Never mind the wealth. What about the health?

Just time for a quick one tonight.

I want to talk about health instead of wealth.

I am going to talk for a bit about my personal experience with health since leaving work.

When I had a job I was overweight by a large margin, there is a history of heart problems in my family and I was exhibiting a number of stress related symptoms. Not a good combination. Especially for someone who is quite lazy.

I am too lazy to exercise. I had a gym membership but spent my time there in the spa, steam room and sauna. Mostly trying to relax and bring my stress levels down. I hate gym-based exercise so joining was a bad and expensive idea based on an attempt to loose weight.

Anyway, enough about that. What about since leaving? I’ve started following an intermittent fasting diet. It’s working, I have lost over 2 stones in weight. As a lazy person I can do this because it means less cooking! But the point is that it is easier to do things such as loosing weight if you change your lifestyle. Changing the way I live my life has enabled me to do this. It is a lot harder to change things while you have a regular job.

How about stress? Surely running your own business is more stressful than having a job? Yes, if you don’t do it right. Or if you are in a job that doesn’t make you stressed. This wasn’t the case for me though. My job caused my stress. Not having a job has taken away the cause of a lot of my stress. After a few months the symptoms of stress that I was exhibiting went away. I had knots in my guts, bad sleep patterns, weight gain, nagging tension headaches most days, a feeling of dread (especially on Monday mornings) and anger.

All gone now. So I am not only loosing weight, I have got rid of some of the other classic causes of heart trouble. I think that having a job was shortening my life and I had to make a change. Something else I was doing while working was drinking half a bottle of wine most nights, sometimes more. I drink a lot less these days, and only because I like it, not because I feel I need it to unwind.

So, over to you. Is your job – indeed any job – worth shortening your life over? Is earning money more important than a longer, healthier life? Some people seem to manage it by spending an hour in the gym to work away their stress three times a week while living healthily. That’s great, but I could never have been one of those people. I’m too lazy you see. Sometimes a job simply takes too much from you. It is your responsibility to make a change. Nobody else will do it for you.