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The Underappreciated Aspect of Well-being — Autonomy

Having autonomy is such a crucial part of wellbeing
Leanne Spencer

Leanne Spencer

3 Min Read

Welcome to this week’s blog, it’s actually inspired by a podcast I did last week with Sarah Williams of Tough Girl Challenges – a cracking podcast!

You can listen to the podcast episode here:
Adventure, Freedom, Autonomy And Inspiration With Sarah Williams Of The Tough Girl Podcast

It really got me thinking – Sarah talked about one of the reasons she left her job in wealth management was because one of the biggest things she valued around wellbeing was autonomy, and I completely agree.

I will quite often think, while I’m looking at my laptop, “You know what, I’m kind of done for the day, even though it’s 2:30pm in the afternoon.” In my previous life, I would have had to sit there till 5:00pm or 5:30pm tapping away, looking busy or forcing myself to get on with it.

But one of the things I can do now is just say, “You know , I’m going to go home. I’m going to sit in the sun, and I’ll get up early and finish this the next day, or over the weekend.”

Having autonomy is such a crucial part of wellbeing.

I know for many of you who work in corporate jobs where you can’t necessarily get up and leave in the middle of the day, that could be trickier. But what you can do is try and reclaim some time for yourself during the day or the week or even the month. Do something that you really love, or connect with something you used to enjoy – what we call heartfulness, which many of you will have heard me talk about before.

Don’t feel trapped in your job, or trapped in the humdrum nature of daily life. Seize back some time for yourself and do something that’s all about you. Regaining some autonomy will help you really notice the difference in terms of your wellbeing. It doesn’t have to be a long time, it can just be five minutes initially. Five minutes is better than nothing, or even half an hour depending on what your lifestyle (whether you have a family for example) can allow and how pushy you want to be about this.

Autonomy is a crucial part of wellbeing. We quite often talk about sleep, mental health, energy, body composition, digestion, fitness – the Six Signals, all of which are very important for health, but having some autonomy, feeling like you’re in control of your life, at least some of the time, is also massively important for our physical, our spiritual, our emotional, and of course, our mental health.

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Author(s)

  • Leanne Spencer

    Leanne is an award-winning entrepreneur and the founder of Bodyshot Performance Limited. She delivered a TEDx talk on 'Why fitness is more important than weight', is the author of bestselling books 'Remove the Guesswork' and 'Rise and Shine', and hosts a podcast called ’Remove the Guesswork‘. Leanne is the founder of Bodyshot Performance, an award-winning health and wellbeing company. Bodyshot Performance work with businesses of up to 500 people who want to create a culture of energy, vitality and performance through the business and position wellbeing as a competitive advantage. Bodyshot intersect the latest science and technology to provide unique solutions to the challenge of wellbeing in the workplace that have a direct impact on the bottom line. Our clients have won awards for wellbeing and recognise it directly improves employee engagement and retention and attracts talent into the business.  We also work with chronically stressed or burned out professionals to get you back in control of your health and able to do the things you want to do in life. My expertise is around health, fitness and wellbeing, specifically focusing on sleep, mental health, energy, body composition, digestion and fitness. I host a popular podcast on iTunes called ’Remove the Guesswork ‘, and in November 2016 I delivered a TEDx talk on 'Why fitness is more important than weight'. I’m the author of the bestselling books 'Remove the Guesswork' and 'Rise and Shine' and I regularly speak to corporates on health and wellbeing. My personal values are to live truthfully, considerately and to "suck all the marrow out of life" as Thoreau said. I support the charity Diversity Role Models which works to combat homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. I recently completed the world’s toughest ski race to raise £10,125 for Alzheimer's Research as my father-in-law was profoundly ill with Alzheimers, and I am on a constant mission to find ways to live in a way that is sustainable and environmentally friendly. I love sport, fitness, reading, gardening, business, podcasting, and being with my cat and our scampish little rescue dog, Kami from Romania.