Best health is at the top of everyone’s 2019 wish list. The ongoing health messages seem to sound louder at the start of the year. “Manage your weight, eat less fast food, exercise, and watch your stress levels” are predictable health prescriptions from our trusted health providers. The arrival of January always jumpstarts our desire for better health. Despite our best intention our efforts to sustain our identified best health goals are challenged year after year. Why? Described below are three powerful, but seldom discussed barriers to achieving best health goals.
First – Managing Time
It is embarrassing to admit that you struggle with managing time. The problem of fighting with time is often a well-kept secret. Who likes to talk about weaknesses? Time! It may surprise you to learn that you are not alone. Time management assumes that you have the innate ability to sustain concentration and pace required for timely task completion. It requires mastering the increasing distractions and interruptions of everyday life.
Time management is an invisible, but powerful problem. The hours, minutes, and seconds of a twenty-four-hour day are vital components of our lives. Unfortunately, invisible problems are easily be ignored. The negative impact of mismanaged time can have severe consequences. The working hours can easily disappear and you are left with the mental drain. After a long day, mismanaged time provides little opportunity to pursue another task, such as exercise.
Second – Hiding Emotions
Studies suggest our nation is riddled with anxiety! Who likes to talk about their emotions, especially anxiety? It may surprise you to learn that you are not alone. The 2018 National Survey of America by the American Psychiatric Society (APA) suggests that anxiety is on the rise. Our society is “increasingly anxious about health, safety, and finances.”
This research suggests that many are anxious and preoccupied with worries, feeling tense and being uneasy. Others may be preoccupied with health concerns. Feeling worried, anxious, and uptight easily enables one to resort to repetitive negative thinking of bad outcomes. Living with unrealistic worries about ongoing catastrophic possibilities requires considerable effort to break this cycle and push beyond it.
Pushing through worrying thoughts, to calm them down and to complete a task can exhaust you. The workday has its own mental challenges. The necessity of psychological reality checks to combat unwanted anxieties, tension and worries, combined with workplace demands can leave you exhausted. Under these conditions who has time to pursue another task, such as going to the gym?
Third – Distraction
It is not fashionable to admit being distracted. Does it take you longer than your colleagues to complete assignments? Do you find yourself alone in the office after everyone has left for the day, working to complete a project? Do you have to take work home most evenings and weekends to keep up? Being in a state of mental distraction does not support participating in a new exercise class, or cooking healthy meals.
Best Health 2019 Strategies
Change starts with the acknowledgment of the issues and a desire for solutions. Welcome to the start of your new day! Own it! Stop making excuses. Stop blaming others for your inability to manage your health. Ownership is painful. Recognizing you have a problem is your first step. Who wants to admit they are vulnerable. Everyone on Facebook is doing well. .
Owning a problem is a problem. It is hard to admit having problematic behaviors which appear easy to fix. Often recognizing your issue is embarrassing. Problematic behaviors, such as time, mental exhaustion, and unprovoked anxiety seem simple and are easily dismissed.
Lack of recognition and acceptance, and not making an actual appointment with a professional is the problem. The issues identified could be a brain disability. Make and achieve your better health goals in 2019. You can do it! Start today by giving yourself permission to admit all your invisible barriers that limit your health goals.