Mike Jones
- Oct 29, 2020
- 5 min read

The 4 Components for Long Term Wellbeing in Business

Businesses, the teams within them and the people that start them have the capacity to change the world. But it's only people that start, run and direct businesses that know just how much, physically and mentally it can take, all too often at the expense of health. As our modern lives continue to change at a rapid rate, physical and mental health are becoming increasingly prevalent problems, especially for driven leaders. But with all the new health problems we face, we face an equal amount of opportunities that actually make it one of the best times in human history to be able to work hard and simultaneously be IMPROVING health and wellbeing. The key lies in a more 'business' approach to health, in identifying the essential components of health and building hyper efficient systems to appease them. When we systemise our health we free up our time to work hard, achieve our goals and have a personal life.

There are 4 essential components that significantly add to our wellbeing when met, but takeaway from it when not met. By understanding these we can better approach them in a more systematic and measurable way. When we have these components addressed as a framework in our personal lives and businesses we can approach them with business efficiency. What are they?

Component 1 - Self Awareness

Knowing who you are, what your strengths are, how you like to approach problems and what motivates you is key to longterm wellbeing. When you clearly know who you are and who each member of your team is you can approach life and work in a highly effective way.

A lot of personal and team health issues are created through a lack clarity in self awareness.

On a personal level a lack of self awareness makes it difficult to make decisions, difficult to approach work in most productive way, difficult to effectively delegate and can lead to low self esteem/motivation issues.

From a team perspective, not clearly understanding the full picture on each of the other team members limits communication, limits effectiveness and limits productivity.

The four components we believe are most important to measure and define are:

- Connative function - How each person is hardwired to approach problems

- Core Values - What is most important to each person

- Motivation - What factors motivate each individual and how motivated are they

- Top 5 Strengths - What is each person best at

Add this awareness to your own life and the lives of your team members and you'll see team communication rise significantly. It's a huge relief for people when they have, written down on paper, what they are good and also what they are not so good at. Especially when they know there are other people in the team who love the stuff you're not so good at.

Component 2 - Vision

All humans are naturally goal driven beings. We feel happiest not when we achieve our goals but when we are moving towards them. Without a clearly defined vision for our lives and the different components of our lives we can find ourselves feeling lost, demotivated, unfulfilled or all three. We can't run businesses without a vision, without knowing where we want to go, without having goals in each component/department of the business, the same is true for our lives.

Making sure that each individual in your team has clearly defined visions in the different areas of their lives will help them with drive and time management as well as help you play a key role in their personal development. If you and your people are moving towards your own goals whilst simultaneously playing your own unique roles in moving the business towards its goals, retention, productivity and motivation levels are going to be consistently high.

Component 3 - Physical Health

Most if not all of us understand the importance of physical health, yet so many of us struggle with it none the less. The reason we're struggling with it so much isn't majorly due to personal choices. This is evident in the sheer numbers of people struggling, for example approximately 40% of the entire population of the world is overweight... obesity levels have more than tripled since 1975. This isn't because almost half of the population of the world decided they wanted to become obese in the last 30 years.....

Our environment and lifestyles are becoming increasingly more encouraging of bad health. The opportunities to be extremely healthy (even with busier lives) are also more, but we need to know how to capitalise on them.

Simply put, we have a choice. We can actively put systems and training in place to capitalise on the new health opportunities available to us, or we can just go with the flow and run a very high risk of ourselves or a high percentage of our teams becoming unhealthy and embrace all of the negatives that brings with it to our personal lives and businesses.

The vast majority of joint pain, stress, obesity, minor illnesses and diseases that negatively impact us can be significantly reduced if not eliminated through simple, systemised approaches to the four pillars of health. Employers and team leaders stand in one of the best position to directly contribute to this in a positive way. As we've highlighted, it's the environment and a lack of knowledge that's creating global bad health, employers can create environment and provide education that encourages optimal health (and performance). The four pillars are:

- Movement & Fitness - How to maintain a healthy body and offset the negatives of a computer based job

- Nutrition - How to eat in a way that optimises energy and health

- Sleep - Managing sleep to optimise health and performance

- Stress Management - How to harness stress instead of letting it become a negative

Component 4 - Personalised Strategy

We're all different yet we're all the same. You might like fitness a lot more than I do, you might want to run marathons and play tennis where as I might hate sport. You might be 20 I might be 70. Regardless of those differences we're both humans, and at the basic level we both need the same approach to fitness to enable long term vitality. The key to creating long term wellbeing in yourself and your team is by educating and upskilling in the fundamental basics then rolling them into personalised strategies that fit unique needs. By enabling people to work the essentials into their lives in a way the works for them, as opposed to providing a one size fits all approach, you lay the path for long term success.

In summary, we all need the same things but the way in which we implement them will differ from person to person. Changing the components isn't the answer, adapting the approach is.

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Historically life has 'taken care' of these components without any particular effort being made.. We've had to do what we were good at for survival, we didn't have anything but healthy food as an option, we slept when we were tired. It's not the same anymore. Without having interventions in place poor health, and all the inconveniences it brings with it are highly likely to plague us.

Our environment is only going to continue to change in a way that makes it easier and easier to be unhealthy but also provides more opportunity to thrive more than ever before. If we choose to be proactive, we'll put ourselves and our teams into the thriving category. If we choose to ignore it, different components of poor health will plague us.

P.S. - I am currently looking to partner with forward thinking teams and small business owners who want to work with me and my team to implement long term bespoke wellbeing systems. If your success is driven by you and your team and you want to become a leading business in wellbeing, get in touch with the link below.

Book a Free Strategy Session - Here