Here’s Why Leaders Struggle With “Healthy Habits” & Burnout

So you can run a boardroom and craft a 25% annual revenue increase strategy, but you can’t make yourself “eat healthily” or stick with that workout routine, and if one more person tells you to try deep breathing you might just explode. Which, of course, will only make them tell you again that you should try deep breathing or meditation. 

It’s not that you want to burn out. It’s not that you like living in overwhelm. It’s just, you can’t seem to make the changes stick. You’re too busy, it’s too hard, and surely you simply don’t have enough willpower. 

Well, if that were true you wouldn’t be kicking butt in your professional life. Here’s the thing. Leaders are awesome with strategy, and not as awesome with execution. This is especially true when it comes to your personal well-being because you can’t delegate as much. You have to do it all, own it all. 

Here’s how you do it, well to a point. I can’t give away my entire coaching program out of respect for my paying clients. But I can give you a few pointers to get you started. 

You probably already know about lag and lead measures. If not, the lags are your outcome goals and the leads are your action goals. Together, they help you achieve your primary goal or target. 

Say, for example, your primary goal is to get off blood pressure medication. 

• Your outcome goal is dropping 20 points.

• Your action goals are: eating a serving of vegetables at every meal, walking for 5 minutes after every meal, and going to bed 5 minutes earlier than usual every night.

So far, this is the strategy building that you and I as leaders love! Now comes the tricky part. Execution.

Now What?

How are you going to hold yourself accountable for taking those actions? This is where you get to build a system to support your strategy. 

The system needs to shape your environment and track your progress. 

You shape your environment in a way that makes what you want to do easy and what you don’t want to do hard. 

For example, your goal of walking for 5 minutes after every meal…perhaps your system is eating your meals in your walking shoes to make it easier for you to get up and move after your last bite. 

For tracking, you want to keep your tracking system simple and visible. Perhaps putting an X on your day planner after every walk. That creates a powerful visual of progress! And the more Xs you have, the more empowered you will feel, and the more likely you are to stick with your goal. 

Why Bother?

Why should you bother with any of this? Well, you certainly don’t have to. But I’m guessing if you’ve read this far that you’re like most of the business professionals that I work with. You are tired of sacrificing yourself and even your relationships for the job. You want to thrive personally and professionally simultaneously. You are flirting with burnout and want to turn things around before it gets that far. 

And you’ve tried to do this solo, but it’s never really stuck. 

Am I right?