How To Find Time For Health And Wellness Activities, Without Neglecting Your Work Or Personal Life

Do you feel like it’s virtually impossible to make time for health and wellness activities in your busy schedule? Do you feel like no matter how hard you try, you’re being pulled in a million different directions every day. As good as your intentions might be in the morning, by the end of it, you just haven’t gotten around to doing anything?

Between work, managing your team, taking care of your children, fulfilling household duties and if possible, also enjoying life a bit, you probably think there just aren’t enough hours in your day, and frankly, I don’t blame you! You may find solace in knowing that you’re not alone: This is one of the greatest challenges our Shifters share with us when they embark on the journey towards improving their health and wellbeing and they often truly perceive it as an inevitable and maybe insurmountable one. Until they don’t.

But the road which leads from point A to point B is, in this instance, a counter-intuitive one. The road less traveled, let’s call it. I’ll tell you all about it shortly but first, let me tell you a bit about who I am and why you should even spend any time paying attention to what I have to say: My name is Serena Sabala, I am a Certified Nutrition Consultant, Yoga Teacher, and Fitness Trainer. I have studied the subjects of wellness and nutrition for over ten years and have a unique, holistic approach to health.

Together with my husband Eugene, I run Whole Shift Wellness: A coaching company that specialises in bespoke programs for time-pressed professionals. Our combined experience spans over twenty plus years and has allowed us to work with more than five hundred professionals across five countries. Together, we passionately apply our proven methodology to transform the health and wellbeing of leaders from around the world who want to be strong, fit, healthy, and satisfied, and who aspire to continue having a positive impact within their organizations and communities around them.

We are very passionate about bringing wellness to the workplace since many people spend most of their waking hours at work: we believe that ‘employees who are cared for, care more’ and that companies who put the wellbeing of their employees at the forefront of what they do are more successful than average. The seed for this unshakable passion for health and wellness was planted in me at a very young age. When I was eight years old my father, a very successful and busy entrepreneur, got really sick: Unfortunately, I now realize he simply didn’t have the tools to take care of his own wellbeing whilst juggling the many responsibilities and demands of his busy life, therefore he crumbled under the pressure.This led to him losing everything he had worked so hard for, with huge consequences to him and our whole family.

My childhood traumas planted an unconscious (at the time) realization of how fundamental our health and wellbeing are to everything we do in life. Without it, we simply can’t fulfill any of our responsibilities to our best nor fully enjoy life; not to mention, we can end up having a negative impact on those around us, the very people we love the most! I suffered immensely because of my dad’s illness and, although I may not have understood this back then, if he had taken the time, energy, and money needed to make sure he remained healthy or at least recovered quickly, I know for sure that would have massively improved the quality of my life in so many ways.

This is why I care so much about what I do: I am on a lifelong mission of preventing scenarios like that (even if milder) from ever happening under my watch because I know, without a doubt, that a happy, healthy and confident leader creates a ripple effect of positive energy and outcomes that so many people benefit from. How magical is that? I truly believe it makes the world a better place to be in.

So hopefully I have your attention now; let me share three very counter-intuitive obstacles which are making it impossible for you to fit health and wellness activities into your busy schedule (and what to do about it all).

Obstacle 1: Your Values Need Upgrading

So here’s the thing: We all have the same twenty-four hours in one day. I have the same twenty-four hours in my day as you and the President of the United States. So how is it possible that some people are able to fit in health and wellness activities into their day (including Barak Obama!) whereas others find it more difficult? Are they all busier than Barak? Maybe. But is that truly the issue at hand? Certainly not. The truth is (and please bear with me if this feels a bit confronting to see) that those who make time for it value it more than those who don’t. So if you say you value it but then don’t do it, you simply don’t value it as much as you like to believe. Simple.

Actions speak louder than words so if you truly want to know what you value most in life, simply write down a list of the five to ten things you spend the most time, money, and energy on, and just like that, your values will become crystal clear to you. Here’s what you absolutely should never do, however: Criticize yourself for your values! If you see something on the list that you wish was not there (or equally if you don’t see something you wish was) you must remember that is NOT a reflection of who you are. Your values may have less to do with you than you realize. Some of the values we live by may not even come from us at all; we may have inherited them from our families, communities, associates, the common culture of the place where we grew up, or our teachers and other role models. However until we clarify them to ourselves, they continue to determine which activities we prioritize and invest in, on an unconscious or semi-conscious level and that’s where we can run into trouble.

