Exercise makes you a better entrepreneur
1. Exercise can get your creativity juices flowing. Several studies have now shown the direct positive impact aerobic exercise has on your working mental life, with increased cognitive function and focus. In basic terms, going for a run can make you smarter. While entrepreneurs place so much focus on constantly improving, learning and developing an all-round professional mentality, the role of exercise can’t be overlooked!
2. Exercise can boost your confidence and your ability to tackle difficult tasks. Ever noticed how your confidence fluctuates? How some days you are ready to take on the world and other days you hide from every challenge? As with most things, the answer usually involves chemicals in our brains. It’s been long known that exercise releases endorphins in your brain and tips this chemical balance in your favour, what you need to appreciate is the impact this can have on you at work. Exercise will make you more bold and proactive, tackling problems head-on rather than shying away.
3. Exercise can improve your work-ethic and outlook. When you’re in training for an upcoming event, like a marathon, it’s easy to re-appreciate the importance of setting goals and striving to meet them with grit and determination, even when it gets tough. Planning and committing to such a training regime in one area of your life can help you bring the same commitment to your work. When you start looking at injuries and set-backs as obstacles which you will overcome, the same tenacity spills over into your work and helps you tackle whatever is thrown at you.
Exercise improves your worklife
4. Exercise will reduce your stress-levels. When you’re running your own business, freelancing, or are in any way responsible to a whole host of clients, stress will be a near constant factor in your life. Even those with businesses which move from success to success, stress is still ever-present. While you may never escape stress altogether, exercise can blunt it. The endorphins that regular exercise produce will give you a natural high – better than a double espresso – and also help you keep your calm. When running a business having this outlet can be vital to your mental health.
5. Exercise doesn’t just give you a better high than yet another cup of coffee, it also increases your energy-levels in a healthier way. Why depend on an influx of caffeine when you can create those energy-levels yourself? It’s now believed that when someone who is usually inactive picks up regular exercise their energy-levels can be boosted by as much as 20 per cent while fatigue can decrease by more than half! All it takes for this transformation is a little bit of regular and low-intensity exercise, such as going for a morning jog, and then you needn’t get home and crash on the sofa, you’ll have more energy to enjoy life.
6. Exercise can also improve your memory. You might not see the connection here, but recent studies seem to show that your brain is much better and retaining information when your body is active. In one particular study, the abilities of students to accurately remember information was tested when they were given the choice of running, lifting weights, or sitting quietly after receiving the information. Those who ran were both faster at recalling the information and more accurate than the other students in the study.
Struggling to commit to regular exercise?
So while it is obvious that you should be exercising, why do so many people struggle to fit it in? One answer is that people merely struggle to commit to regular exercise, another answer may be that socialising is given a higher priority when one has free time. The answer to both of these is simple and straightforward, make your exercising sociable! By doing this it will make you feel like you’re still finding time to see people, and they’ll keep you committed to your work-out schedule. It seems obvious that we’re always more likely to keep our commitments when there is a level of accountability, so find a friend or two that you can exercise with regularly and they’ll help you stick to it while also making the workout more enjoyable.
