The Foundation of Lifelong Growth

If you’re passionate about life-long personal growth, this is a fact that you have to accept:

You will not be your best self unless you’re fit and healthy.

Once you’ve entered your 30s, your life trajectory — in all aspects – will continue to be on a downtrend unless you take ownership over your physical health.

If you did not know, sarcopenia is the condition where people’s muscle mass and function decrease as they age. Studies have shown that muscle mass decreases about 3–8% every 10 years after we hit the age of 30 and this rate of decline only gets greater as we age.

But that is not all. As we age, many other aspects of our bodily function will start to deteriorate and affect how we are:

Bone density: gradually lose our posture and balance
Muscle recovery: feel achy for longer after a workout or a long day out
Pain tolerance: the achiness will feel worse and bumps will bruise more easily
Metabolism: gain weight more easily even when we eat the same amount
Flexibility: reaching down or out to grab things will be harder and more painful
Cardiovascular fitness: feel out of breath and out of energy more quickly
Speed and reaction time: lower ability to run to save someone and ourselves from an accident
And the list goes on.

If you’re already in your late 20s, you’ve most likely started experiencing some of the symptoms above. And to you, this may already be an obvious fact of life that you’re aware of and already managing.

But the repercussions of not maintaining your physical health is not limited to just your body. Your physical health matters a lot more to the other aspects of your life than you might realise.

Interconnectivity of Areas of Growth

The conventional method of approaching personal growth is by developing the 6 Areas of Growth individually. While this is certainly important, it is equally as important for us to strengthen the bonds between the 6 Areas of Growth too.

In the world of Chinese Kung-Fu, some would call this ‘strengthening the harmonies’ of the different areas.

But this is also the reason why you cannot leave your physical health unmanaged. If your Physical Health node naturally weakens as you age and you do nothing to manage it, the bonds between your Physical Health and the 5 other Areas of Growth will also continue to weaken.

Mental Health

The mind-body connection is innately strong. While a healthy body can promote a stable mind, the opposite is also true. When we are physically unfit or ill, our minds become foggy, distracted and are not able to focus. In more serious cases, illnesses can cause inflammation in the body, which in turn can make us depressed.

As we age, our bodies naturally accumulate larger amounts of inflammation from the day to day stresses of living. Unfortunately, this inflammation becomes harder to get rid of as our bodily functions deteriorate with age. This is a condition called ‘Inflammaging’ (= Inflammation + Aging). This increases the risk of us falling into depression as we age too.

Skills & Knowledge

If you love physical sports like snowboarding, while some acquired skills that’s been honed into muscle memory may stick with you, it can only carry you as far as your physical fitness enables you to. If you’re into competitive online games like DoTA2 or Overwatch, your eye-hand coordination and reaction time is critical for victory, but this too will decrease unless you manage your physical health.

For your ability to learn new things and retain past knowledge, many studies have shown the relationship between physical health and cognitive health, memory ability and concentration.

Finance & Career

With the increasing costs of medical care (or increasing wait-time of free healthcare, depending where you’re at), falling sick has unfortunately become a huge financial risk for many people. ‘Prevention is better than cure’ not only in the physical health aspect, but also in terms of your personal finances.

Career-wise, physical fitness is a base requirement until you fully retire. Whether you’re climbing up a career-ladder, growing a business or hustling multiple jobs, advancing your career will demand more stamina and that you are able to handle a greater amount of stress. Your physical fitness to handle the ever growing professional responsibilities and stress may determine whether you make it or break it.

Relationships

The bottom-line: physical fitness 100% matters when it comes to relationships. Six-packs and a sexy body are certainly nice-to-haves in a partner, but general physical health matters more because we humans are attracted to someone who is healthy enough to help take care of us and fulfil their responsibility as a life partner. This means that you have to be physically fit to protect your spouse, help around the house, fulfill your partner sexually, and also take care of your children if you are to have them in the future.

And a note to men: You have a biological clock too. The quality of men’s reproductive health significantly decreases after the age of 35 unless you keep your physical health in check.

Spiritual Health

Spiritual health, to me, is the ability to recognise the relationship between you and the universe around you. To explore your spirituality, you need to be able to climb higher ‘levels of consciousness’, into what David R. Hawkins refers to as the Spiritual Paradigm.

However, if you’re unfit and unhealthy, you will be too distracted too often by the discomfort and pain within your own physical body. As a result, you will find yourself lingering most of the time within the lower levels of consciousness of the ‘Survival Paradigm’.

My journey to taking ownership of my own physical health

I know how gloomy and doomy I sound writing all the above, but this is the reality that I had to face over the last 5 to 7 years.

I was never physically strong as a kid, and out of the 6 Areas of Growth, physical health has always been my weakest link till perhaps my late 20s.

I’ve always been more interested in other Areas of Growth and put less priority on my own physical health. It is only until I started struggling with my mental health, and consequently other aspects of my life in my mid 20s did I start conscientiously assessing my weak links.

As the saying goes: “You are as strong as your weakest link.”

What I learned was that a huge part of self-growth is identifying the weak links that are within you.

And for me, my physical health was my weakest link. It was lacking and negatively affecting the other areas of my life. And after realising how my physical health will only continue to deteriorate as I aged, I realised that I had to take action to properly manage it.

Today, I am happy with my physical health and fitness level. Though there’s always room for improvement, I would say that I am ‘fit enough’ for the time being.

But, what does ‘fit enough’ mean?

