Ted Talk 144: Help! How Do I Stay Healthy When Life Gets Super Busy? – Ask Ted

Podcast Transcription: Ask Ted: Help! How Do I Stay Healthy When Life Gets Super Busy?

Ted Ryce: So let's say that you've established some pretty solid habits in routines with your health and fitness. But then an opportunity comes along and you get promoted into a higher level position. And this higher level position puts demands on you, increases your stress, and you start to lose some of those healthy habits that you've established, because it's a bit chaotic, adapting to the new demands of this new position that you've got, that you've just been hired for.

That's the question that we're going to tackle today in this episode of Ask Ted. What is up, my friend? Welcome back to the Legendary Life podcast. I'm your host, Ted Ryce, coach to entrepreneurs, executives, and other high-performing professionals. Now, our question comes to us from Megan.

She said that she changed to a higher level job with a lot more demands on her mental energy, and she feels it's derailed her somewhat. She said definitely higher stress and getting used to it. And she asked me, what are your suggestions on retaining or adapting to keep up good habits when life changes? So here's what I want to tell you.

I am a bit of a master at this because I've done this to myself a lot. You may have heard me say, well, I'm in Brazil and now I'm in Portugal and I'm in Mexico. I'm in the United States. And where else have I been? I was in Columbia. So just in the past six months or seven months, I've gone from the US to—in different places in the US, from Orlando to Texas, to Columbia, to Portugal, to Texas again, to Portugal again, to now Brazil.

And I lost track of that. I'm sure you have, too. And every time that's happened, it set me back. It set me back, not just with my business, but also with my habits and routines that I have to stay in shape. So what I want to offer you is some thoughts on how to make this work for you.

So even if you're in a position where you're working for yourself as an entrepreneur, expanding your business, and that's coming with some additional demands, or whether you're being promoted to a higher level job, and it's demanding more mental energy and you feel a bit derailed, this is going to help. And the first thing is you're aware of this situation.

That's the number one important thing, you're aware of the situation, you're understanding that you're feeling a bit derailed. So the second thing is some adaption time is normal. This is what my business coach calls “The Seesaw.” So for example, I'm riding this seesaw in my business of getting new clients, which comes from doing podcasts, being interviewed on other people's podcasts, creating content on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and then serving the new clients that I sign up.

And we don't have a situation where it's like, well, the clients are all being served and the content is being put out there to let people know, “Hey, we're open for business if you're looking to transform your body.” Now, some adaptation time is normal. And so you're riding the seesaw. You might get a little bit into your business or into the new job and the seesaw shifts in the direction of that.

And you start to feel like, again, you're being a bit derailed on your fitness habits and that's normal. It's normal for this to happen. So the next thing I would say is make it easy and set a minimum. Okay. Set a minimum. And this comes right from coaching, from my coaching, my business coaching, and what my coach said to me, which is equally applicable here, is set a minimum standard that you won't go below.

I'll give you an example. When I'm getting really busy serving my clients, I tend to post less on social media. I always show up twice a week here on the podcast, but I show up less on social media. So I used to post 10 times a day on Twitter and then one thread a week, which is like a bunch of tweets together, tied together in a common theme.

What I found was, that's way too much for me to stick with. It's way too much for me to stick with. So I had to set, okay, what is our minimum? What is a minimum that I can stick with? And my minimum is this: one tweet a day, one thread a week. One tweet or one thread, and then I'll do a few comments on people's posts.

So that's like my minimum. And then I'll take that information and I'll share it in other places. So what I want to tell you is this: you've got to set a minimum and make it easy enough so that you don't need a lot of motivation to do it. What will that look like if you’re talking about exercise, for example?

So it might look like, well, I'm going to walk 30 minutes every day. Well, I don't even have time for 30 minutes of walking, what can I do? Okay. So it's going to be one upper body exercise or lower body exercise every day, taken to close to failure to that failure point. That's exactly what I had a CFO client do, who lost 20 pounds in four months.

And he did it by three major things. There were a couple other things, but three major things. Number one, he tracked his nutrition. And here's the thing about tracking nutrition. You're always eating. So, no matter what type of stress you're under, you're always eating.

So you always have an opportunity to make better choices when you're eating or to control your calories when you're eating. The second thing is, what we had him do, is we had him do five minutes of exercise during the week. And so he had more time on the weekends. And so he would do an hour on Saturday, an hour on Sunday, or half an hour to an hour on Saturday, half an hour to an hour on Sunday.

So his minimum during the week was five minutes. And what we did was what I told you. We started with an upper body exercise. In fact, I'll tell you what he did. He did pushups. So he woke up. He only had a few minutes to exercise per day. He did one set of pushups, as many as he could, and then the next day would come and then he would do body weight squats, again, as many as he could.

