Why you should look after your health like you look after your kids
Your health, and your kids. Most people would argue that they are two of the most important things in your life - myself included.
Looking after each of these aspects of your life is some of the most meaningful work we do. But often our approach to each is vastly different.
When it comes to our health we want to "lock in" the perfect regime. We want to be nailing our exercise, our nutrition, managing our stress levels, and getting enough sleep. We come up with plans of how to be perfect.
Then life happens. Any number of our other important priorities get in the way. A crisis at work where we need to support a colleague with a project. Our kid needing a bit of extra emotional support to deal with an issue. That thing you promised Karen you'd do and then forgot about until the last minute.
When life happens our beautifully laid vision for our health actions disappears. AND because we can't do it all, often we do none of it. With health we're either all in or all out, sometimes wildy vacillating between the two.
When it comes to looking after our kids we'll often have a plan of how we'd like things to go. We want to parent in a certain way. We've got values we want to instil in our kids, we'd like them to behave in a certain way.
Life happens here in force as well (I was so naive 4 and a half years ago before kids). Things conspire against our parenting goals all the time. It might be the last minute poop that happens just leaving the house. It might be the boundary continuously being tested. It might be the drain of your emotional capacity from a variety of child related reasons.
Just like our health, we often have a wonderful vision of how we would like it to go, but very rarely (almost never) does it play out exactly the way we had hoped.
But with our kids the "all or nothing" approach doesn't really cut it. There is no way we get away with the "nothing" part of the strategy.
Instead what we tend to do when faced with a challenge point is to not give up on our vision. We accept that this time it isn't going to go perfectly but that we'll try our best to find a compromise that doesn't give up on our values even though it may not be the "ideal". Sometimes it’s a small compromise, sometimes it’s letting Youtube look after the kids so you can cook dinner in peace.
When it comes to our health this flexible compromise might look like a couple of these scenarios.
Heading out for a 20 minute walk instead of the long run you had planned when life got in the way
Choosing a slightly healthier option or grabbing a side of veggies when out for lunch with a client at a place that doesn't quite fit with your eating plan.
Doing 30 seconds of deep breaths or a couple of full body muscle clench and relaxes instead of 20 minutes of your guided mindfulness app.
Our health status will usually be better if we approach looking after it like we approach looking after our kids, instead of putting it up on a pedestal.
Tldr
Look after your health like you look after your kids
Have a great plan, realise it's not going to go perfectly most of the time. Try your best in the moment and stay flexible