Physical Fitness for Personal Growth

I define ‘fit enough’ as having the physical ability to lead a good quality life without it hindering you from fulfilling any aspect of your life, for most of your life.

This is subjective from one person to another. If one of your goals in life is;

to not be depressed anymore and have peace of mind, then manage your health so that bodily inflammation and pain no longer becomes a trigger for mental health issues.
to manage a multinational company, then you have to be ‘fit enough’ to handle the work stress and hours the job demands.
to go snowboarding until the day you die, then you should commit to a fitness regime that allows you to enjoy the sport without getting hurt.
to be able to carry your 5-year old kid during the entire trip to the zoo, then you better be strong enough to carry the weight for long hours.
to reach financial independence by the time you hit your 40s, you need to manage your health so that illness becomes a smaller financial risk to manage post-retirement.

Whatever personal goals you have, manage your physical health so it does not become a hindrance for you to reach your goals.

While, I said that I am happy with my physical fitness but I am, by no means of the word, an ‘athlete’. If I compare myself to other men my age, my height and my weight class, I am actually below average.

But my satisfaction comes from the personal growth and benefits I’ve received from my taking ownership over my physical well being:

Mental Health: I’m more resilient when facing mental health issues, can surgically pin-point the cause of my mental instability
Skills & Knowledge: My concentration has improved, and I have more stamina to go through the pains of learning something new
Finance & Career: The number of trips I have to make to the doctors (and chiropractors and masseuses) have significantly dropped over the years! I feel like I have more energy to pour into my work day-in day-out.
Relationships: I am able to spend more quality time with friends and my wife from the fact that I’m sick less no. of days of the year, and I feel like less of a burden to people around me.
Spiritual Health: I find myself having more peace of mind, and the mindspace to contemplate my position in this Universe.

So, what exactly have I done, and continue to do to take responsibility over my physical health?

The Health Trifecta

There’s only 3 things that you need to properly manage for your physical health. In priority they are your:

Sleep (50%)
Diet (40%)
Exercise (10%)

Here’s what I’ve specifically done for each one.

Sleep

I try to get at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night. While this can be a struggle for me from time to time, this is certainly the most important practice for my physical health.

If I can travel 10 years into the past when I first started dealing with depression, I would prescribe myself with 8-hour sleep regiment because I do think my lack of sleep back in the day was a huge factor to my mental health problems.

Matthew Walker’s book ‘Why We Sleep’ is a great book which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to understand the criticality of sleep for our physical well being. Here’s Matthew Walker TED Talk video which touches on some key lessons.

Diet

After lack of sleep, the second largest damage we can do to our physical health is through bad dieting practices. Many of us do this by eating too much (higher than our maintenance calories) and eating junk (high sugar, processed food).

First, I aim to eat about 1,900 – 2,000 calories per day when I am not trying to lose weight. This is my actual maintenance calories at my current age. Secondly, I’ve reduced my added sugar intake and eating fast food by a large margin.

Despite what online calorie calculators say, I’ve come to realise that I have a lower metabolism than most men my age, weight, and height, from diligent calorie tracking. If you’re serious about finding out your actual maintenance calories, I recommend tracking it for at least 3 to 4 weeks.

For cutting sugar and junk food, I recommend taking a gradual approach as they are addictive. If you’re eating junk food 4 times a week and like sugary drinks, consider reducing it to 2 times a week and switching to less sugary drinks. Reduce over time, but commit to reducing.

Exercise
Out of the three, exercise is the least important, but it is a catalyst to levelling-up your physical fitness. There are so many ways to start exercising, but allow me to share what I’ve found practical for someone like me who isn’t physically gifted:

Stage 1: (Inactive > Active)

If you’ve never exercised before or you’ve fallen off the rhythm, then just focus on ‘showing up’. If you decide to go to the gym or to walk at the park 2 times per week, then make sure you show up at the gym or the park. It doesn’t matter if you don’t end up working hard at the gym or walking for long. I would just focus on showing up.

Stage 2: Pushing yourself

Once I’ve consistently shown up for a few days or weeks, I’ll reach a point where I feel like pushing myself when I am at the gym or at the park. At this point, I still don’t have a clear workout plan, but it would be a good idea to start noting down how much weight I lifted or how long I walked. Next time I show up, I would try to push myself to lift a little more or walk a little longer. I would just focus on pushing myself a little more than the previous time.
Stage 3: Challenging yourself

Once I’ve consistently pushed myself for a few days or weeks, this would now be a good point for me to introduce some kind of plan or structure to my workout. By now, I have built some rhythm of showing up to the workout, and the mindset to push myself whenever I am working out. I am now ready to adopt a workout plan to challenge myself.

The key to any exercise regime is to be consistent. It doesn’t matter how much you can lift or how fast you can run or how far you can run. What matters is consistency.

A Lifetime of Growth

In conclusion, if you’re passionate about developing yourself to be the best version of yourself until the day you die, then you need to manage your physical health and fitness.

In Venki Ramakrishnan’s book ‘Why We Die’, he shares about how some longevity scientists believe that with modern technology advancements we have today, some humans living today may live all the way till they are 150 years old. While it may not be for the majority of us, living to a 100 years old will become more commonplace for many of us.

However, whether you and I live that long should not be our focus in my opinion. What really matters is whether we would have a good quality of life, for most of our lives.

So…

Would you rather live up to 150 years old, in writhing physical discomfort for many years?

Or would you rather live a shorter life, but with good physical health where you can be your best self?