Are You Living Your Life to the Fullest?
No matter what occupation you have, there are daily stresses with which you deal. The only difference is that some of us are better at dealing with stress than others. Letting stress get to you can be one of the biggest obstacles to truly enjoying your life. Another big obstacle is feeling like you don’t have enough time for enjoyable things.
Being a hard worker is both an admirable and necessary trait for reaching new levels in business. But in order to live life to its fullest, we need to find a healthy balance. As an entrepreneur, I am constantly striving for success. As a result of that, there were times when I worked around the clock without so much as a thought about exercise or sleep. Those were not good times.
Although it may seem counterintuitive, rest and relaxation actually enable us to be more productive during the hours that we work. Working around the clock doesn’t increase your efficiency. Proper sleep enhances your memory and improves your cognitive processes. Although it may seem like we don’t have time for sleep, proper rest is essential to a productive day. To get proper sleep, we must respect our circadian rhythms.
In my book How to Live Until You Die I explain that we all sleep in 90-minute cycles that repeat themselves throughout the night, alternating between REM, (rapid-eye-movement) and NREM (non-rapid-eye-movement) sleep. I give further details on REM and NREM sleep and how to get the best sleep for waking up energized and being productive, using sources from the Mayo Clinic, National Sleep Foundation, and Harvard Business Review to corroborate my advice.
If you aren’t getting proper sleep, you are going to be more susceptible to illness, and you are going to be weary all the time. Pretty soon, you’ll literally become sick and tired of being sick and tired. That’s certainly not living life to its fullest. To truly enjoy your life, you need to get regular rest and not feel guilty about sleeping.
In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport talks about the necessary balance between work and other activities, like exercise. He encourages people to take a break during the day to go for a walk or run in order to re-energize and balance exercise and work. He especially encourages people to spend time outdoors, saying “Spending time in nature can improve your ability to concentrate.” Newport elaborates on how spending time walking through nature can help you focus on solving problems. I myself have often walked my problems out and it has greatly helped to ease the daily stresses of being an entrepreneur.
The thing that matters most in living your life to the fullest is balance. There is nothing wrong with hard work, but you can’t allow your work to take the place of spending time with your family, sleeping, or exercising. There is a balance you can achieve which allows you to enjoy activities that you love and still accomplish the things you need to do to make money.
In fact, there are seven keys to living happy, healthy, and whole. Each of these plays an important part in living life to its fullest and finding satisfaction along the way. To learn more about the seven keys, get your copy of How to Live Until You Die today.
Healthy Blessings,
Dr. Phil
