Health is Wealth: How Prioritizing Your Health Could Influence Your Wealth

It’s 3am, you’ve been grinding your face off for the past 18 hours trying to build your business. You’re probably thinking to yourself that you are the bomb.com and that no one can outwork or out-hustle you. You go to bed, wake up at around 6am and go back to grinding all day. You’re on the move, you grab something from Starbucks to keep you going, maybe even stop somewhere for a quick bite to eat.

Grind, grind, grind.

Hustle, hustle, hustle.

All of a sudden, boom, you get sick. What’s even worse? You’ve been getting sick consistently every month for the past couple months, and you are wondering: why am I getting sick so much? I’m killing it in my business, grinding all day every day, why do I have to be getting sick? It’s slowing me down!

Answer: you put your financial health before you physical health. Aka, you played yourself.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with grinding to build your business and your empire, I’m not bashing that at all. I work all the time, just as much as any other aspiring entrepreneur. However, I grind effectively and put my health before everything. You too need to learn how to grind effectively and in all different aspects of your life. First and foremost being that you need to learn how to grind in the gym and in the kitchen. Health comes FIRST.

Now, being a certified personal trainer and having been in the health & fitness space for over 6 years now, of course I’m partial to believing that your health should come first before anything. But you don’t need my advice to prove that your physical health is key to building your financial wealth; look at some of the most successful people in the world.

Some of the most incredible entrepreneurs and thought leaders in this day-in-age have something in common, what is it? Money and influence yes, but more importantly they have overwhelming energy that exudes into just about every other facet of their life. HOW ARE THEY SO ENERGETIC ALL THE TIME?! You might think that their passion is what pushes them to such great lengths. And yes, having an overwhelming amount of passion behind a certain path will take you far, but know what will keep you going down that path and supercharge your progress? You guessed it, your health!

Another thing that a lot of these top entrepreneurs and thought leaders have in common is that they are all healthy! Many of them exercise regularly and most strive to eat a healthy and balanced diet. These high performers all understand that in order to function at 100% capacity 24/7/365, they need to prime their body to be able to take on such demands and fuel it with what it needs to thrive. You want to be successful right? Model after everything they do, even outside of business!

You can get very far by replicating the tasks of those before you to get where you want to go, but without putting your health first, you’re going to come crashing down very quickly and your finances will suffer because of it. Not convinced yet? Think I’m “full of it”? Well, what if I dropped some science on you then.

According to a 2015 study done by Garau et. al., researchers found that healthier individuals were able to work longer and were more productive, thus leading them to earn more as a result of their increased productivity. Our economy thrives off the exchange of money/credit for goods/services, but money cannot be accrued without some form of productivity. Whether it be through manual labor, or selling items online through drop-shipping, a certain level of productivity is required in order to perform well and produce big numbers within your business. And in order to become extremely productive, your body needs to prepped and primed to fire on all cylinders.

Another study from 1998 done by John Strauss and Duncan Thomas suggested that not only was their a correlation between personal health and personal wealth, but also a correlation of collective societal health in relation to a society’s economic potential. So not only does “Health is Wealth” apply to just you, but to your company and country as a whole as well. So basically, by you becoming healthier, you have just strengthened the economic machine in your country… pretty cool right?

I could go on and on and list tons of studies showing the correlation between health and wealth, but I’m sure you get the point by now.

So when thinking about grinding and doing another all-nighter, or stopping at a fast food place just because it’s “convenient”, just remember what the long-term affects of repeating that behavior will yield in regards to your overall output in your business. Sure, you might feel like an absolute beast for going 24 hours straight, but I can almost guarantee that you would have gotten just as much done, if not more, had you gotten proper sleep, fueled yourself with the right foods, and gotten a good workout in.

If you want to learn the specifics of how to live a healthier lifestyle as an entrepreneur or executive, be sure to keep a lookout for more articles from yours truly, Chase HenderFit. Or, you can find me on social media (Insta: @chase_henderfit; TikTok: @chasehenderfit; YouTube: Chase HenderFit; LinkedIn: Chase Henderson; Email: chase@henderfit.com)

Until next time, Stay Healthy, Get Wealthy!

Sources:

Garau, Martina et al. “IS THE LINK BETWEEN HEALTH AND WEALTH CONSIDERED IN DECISION MAKING? RESULTS FROM A QUALITATIVE STUDY.” International journal of technology assessment in health care vol. 31,6 (2015): 449-56. doi:10.1017/S0266462315000616

Strauss, John, and Duncan Thomas. “Health, Nutrition, and Economic Development.” Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 36, no. 2, 1998, pp. 766–817. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2565122.