If you think of success as a sailing ship, you’ve got wind in your sails pushing you forward, and you’ve got the decisions you make as a rudder that steers the ship. But if you’re not careful, you might be accidentally dragging an anchor that is holding you back from achieving your full potential… And you don’t even realize it!

At CEO Warrior we talk a lot about the “Core 5”—five components to life that are vitally important and need to be constantly worked on. Some of these Core 5 are obvious—belief, wealth, and freedom.

But one of the Core 5 is vastly overlooked. Unfortunately, if you ignore it, you’re putting your success in danger.

I’m talking about Health.

Now, CEO Warrior is not a health and fitness program, nor am I doctor so you should always make sure that any health-related decisions you make are right for your situation. But I can speak generally to the idea of how health is overlooked as a key method of success.

Let me start by saying this: healthy people are more likely going to be successful. That’s not to say that unhealthy people can’t be successful but healthy people are more likely going to be successful. The reasons are:

  • Making healthy lifestyle choices is about mastering willpower and living with discipline, which are fundamental skills to creating success in other areas of your life.
  • Being healthy means that you can focus on other things instead of worrying about whether you can make it through the day.
  • Being healthy lets you sleep LESS at night, giving you more day-time to work or spend time with your loved ones.
  • Being healthy means you can make faster, better decisions because you can think more clearly.
  • Being healthy means less time and money spent at the doctor and more time doing the things you love.

There’s another aspect to health that you might not be thinking about: your team’s health. As a leader of your company, you are influential in your team’s health. Of course there’s the safety element of making sure that your team has all the equipment and decision-making strategies available to them to make the healthiest decisions. But even outside of that, you are influential in helping your team make healthy decisions.

For example, what if you have team members who are younger, who go out drinking at night. You can’t be responsible for their CHOICES outside of work but how to they show up in the morning? Are they focused and ready to go or are they hungover? That will impact your business. How can you guide their choices and help them to see that their decisions outside of work influence their success and yours in your business?

  • You can educate them at all-company meetings about better decision-making throughout life
  • You can model great choices yourself and show them how successful people make good decisions 24/7

Or here’s another example: if your team brings unhealthy meals or even skips lunch, what does that do to the quality of their work? Consider the possibility of providing a few low-cost healthy snacks (such as fruit and yogurt and nuts) at your head office, or even bringing in meals from time to time; try it and see what that does to your team’s productivity.

Summary

Your health is often overlooked or even ignored in order to help you run your business. But your health is so important and being healthy will help you run your business even more effectively. As well, you have an impact on your team and the healthy choices they make, which, in turn, will impact how they serve your customers.