The FIRST Skill You Need to Master to Get Healthy

Getting healthy and STAYING healthy requires time and effort, but there's one skill you can master that acts as the "First Domino" to jump-start your process.

Approximate Read Time: 2 min 31 sec

What's the one skill?

The first thing you need to master to reclaim your health is...Drumroll Scheduling.Pretty anti-climactic, right? It's not some esoteric breathing practice, secret training regimen, or ancient superfood. It's the ability to manage your time and "keep the main thing as the main thing," as Stephen Covey would put it. In this case, the "main thing" is setting up lifestyle habits whose natural consequence is health.

Don't believe me?

You're busy, aren't you? How often do things you want to do slip through the cracks because you "didn't have time."If you're human like the rest of us, that list is longer than you'd like to admit. But you had time to mindlessly scroll social media for 12x longer than you intended. You also likely had time for Netflix or YouTube. Annnnd you probably squeezed in some time to look at the news just so you could round out the day with a dusting of extra anxiety. I'm not trying to give you a hard time. All I'm doing here is pointing out the fact that if you don't intentionally make time in your day to do the things that will keep or make you healthy again, other things, usually easier, aka addicting things, will take that space. So instead of spinning your wheels trying to master 100 habits at once, all while swimming against the current of life responsibilities and addicting technology, focus on the one thing that will do the most to ensure your success. Scheduling.

The down-and-dirty easy way

Scheduling doesn't need to be complicated, and it SHOULDN'T be difficult. If it is, you're doing it wrong, and you'll never be able to sustain it over the long run, which coincidentally is where the magic happens, and you get your health back. Here are the two tools I use to schedule my healthy habits.

-Google Calendar -The Daily Manifest

Google Calendar- I use Google Calendar to coordinate all of my long-term responsibilities. This is where all of my recurring meetings and family responsibilities live, and anything else planned more than 24 hours in advance. They go in the calendar and out of my head, so I don't have to think about them until I get a notification on my phone or computer.

The Daily Manifest- This is a FREE planning tool from Visualize Value, which you can get HERE. I use a hard copy of this every night to plan for the next day. I refer to my Google Calendar to see if I have any recurring responsibilities or other things that were scheduled in advance. Then, I added to my healthy habits: exercise, walking the dog, cooking dinner, etc. This schedule sits on my desk next to my computer and runs my life every single day.

Remove human error

These tools remove much of the human error in my day-to-day life. Which means they remove opportunities for me to make choices that will negatively affect my health, career, and relationships. That's what scheduling is all about. Make it easy to make good choices and difficult to make bad ones. It's the easiest way to set yourself up for success.

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