We don’t often realize that we get to set (or re-set) our values at any point in our life and doing so will then re-shape our life to better match our goals and aspirations: Hurray!

Our values shape our life whether we like it or not, but it is never too late to look at them and re-assess them to our best advantage. So the first tip I have for you today is: List your values and if any changes need to be made, create a new and upgraded list that better matches your goals and put it up somewhere you can see it every day. You’ll be surprised how this simple exercise may create new ‘openings’ and lead to new decisions in how you allocate your time each day.

This leads perfectly to the second greatest obstacle I see in my work.

Obstacle 2: You Think You Should Be Doing More Than Is Actually Needed To Achieve The Results You’re After

By completing the first exercise you may experience a surge of motivation and inspiration: it’s empowering to take ownership of our values and it will actually lead to big changes in how we want to spend our day. So if, for instance, you’ve decided to value health and wellness more (and especially if it’s January!) you may now want to create a new, radical, and very powerful routine that you believe will get you the results you’re after as quickly as possible. This is where most people fail, in my experience. I call it the ‘New Year Resolution Trap’ and it’s particularly dangerous if you did, in fact, at any point in the past have any success in achieving some results in this area of your life, because your mind will use those successes as reference for what you think you should do now.

What will actually happen is that you will set yourself up for failure by creating standards and routines which are simply not sustainable for wherever you are at present. You’ll think the more the better and actually overdo it and this will lead, at best, to an overall unpleasant experience, at worse to injury and hurt. So you’ll give up. Again. And feel like a failure for it. Again. Then you will go back to not valuing it as much but this time with an added negative association and a bit (or a lot!) of resistance. After all, why would you value (and therefore spend time, money, and energy on) something that hurts? It makes no sense.

The good news here is that it doesn’t have to hurt! In fact, it shouldn’t at all! If it does, you’re simply doing something other than what you should be doing or you’re not doing it the right way for where you are at this very moment in your life. If you’ve taken a long break from health and wellness activities (or if you’ve never even gotten started), it won’t take big actions to create positive momentum and start seeing some tangible and measurable progress: Quite the opposite. Just a few micro improvements are bound to lead to greater and more sustainable progress and they will feel easier to stick to and leverage to the next level, and the next. Just think about it, one small micro improvement a week will lead to fifty-two new positive improvements by the end of the year which will have likely created huge compounding results: Greater than you can imagine.

So my second tip for you is: Start small. What small actions can you take this week (or even better, today!) which will start new positive momentum around your health and wellbeing? The smaller the better as they’ll create less friction for you to get started and if at all possible, start with something which actually feels fun and puts you in a good mood.

Obstacle 3: You Think You Should Be Doing Different Things Than What Is Actually Needed To Achieve The Results You’re After

Did I just use the word ‘fun’ a few sentences ago? Yes, I did. And I mean it. I see so many high achievers venture into health and wellness activities as a mission, a struggle to endure, or even a punishment at times. This can sometimes stem from a negative mindset around it but in my experience is actually often caused by thinking they have to do things they don’t enjoy (or which may even be bad for them) in order to achieve results. If you’re resisting whatever activity you think you should be doing you’re either expecting too much (see the previous obstacle) or expecting yourself to do something which is actually not suitable for you, at least not right now. There is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution to becoming your most fit, healthy, and confident self now. What may have worked for you in the past may no longer be the most suitable solution and what works for a friend, colleague or relative may not be at all what’s best for you. Quite the opposite! It may cause you harm or you may simply not enjoy it and that is why you are resisting it. You have to. be very mindful of whether you’re again projecting the past into the future (i.e. using things that may have worked at some point as a frame of reference for what you think would work now) or whether you’re finding inspiration in the wrong places and trying to make yourself ‘fit into a box’ that’s not really your shape and size.

For sure there is an element of resistance involved in making changes or improvements of any kind: Change uses up way more energy than keeping the status quo, so procrastination is really a survival mechanism as it allows us to save energy and potentially avoid the trouble that may arise from new scenarios. We should expect some resistance when trying any new habits and that’s why leading with fun activities helps break the resistance and allows us to take the first few steps needed to build new and healthier momentum.

My final tip for you is: Make a list of some fun health-related activities you could easily incorporate into your routine that you know would lead to new results. Pick some that you are actually excited at the prospect of embarking on!