What Leadership Has Taught Me About Managing my Health

As a business owner, I listen to a lot of books on audible and even more podcasts. I want to learn from those that have gone before me. What tips would they offer their younger self (and me)? What did they learn from their mistakes and how can I learn from that as well?

One of the themes that I’ve been hearing across the board lately is the value of delegating. The message continues to surface about knowing your strengths and knowing your shortcomings.

Leverage your strengths

Whatever you’re really good at, invest your time in doing that.

Find support for your shortcomings

Whatever you tend to struggle with and lose the most amount of time on, find support and when possible, delegate it out.

Of course, there are so many applications to this from a business perspective, but when I started thinking about it further, I found it extremely applicable to managing my health.

My health strengths

Managing energy is something that I always have to be mindful of. I have a tendency to expect too much out of a day and when my to-do list isn’t complete by the end of the day, I feel defeated.

However, I know that I have the most energy in the morning. Those are my best hours. So, to leverage my strengths from a health perspective, I need to prioritize my most important tasks at the start of my day.

My health shortcomings

By the time the late afternoon and early evening strikes, it’s not uncommon for my energy to be wiped out of me if I’ve overexerted myself throughout the day. At this point, dinner can feel like a monumental task.

This is where delegation comes into play. As much as I would love to get a private chef to prepare all my meals for me, that’s not realistic. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any other options. These are just a few options for “delegating” dinner.

Meal prep

"Delegate” the daily task to one cooking session per week. This has been the biggest game changer for me in terms of staying committed to my health without spending hours every day in the kitchen.

I grocery shop on Saturday. I meal prep on Sunday. This gives me an opportunity to cook once but eat multiple meals out of it. I’ll meal prep a breakfast hash that I’ll have throughout the week. I’ll also often meal prep for lunch by cutting some veggies in advance and cooking a batch of grilled chicken breast.

Food prep delivery

There are so many options for online services that will deliver the prepped ingredients for meals or will even deliver the fully prepared meals for you. This is obviously a higher price point, so I’ve opted to do my own prep, but this is definitely an option in my back pocket should I get to a point where I’m either super busy or too fatigued.

Dinner swap

You may be most familiar with this concept from the holiday cookie swaps – everyone brings five dozen cookies to a party and swaps cookies so you go come with a greater variety of cookies.

Similar concept, here you’re bringing multiple batches of a dinner – three jars of chili or three trays of lasagna. Because the reality is, when you’re making one dish it’s a lot easier to make another batch because all the ingredients are out. And if you can find a recipe for a crock pot meal, it makes the process so much easier because it requires less of your energy to prepare.

Then you return home from your dinner swap with three different meals for your family dinners. This not only helps take the load off the daily dilemma of what’s for dinner, but also builds a strong sense of community.