The topic of exercise plays a critical role in getting and staying motivated in order to thrive more and struggle less in a high demanding life.
In a high stress work environment, there are three types of hard working adults who operate in a high demanding job. The first group is the Thrivers, those who are productive in their work and sustain a great personal and professional life balance. On the other extreme are the Strugglers who do not operate in a high demanding job and most likely leave on their own to pursue opportunities elsewhere. In the middle are the Strivers who sometimes thrive and sometimes struggle.
My book Change Your Day Not Your Life has a quiz to help you identify where you stand in these three categories and what you can do to struggle less and thrive more. To take the quiz now, visit http://andycore.com/quiz/ to see if you are a Thriver, Striver, or Struggler.
In my quiz, one of the best questions is, “How often do you exercise at an effort level of 80% or higher?” 51% of people rarely exercise at an effort level of 80% or more, 9% exercise at this rate monthly and 40% exercise at this rate weekly. Based on those results, more than half of the people who took the quiz rarely work out at an effort level of 80% or more.
There are many benefits of exercising that create long term satisfaction such as more energy, motivation, work-life satisfaction and less stress. Specifically for people who are high stressed, exercising at an 80% or higher effort level makes a big difference. High levels of exercise can help reduce those high levels of stress like cortisol in your body.
The most common excuse for not making exercise a priority is lack of time or energy. An easy way to start exercising is to split your exercise time into five-minute blocks. I want you to do four minutes of exercise at a level of 60-80%, which is at conversational level, and one minute at 80% or more. After pushing yourself for 60 seconds, you can then go back to that four-minute level of exercise that is a little bit easier. This way, you can recover and it is less painful to jump back into that one-minute timeframe. This is a great way to break up your workouts, capitalize on stress reduction and make sure you’re adding enough positive energy to your life.
For more tips on how to reduce stress levels, read my book Change Your Day Not Your Life.