In this article, you will:
- Understand the relationship between physical exercise and work;
- Know why this subject should be taken seriously by women;
- Understand 4 reasons to go get your sneakers and start moving to grow faster in your career.
Exercising is a way to ensure health and well-being, and no one can dispute that. After all, the moving body provides proper functioning of muscles, bones, organs and the brain, and also causes joy and relaxation related hormones to be released.
In addition to this direct benefit, the practice of physical exercises allows us to create excellent analogies with the work environment and end up learning good lessons when facing obstacles, thinking about technical preparation or even relying on the help of professionals.
In this article, we’ll talk about how running, one of the most basic physical exercises there is, can better prepare you for new challenges. Besides all that, we are going to give you 4 good motives to start exercising as soon as possible.
Physical exercises and work
According to Harvard Health Publishing, in the article “Regular exercise changes the brain to improve memory, thinking skills”, aerobic exercise makes the blood flow and allows the hippocampus to grow, increasing verbal learning and memory habilities. Thus facilitating communication and decision making through information retention, essential activities for any professional, especially leaders.
In addition, exercises enable a reduction in stress levels, which makes it easier to think of scenarios to solve problems and establish more successful negotiations. According to Gameplay A website:
Why is this subject important to women?
Because we women take responsibility for countless fronts in our personal, professional and family lives, many of us end up overloading ourselves with activities, neglecting the practice of physical exercise. Among the many priorities, this can be considered one to be set aside.
However, the physical and mental benefits of exercise can make women feel more prepared to face professional and personal challenges that arise. Furthermore, the practice of activities that are not related to daily obligations can be a respite and rest in a busy routine like that of a working woman.
4 reasons to exercise and thus improve work performance
Keeping a reasonable training routine and motivation makes us feel more willing and prepared for our daily chores. In this article, we use running as a reference because it is a relatively easy physical exercise to be practiced almost anywhere.
4 reasons why racing will accelerate you professional performance:
1. “Complying with the worksheet”: If you can adjust your routine to run at 5:00 am, intersperse sprint training sessions with long weekends, control the Friday wine, adapt reading time with your child to strengthen a little muscle, you will probably have the same kind of discipline in the optimization of time at work.
2. “Defining targets”: Doing 30 minutes of daily physical exercise in order to improve health is valid and healthy. But great joys in running are linked to setting goals of distances and times never reached before, which makes us feel better as we achieve each step in the process.
In the work environment it’s not much different, the “I’ll do my part and stay very quiet here so no one bothers me” may be comfortable in the short term, but it will give you the feeling of being in a standby mode of emotions and experiences.
3. “Surrounding yourself with good professionals who support your strategy”: Sports doctors, nutritionists and coaches are allies to pass on the best running tips, both because of their knowledge and experience. It’s worth sticking with at least one of them, especially if you want to get away from the “café au lait” performances.
When we reflect on our professional activity, mentors, teachers, coaches, professionals from different areas, they can all change our points of view and broaden perspectives of the world.
4. “Having fun”: When running is a nuisance, it’s not good. And there are times when running is boring and you are lazy to put on your sneakers. Then it’s worth changing everything: focusing on functional exercises, running in groups, moving on to mountain races, investing in a race in another country, following runners’ profiles on Instagram. Transposing it to the reality of work, why not think about new courses, new activities, alliances with other areas, training people about what you do? Or more drastic attitudes such as changing company, sector, profession or continent? What is not worth it is to be unhappy and dragging yourself to the finish line.
Running can also be other activities
Well we chose to write about running, but you can think of any activity that you enjoy most and that challenges you to be better. It is worth thinking about weight training, playing volleyball, swimming, but also learning Italian, embroidering, studying contemporary art, cooking Vietnamese food among other activities.
The message that remains is that who we are outside of work is reflected in who we are at work. Why not try to be our best self in everything we do?
Continuing the conversation…
What about you, what are you currently doing to challenge yourself in your daily life? How does this activity help you to be a better professional?
Please continue this conversation with in the comments and let us know your experience.
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Co-authored with Sandra Milena Acosta
Sandra has worked for more than 12 years in the strategic planning and risk management of global financial institutions. Master in Economics from UFPR, graduated in Economics from UNICAMP and post-graduated in Digital Marketing from Kellogg Executive Education, she recently went through a career transition and is now a Writer of Chronicles, Children’s Literature and Poems. All of her work is available on her Instagram page (@sandramtca) and on Medium.
As of 2021, 41 CEOs of the world’s 500 largest companies, the so-called Fortune 500, are women. That is 8,2%. In the environment of small and medium-sized companies, this number is difficult to measure, but it seems to us even smaller. The most curious thing is that we are half of the world’s population. So why are we so few in charge?
Womaninzing is a startup project in creation that aims to understand and propose solutions to the problem of very few women in the top management of institutions. Our articles encourage discussions about problems faced by women in the professional environment and seek to teach what can be learned from previous mistakes and difficulties so that we can demand a greater balance between men and women in the world of work.
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