Coming Clean About Building a Healthy Lifestyle

In business school, you learn all you need to get started with marketing, project management and finance. But what they don’t teach you? How to handle the lifestyle that comes with it.

In my career, that meant drinking and partying - a natural side effect which came with my career in the hospitality industry. While many people may leave partying behind in college, with my work, it was only just beginning. My image, both professional and personal, was built on partying. I mean it: my first company literally threw parties. My career and partying were one and the same. It’s no exaggeration to say that partying was my life.

As a college grad in your early 20s, that’s the dream. But at 28, with a premature Dad bod, trust me, it’s less cool.Indeed, it’s worse than not cool. It’s flat-out exhausting. While my career went from success to success, the lifestyle that came with it sent me toward a downward spiral.

Eventually, my mindset was so clouded by the hedonistic behavior I was keeping up that I didn’t have a clear grasp on my purpose, my future plans - or even who I was in the present.

I’m not alone. In fact, according to a study by the National Institute of Mental Health, 72% of entrepreneurs are directly or indirectly affected by mental health issues, compared to just 48% of non-entrepreneurs.

May 4th, 2019 was the day I realized it was time to make a change.

t was only then that I took a step back to really take stock of my lifestyle and see how far away from the life I had wanted partying had taken me. It was also then that I made a conscious effort to shift my lifestyle, in both my mental, physical and emotional health.

Enter: Shannon Miller, MPH, my health coach, who over the last few years has helped me reshape my goals and priorities to help me become my best self.

I came to her lost in every sense of the word - but by getting health, fitness and nutrition in order, Shannon also turned my energy and mindset around, and helped me create a seismic shift in the way I attacked my life and career.

In business, we often talk about working on self-improvement in terms of knowledge, in confidence and productivity. But improving our health can have the biggest impact on all areas of life - and bring success with it, in turn.

Let’s get real: making a drastic lifestyle change to something so ingrained in your life and career is tough. Even now, I occasionally still stumble. The difference is that now, I recognize the need to recalibrate, change gear, and get back on track, fast.

In terms of business lessons, the one I learned with Shannon and through assessing my lifestyle might just have been the most life-changing of all.

What area of your lifestyle are you working on making more healthy?