Many people in this country are
used to working long and grueling hours to make a living or while going to
school and for many of us, it is both. Finding time for relaxing and enjoying
ourselves is getting harder and harder to do. With as little time as we seem to
have, we are neglecting some of the most important aspect of our lives: our
families, our passions and our health. I would like to further elaborate on the
health concerns in more detail because it is rapidly becoming more convenient
to neglect. What if our government was more in tune with its people and no
their output and efficiency? What I mean by this is the government could give
us shorter work days and longer holidays. Would this fix the American health
concern? No, it is still each citizen’s responsibility to govern their own
health, though I firmly believe that this would grant us more freedom to pursue
healthier lives. I’m not just talking nutrition here; I mean every facet of
health, whether it is physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually.
Shorter hours in a standard work
day would allow for much more deserved freedom to do anything we need to become
healthier. Even if days are shorter by just an hour or two, it gives us
citizens time to allocate for other, more healthy activities, like cooking
dinner instead of eating out, going to the gym instead of watching tv, spending
time with our families or children instead of zoning out on the internet to
unwind, and preparing meals for ourselves and children for the following day of
work and school respectively, to name a few.
Longer holidays have already been
implemented country-wide in most European countries. In America, we have 10 public
holidays off, but a company is not required to give any others after that.
Meanwhile, countries like England gets 8 public holidays and a minimum of 28
personal days for vacation. Most American corporations do allow for some
vacation days, but in most cases, it restricted to only one to two weeks.
There are three main excuses given
for vacation days going unused:
1. “I can’t afford it.” This is an
EXCUSE. Most of these people who use this excuse have not put in the effort to
actually find out how much money it would require to make the trip. The effort
just simply isn’t there so of course they will assume that it isn’t affordable.
2. “I don’t schedule far enough in
advance.” Another EXCUSE. This excuse only thrives off of the first, such that
if they planned things in advance, they would be aware of the costs and find
ways to make a trip or vacation affordable. People who use this excuse are
obviously aware of the problem, so why wouldn’t they be able to solve it if
they actually tried?
3. “Work is my life.” HUGE EXCUSE.
Work becomes your life in one of two scenarios: you are doing what you truly
love and don’t even really consider it work anyway or you make yourself work so
much that you cannot differentiate between work and your personal life. This
choice is based on a closed-minded thought process and with a plan, it can be
relinquished.
The plan here is for us, as
citizens of this country and people of this Earth, to take time for ourselves
and not allow ourselves the day to day stresses of working so much a week.
While petitioning the government would be great, for now we will narrow the
focus to something more feasible that you can take immediate action on. Start
small by planning out your day, each day of the week. If you know what hours
you will be at work, you can deduce from there the time that it will take
traveling back and forth and you will know approximately when your lunch period
is and you can plan to make your own healthy lunch the night prior. Once you
know which times you are obligated to be busy, ie, work, you can subtract your
eight hours (give or take) of sleep and plan around it. With the remaining
time, incorporate healthy objectives into your day. This can be before working,
on your lunch break or after work. You’re looking for at least an hour a day of
healthy activities that you can engage in, stimulating your physical, mental,
emotional or spiritual health. If you don’t have time for all of those in a
single day, which many of us don’t, try alternating them throughout the week.
Monday, for example you can go to the gym after work, while Tuesday you can be
a little more relaxed and read a book.
Unfortunately most people don’t
plan out their days and they assume their day not to be long enough and give up
and stop having a successful, productive, happy and healthy day. In order to
ensure that your day is successful, I suggest a method that has been used for
ages. Before each next day, you write a list of 7 things that you want to get
done that day. Then you have to make sure that all 7 things become priority and
complete them. In a traditional sense, this tool has been used for business
success, but it can be used to promote your own healthy activities as well. In
this 7-item list you can include work as a single item, but also include other
activities that you know you want to have accomplished, even small ones like
doing the dishes, but make sure you also includes things like preparing a
healthy meal and spending time with your family. In the end, your mind and body is what sticks with you and if you allow all the other stresses into your life, then they will remain with you as well. So do yourself a favor, starting right now, and follow a path to becoming healthy.
