THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR

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Focused Stress

• Wellness Tip

• Quote

• Post: The Core Leadership Traits

• Article: Where are you focusing your stress?

Wellness Tip

Sitting in the bottom of a relaxed squat is a natural sitting positions for humans - but in the developed world we’re so used to sitting in chairs that most of us can’t sit in that position for more than a few seconds.

I’ve always been like that - and since starting real strength and conditioning back in 2008 I’ve known I should improve that part of my bodily function, but haven’t made much progress.

Until the past six months - after hurting my back one too many times, I got some help from an expert and realized what I already knew - I’ve let my glutes and overall lower body strength decline the past few years, for a number of reasons I won’t get into today.

I decided to fix this issue, and have spent the past 10 weeks doing the following things:

1. Structured 3x a week strength program

2. Eat 1 gram of protein for each LB of bodyweight - that’s 215grams per day, oh my

3. Done a daily flow/stretching program that includes sitting in the bottom of the squat

I’m proud that I’ve stuck with all of the above the past 10 week, and my overall strength and low-back health is substantially improved already

I’ve also been sitting in the bottom of the squat on meeting breaks, and multiple times per day. And the results have been tremendous.

Increased flexibility, less back soreness from sitting, less achiness in my joints even.

Give it a try - place your feet shoulder width apart and toes slightly out. Pull your hips back and down until you’re resting at the bottom of the squat - keep your weight in the middle of the foot or your heals. You don’t need to resist, just relax.

That’s it, enjoy!

Quote

“Health first, the rest will follow” - Me

You’re damn right I’m going to quote myself, if I think it’s a good one 🙂

Post

My most popular post of the week is here

The 7 Core Leadership Traits

Where are you focusing your stress

The personal growth world leans heavily into the concept of pushing ourselves past our comfort zones in order to break through our limitations.

This is a universal concept at this point - everything you desire is on the other side of your fear/comfort.

This concept has anecdotal and scientific merit - the part of the brain that responds to learning new challenging things grows the more we’re exposed to that stimulus, and shrinks as soon as it stops.

In practice this is simple - we need to consistently expose ourselves to challenging and uncomfortable physical and mental challenges in order to continue to grow. If we do this we can grow and learn forever, if we don’t we will stagnate.

This is a relatively simple concept to understand - but in modern day life when we’re expected to be good at everything - how does this practically apply?

Do I want to be constantly exposing myself to high levels of discomfort in all aspects of life? One at a time? A few?

I’ve been thinking about this, and think we can all agree there’s some kind of sweet spot.

I think we can all agree that if we’re facing difficult challenges in too many areas of life - life becomes chaotic and we risk it all crashing down, health issues, burnout.

If we don’t have any areas of difficulty, we are guaranteed to stagnate.

Finding the right sweet spot is difficult - so maybe we can approach it like everything else. Apply strategic planning, goal setting, and measurables to it.

Here’s a model I created based on the Wheel of Life factors I measure each quarter for myself, listing out my perceived “level of chaos” for each factor:

Based on a quick reflection of my perceived level of difficulty, challenge, or chaos which is a word I love, I’m higher in 2 factors than anything else:

• Career - I’m in the first year of a new career as a business coach (EOS® Implementer)

• Friends & Family - I have a 16 month old after a 9 year baby gap - enough said

Am I working on all other areas in my life? To some extent, yes, and some are getting more emphasis than others. From a chaos standpoint - everything else is relatively stable.

How can I normalize or make this kind of analysis useful? Do it periodically. To evaluate whether it’s useful, here’s a comparison to the lowest point in my life. When I was newly separated living alone for the first time, with young kids and a business that was having serious difficulty.

Oh yeah - that brings to life a time that’s kind of a blur at this point. MOST areas of my life were in chaos during this time, and my quality of life unsurprisingly tanked during this time. This is when I started taking anxiety medication in order to get through the day and sleep at night.

The first chart is me feeling pretty close to the best I’ve ever felt, with a total score of 32 and 2 factors at 5 or higher.

The second chart is me at my worst, with a total score of 67 and 7 factors at 5 or higher.

What’s the sweet spot? I can’t say without measuring for a few more quarters - but I would honestly suspect it’s about where I’m at now - 2-3 areas higher than 5.

How can a tool like this work into my life?

This is the front end introspection part of your quarterly and annual planning - how are the different parts of my life going relative to the past? Where do I want to go in the future? Where do I want to prioritize this next quarter to grow as a person and meet my goals?

Using this tool can help evaluate how many areas you can focus in.

I’m going to use this next week when I do my ALL DAY PERSONAL PLANNING SESSION - I will use it before reviewing the previous quarter and plan the next quarter.

Give it a quick try and evaluate where you are today, and consider adding it into your planning.

Talk to you next week,

Mike

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