Physical exercise – the most important job you must do for yourself. Few months back, I was reading The Almanack of Naval Rabikant. Rabikant mentioned there that physical health is something that ensures your mental health as well. If you are physically fit, then your mental health is fit as well. And this one is not vice versa. You can’t ensure your physical health by making sure you are mentally fit.
Now what to do to maintain your physical health? Answer is simple. You should go for physical exercise. You can go for weight lifting, running, walking or even a regular outdoor sport can also ensure your good physical health. Maintaining this physical health is not only important for your mental health, it’s more important for other parts of your life as well! Physical exercise is one example of a keystone habit. Now, what is the keystone habit?
Some habits have the power to start a chain reaction. If you can adapt one of those kinds of habits, many other good habits will be automatically created! These types of habits are called KEYSTONE HABIT.
I have come to know about keystone habits from the book “The power of habit” by Charles Duhigg. In one of the chapters of this book, Duhigg gave an example of Paul O’Neill – who was the CEO of Alcoa. Paul was made the CEO of this company when the company was producing losses. And when Paul was going for retirement, Alcoa produced 5 times profit compared to its last good year! How did he make it possible? By implementing a Keystone habit. And what was the keystone habit? The keystone habit was to ensure worker’s safety! At that time, every year numerous Alcoa workers were so badly injured that they would miss a day of work. Paul committed to make the injuries zero. Paul believed in Keystone habits. To change the organization you can’t just order people. He focused on a habit and gave zero tolerance when there was any chance to break that habit by anyone. This practice made Alcoa one of the safest places to work. As a result people were not finding the workplace risky, they were motivated as they were feeling safer than before. On the other hand, because of very few injuries, the worker was not missing any working day. Production was going high at the same time. And Paul brought the result very soon. Within one year of his joining, the profit hit a record high!
Like worker’s safety in Alcoa, Physical exercise is a Keystone habit for our life. Usually, those who go for regular physical exercise, they have a good food habit, they go to bed early, they have a very deep sleep, wake up early and they are very focused on the job they do. And just think about the connection. It’s very simple. If you go for a morning run, you have to wake up early. If you want to wake up early, you have to go to bed early. On the other hand, if you are doing physical exercise everyday, you won’t submerge yourself in junk food because it won’t give you good feelings and you might also feel guilty. You will have a very good sleep because your body will need proper rest after a good workout session and your body will take it by itself. And when you will have a good sleep, good physical health (which will push your mental health) – your focus has to be better!
So, convince yourself for an hour of physical exercise 5-6 days in a week for a better life! Implement this keystone habit in your life. Be a better version of you.
Keystone habits are the habits that can help you to build a lot of other good habits and to make you a better version of you! Physical exercise is one of the important keystone habits that you can try to build. You will have the multi fold return very soon for sure. You will notice the positive impact on the other parts of your life very soon.