And he did that during the week. And he focused on good form. He focused on getting as many reps as possible, and he focused on improving every time he did push up. So adding another rep. And we were able to start at five minutes and we even pushed it to, I believe, 10 minutes. So he was working out 10 minutes, Monday through Friday, and then he was going on long walks or maybe some other stuff on the weekend.

We gave him some options on the weekend. So make it easier for yourself and set a minimum. Can you work out five minutes a day? And I mean, doing one set of pushups or pushing exercise takes even less than five minutes, but it, you know, to warm up a little bit and then do that one set will take you around five minutes.

So can you do that? Always have a minimum and make it easy for yourself. Make it easy. If you've got to go to the gym and that's a 20 minute ride and then, you know…It can be tough. So make it easy for yourself when you set that minimum. The other thing that I would tell you is that the more stress you're under, the more stress reduction you'll have to do to adapt.

So what's important here is stress reduction is proactive. So on the weekends, when you do have time, you've got to make sure that you get the massage or late at night, get the massage. For me, I do float. Right now in Brazil, I go to a place and do a float tank. I go to get acupuncture. Another thing is I make sure I make time to hang out with people because I find it really helps with my stress levels to be in a situation, to be social.

I leave the social situation, I feel much better. Because I don't feel isolated and alone and like, “What am I working for here?” So again, the more stress you're under, the more stress reduction you'll have to do. And stress reduction is proactive, it's not just laying in bed and watching Netflix.

And the last thought I have for you, the fifth thought I have for you here is push through the discomfort to establish good habits. Here's the thing: let's say your business is doing really well and it's expanding, or you just got promoted or got a new job in a higher level position in a different company.

It's easy to step up to the demands of the new position or the new demands of your business because of accountability. For me, I always step…like, I have clients who are waiting for me to help or that we have to serve. And thankfully, we've got an assistant coach now, Stephan, who's helping us crush it even more.

So it's easy to step up and serve your clients while not serving yourself. It's much harder to step up and take care of yourself. And the big reason here is lack of accountability. If I don't step up for my clients, then my clients aren't happy, they don't get results, and that causes a problem for a coaching business like mine.

Obviously, if my clients aren’t getting results, that's problematic. So for you, you might be doing a certain amount of work or having to serve your clients in your business and you have that accountability. And of course, if you're a high achiever, like that's who we attract on this podcast, you're going to step up and do that.

That's not hard for you. What's hard is, oh, man, I'm really kind of fried from taking care of my clients or stepping up and meeting those deadlines in my new position. Ha, I think I'm just going to relax and I'm going to go out to eat because I'm making more money and I'm going to drink a little. I'm going to order the nicer bottle of wine.

I'm going to treat myself. So it's easier to do those things than to step up for ourselves. And it's easier to fall back into unhealthy patterns of behavior. Most people say like, “Oh, it's so much harder to get in shape as you get older, it must be the hormones. It must be my age. It must be the andropause,” if you're a guy. Low T, or it must be the pre-menopause or post-menopause.

Look, I don't want to take away if you're going through a physiological change and I'm only speaking to women here, not men. Andropause isn't a real thing, okay. Men start losing testosterone because their shitty lifestyle is catching up to them.

Whereas women, it doesn't matter what they do, there's going to be a point where they reach menopause, right? So the thing is this: you still need to take care of yourself. Well, I'm getting off track here. What I'm trying to say is it's not those things. It's that you're under more stress.

You probably don't sleep as well, and you probably make more money, which gives you more options to do a little retail therapy or to go out to dinner more. And that's typically… I go out to dinner way more than I used to. In my 20s, I couldn't afford to go out to dinner that much. In my 30s, I was able to afford dinner a bit more.

And now I go out and eat lunch, dinner, breakfast, I don't know, several times a week, it’s one of my favorite things to. And so I've had to develop the skills to deal with that. So it's always going to be easy to fall into the habit of rewarding yourself with food, to stepping up to the demands of the new position or new demands of clients, or if you're expanding your business.

And what you'll have to do is you'll have to push through the discomfort to reestablish good habits. That's one of the things we do with our executive and entrepreneur clients in my coaching program, we help them. They have to be accountable to us. They invest money. In fact, if you heard Trevor's interview, Trevor did an amazing body transformation.

And very interesting, when I asked him, what was the hardest thing that you've done in my program? He said, “It was making the choice to invest financially.” It's the hardest thing to do because then you're accountable, just like you're invested financially in your business or that new position, because you know if you don't step up and do it, your clients will leave or you'll get fired.

So money talks, bullshit walks. And when you invest financially, it puts you in a position where you feel like man, I've got to do this thing. And a lot of people, they don't want to put themselves in that position because they don't want to feel the pressure. But I'll tell you, when you're under that pressure, it makes you perform.

