I’m fed up with men sacrificing their physical health.
When I first started my coaching practice, I was a wellness coach. Eventually, I realized that even though I was good at helping people lose weight, change habits, start exercising and getting healthier, that only focusing on that work was limiting me.
I was frankly fed up with people wanting help with physical health when there were bigger fish to fry in their lives. Clients would show up having a deeply toxic relationship to work, love, relationships, and family. Often my clients, who wanted help with health, needed to learn to love themselves, draw boundaries and claim space. That is why they were unhealthy.
So while I kept doing that work, I distanced myself from “weight loss” or “wellness” coaching as a label and you might have noticed I stopped creating content around health.
That was a mistake. I wasn’t seeing the big picture. The world needs access to physical well being. I now see that for many men, getting healthier is the pathway towards boundaries, confidence, self-love and deeper connection to work and relationships.
Once again, I’m pissed off at how destructive men are to their own health. As we transcend old ways, it’s time to expand our world view. So I’m asking a deeper question when it comes to men and health.
Why do we sacrifice our bodies for our careers? More importantly, how do we stop?
For generations, men have believed we are only lovable when we provide and produce. We have been industrialized and institutionalized. We either are an amazing physical specimen, can compete powerfully in athletics and derive value from being wildly sexy or we focus on who we are in intellect or business.
The cost is that men are unhealthy and sick. We are less present in our business. We are less patient in our families. We are unfulfilled and unfulfilling in our romantic and sexual relationships. There is a huge cost to men, and to the entire world from our over-identification with work, money and the mind.
How we change is simple, but not easy.
We wake up to the reality that we are better in business, relationships, community, and love when we care for our bodies. We work to do the digging into our belief system that has taught us fallacies about our value and how the world works. We start listening to the body and prioritizing it. Then we start to slowly create new habits and routines that reflect our new truths.
This is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and your loved ones. And you aren’t being taught how to do this. This is one of the ways I help.
One of my clients, a high-level exec for the NCAA, lost 70 lbs and got engaged while we were working together.
Another one of my clients, an independent consultant in non-profit marketing, quit smoking and went from never exercising, to doing triathlons.
Another client, a department head for the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, lost 30 lbs and had his first romantic relationship in almost 20 years.
A client of mine, who is a high powered c-suite exec in internet infrastructure, started working out regularly, seeing his body as powerful and felt more desirable and healthy after his divorce. He is currently dating with more intuition, confidence and sexual competence than ever before.
I help my clients shift their priorities and become more healthy while continuing to excel in their careers. The world is ready for men to take better care of ourselves. We need to model this for the next generation of boys and men. It’s time to become healthy in body, mind, and career.
It’s your turn.