MB #012: Quick Start Guide To Balanced Health

February 19, 2023

Read time: ~2.5 Minutes

Hey friends,

Today I’m going to outline my favorite habits you can tackle first if you want to live a balanced and holistically healthy life as a busy father.

There are 4 domains I like to operate in that I believe all impact one another:

  1. Spiritual + Mental

  2. Rhythms + Schedule

  3. Movement + Food

  4. Sleep + Recovery

As I mentioned, each of these categories impacts the others. Your mental life can affect sleep, and your schedule can affect your margin to cook healthy food, etc.

Let me break down my top habits for each category, that you could start today!

Spiritual + Mental

Defense (Removing noise):

  1. Sabbath - an act of resistance against the crazy pace of life. A day of complete rest and rejuvenation, no work so you can disconnect from your phone, computer and other things constantly calling your name.

  2. Parent your phone - Turn your phone off for 1 hour per day (family time), and 1 day per week (sabbath), and lastly, put in on airplane mode for bed and don't turn it back on until after your morning routine is finished.

Offense (filling with the right things)

  1. Prayer

  2. Reading the Bible

Rhythms + Schedule

  1. Create a block calendar and map out a perfect week. Fit the big rocks in where they need to go, and then assess how much time and space you have left over.

  2. Fight like hell to protect the margin. That's where health really begins.

Movement + Food

  1. Movement: Start with micro-habits like 25 pushups every day, until you become someone who exercises every day no matter what. Then advance from there, little by little.

  2. Food: Eat 80% of your intake from whole foods (single ingredients) and cut out seed oils. (see last week’s issue)

Sleep + Recovery

  1. Get sunlight in your eyes, on your face, and on your skin in the first few hours of being awake. This will help melatonin production at night when you're supposed to be getting ready to sleep.

  2. Cut off food intake 3 hours before bedtime.

  3. Reduce your sleeping temp to 64-68°

TL;DR:

  1. Rest 1 day per week

  2. Turn your phone and notifications off more often

  3. Pray

  4. Read the Bible

  5. Work on a block schedule

  6. Protect margins

  7. Develop the habit of daily exercise - even if small

  8. Eat real food

  9. Get sunlight

  10. Don't eat before bed

  11. Sleep cold.

If these seem basic to you but you haven't mastered them yet, it might be time to simplify your approach and build the right systems and habits to ensure you can win at the basics for decades to come!

That's it for this week's issue. Catch you next Sunday!

-Chris

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