And I'm saying this, I run a coaching business, but I also have a business coach. And let me tell you, I paid, I think 24,000, so 2000 a month for a year of business coaching. I committed to an entire year. I'm making payments on it, and I've already signed up to another business coaching experience for a year.

And I prepaid $18,000 to do it. I'm committed financially. I've got skin in the game. And so that's one of the things that helps our clients the most, as much as I sometimes didn't want to talk about it in the past, when you put skin in the game and skin in the game financially, that's when you'll finally step up and do it.

It shows that you've got what it takes. That's that first thing, otherwise, it's like, if you get free information…I was amazing how many people who signed up to my free challenge, we started out with a big group and by the end of the challenge, it was just a few people. It was like 10 or 15 people.

And that's the way it is, because they don't have skin in the game. So push yourself through the discomfort to reestablish good habits. And what I would do is how you invest in yourself is to think about it like this. You can listen to books. Let's say health is not that important for you, you would want to listen to a book about it.

And I don't want to say not important. For example, relationships are important to me, but it's not my main priority. So I listen to podcasts about relationships. I listen to books about relationships, although I'll be honest, that's less frequent. It's more podcasts these days or master classes on relationships because I know I still have to step up in relationships.

I'm single right now. I want to be in a relationship. I can't just become Mr. Work and fitness guy. I need to keep my, what do you call it? I need to keep my saw sharp. I need to keep my sword sharp, my skills sharp is what I'm really trying to say. And so I need to do some minimum. So maybe that might be you for health and fitness.

And that's what this podcast is for you. And maybe you listen to a few other podcasts. Now, the next level is to do a course. Now we don't offer a course. We might in the future, so I can't even… And I don't even know anyone who does a good course in health and fitness, but I'm sure they're out there.

So doing a course is that next level of involvement. And then hiring a coach, that's when you really want to get something handled. So for example, I don't have a relationship coach right now. And the reason is, it's not my main priority, like I said. My business, though, is my main priority. And my health, again, it's not my main priority. I'm doing quite well health wise.

My main priority right now is my business. So what I've done? Hired a coach, like I said, invested. Not for four months, not for half a year, but for an entire year. In fact, I've committed to two coaching experiences for business.

That's how dedicated and committed I am. That's how much skin in the game that I have because I want to get this handled. So think about where you are with different areas of your life, including your health, and think about what you need to do to push through the discomfort to get to where you want to get to.

And that's the level of commitment. So there's free information, there’s courses, and then there’s coaches. Could even say free information, books, courses, then coaches. That would be probably how I would do it, because a book is a bit more of an investment. You've got to put some skin in the game, you’ve got to buy it.

Of course, you can just not listen to the book, so there's not that much accountability there. And books are relatively cheap; 20 to 30 bucks for a book or 10 bucks for a book. So, yeah, but it's still, you can get a lot out of a book if you take action on it. Again, taking action on it. And a course, again, take action on it.

But if you're in a coaching program, you’ve got to take action. I mean, there's someone telling you, like…We don't have that problem with our clients, but I can imagine some other coaches like, “Hey, why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you taking action on this? So again, think about what you need to push through that discomfort.

So let's recap what we talked about. The first thing is being aware of the changes. You might be aware at some level, but really sit down and think about it. Even write it out. What are the differences here? What am I having problems with? And then two is understanding that riding the seesaw is normal. Some adaptation time is normal.

Then three, make it easy, set a minimum standard for yourself and make it easy. What's a minimum amount you can do. For example, for me, for relationships, it's listening to some information, some free information on relationships. What is that with health and fitness for you? What is that minimum?

And again, four is the more stress you're under, the more stress reduction you'll have to do to adapt. So as we make more money, we need to invest more in ourselves and that's not even just hiring a coach. It's also, do you need massages? What do you need here? Do you need to go float? Do you need to see a psychotherapist? What do you need here?

You'll have to step up and invest in yourself because that's how it goes. If you're driving your Honda civic to work and work is a five minute drive away, that's not a lot of stress on your car, but if you're like an entrepreneur, a high-performance professional, you're driving an F1 car, and what do F1 cars need?

They need a lot of care, a lot of maintenance. So the higher level that you run at, the higher the investment that you need to take care of your body, your vehicle, because that's how you get to where you want to go. If that vehicle breaks down, your body breaks down because you keep pushing it. It's not going to work out for you.

And then five, push through the discomfort to reestablish good habits. Realize there's certain different levels of investment and seek the level of investment that you need at whatever time you're at. So is it free information, like listening to this podcast? Do you need to get a book and that helps you get more dialed in?

Do you need to do a course? Or do you really want to step up and make a major change and hire a coach? So that is what I have for you. That is how you change to a high level job with more demands on your mental energy or expanding your business and you feel somewhat derailed, that's how you get back on track.

Hope that helps. Have an amazing weekend, and speak to you soon.