. Health is the foundation of a successful life. The goal is not simply to ‘lose weight’ or ‘get healthy’ but to transform your identity so that you become a person who lives in this way day to day.
This will inevitably provide the results you desire, and this is where most programmes fail. They focus on hitting arbitrary numbers rather than transforming you as a person, inside and out.
I often joke that the fundamentals can be written on the palm of my hand. This is essentially true and makes the process ‘simple’ but by no means ‘easy’. In the face of having consistently stick to something boring, we often look to speed up the process.
Inevitably this gets us no-where, and more often than not we just need to slow down and go back to basics. Building up in this way means that you have a solid foundation against anything that life can throw at you.
The Health Evolved Method™ for achieving lifelong health is built around this concept but it applies to any area in life (see the FlyWheel below). Once you’ve decided what is worth doing, you need to start collecting and examining the data to see what’s what.
From there you can optimize the process so that you can stick to it long enough to allow the effects to compound. From here, course correction and rebalancing as new data comes in causes an endless upward spiral of success.
The flywheel applies to all areas of life and there is certainly more to life than health alone. This is where balance comes in. Wealth is more than just money, it is related to the freedom and flexibility it provides to do what you want.
Wealth and health together provide a solid base for happiness which then needs to be worked on independently. Freedom applies to being free to do what you want and go where you want but also being free from the desire for more which can rob you of happiness.
“If you don’t know where you want to go then it doesn’t matter a huge amount which way you go.” – paraphrased from the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. Without goals and values, life can lose meaning and you’ll certainly struggle to achieve things that you want to achieve.
Define your goals and values, write them down, refine them over time and above all else, take action to move you towards them.
Achieving any goal is based on consistently applying the basics but as high performers we like to go to the next level in certain areas. This might mean allocating more time and bandwidth to them or using supplements, technology and other methods to double down on them.
And what I’ve often found in the past is that upgrading or excelling in one area of my life often has unforeseen benefits that carry over into other parts. Building muscle has helped with confidence and self esteem and taught me a hell of a lot about self discipline and can happen when I put my mind to something.
Supplements, technology and biohacking are all incredible tools for personal development and growth but can be double edged swords. They can provide immense benefit when used correctly but can also lure you into a false sense of action where you feel like you’re doing something but you’re actually looking for short cuts and to avoid doing the real work (simple things applied consistently).
Harness the positives, minimise the negatives. As with anything in life.
Once you’re on your way remember that hitting goals is inevitable and can even be anti-climactic. Learn to focus on the enjoyment of the journey to find true happiness. When you do this you’re not operating out of scarcity or fear (Why don’t I have ‘x’?!) but rather out of abundance and joy (I love what I am doing each day and if I keep doing it I’ve no doubt I’ll hit my goal).
And then when you hit your goal, it’s very easy to re-evaluate, pick a higher goal and keep going!
So, it starts and ends with health. Without health you will fall far short of your potential and you’ll find your body working against you instead of for you. But spend too much bandwidth on health and you’ll find you struggle to balance other areas of your life including enjoyment, wealth creation and building relationships which all contribute to happiness.
Use the compounding effects of habits and behaviours to excel across multiple domains, watch them synergise and take you higher and truly ‘WIN AT LIFE’.