As we grow our businesses and as we get busier and busier, often exercise is one of the first things that fall off our radar.
We don’t have time for it, or we feel that client demands and other things are more important. Sometimes we even feel a bit guilty spending time on ourselves exercising, rather than with our families or doing other things.
Back in my 20s, I used to exercise regularly. I used to go to the gym and I used to run a lot.
But once I became a law firm partner, bit by bit I stopped working out as often. Then, when I had children, I stopped completely.
About two years ago, I started working with a wellness coach.
One of the things she challenged me to do was to start moving my body regularly.
So I went and got a personal trainer who I started seeing once a week, and I started walking a few times a week. I started doing more and more to the point where I was walking most days, and feeling pretty good about it.
But then last year I made a significant change.
Late last year I started doing a program called 75 Hard.
75 Hard is actually not a fitness program, it’s pitched as a mental toughness challenge.
It includes a number of things that you have to do every day for 75 days in a row. If you miss something, you go back to the start and begin again.
For example, you have to do two 45-minute workouts every day, and one of the workouts has to be outdoors. You’re also not allowed to drink during those 75 days, you have to follow a diet, you have to read 10 pages of a business book every day, you have to take a progress photo of yourself every day, and a few other things too.
Now, I really like doing hard things like this, because I really feel it helps me with my mindset.
So I embarked on the 75 Hard challenge, and one of the things that I struggled with initially was fitting in the two 45-minute workouts each day.
I had to make rules for myself about how I would work out every day, and commit to them.
Some days it’s easy to fit in the workouts and other days it’s not. I have my kids with me all day on Sundays, for example, and it’s really hard to get out and do two workouts with kids.
So I really had to figure out how to fit in two 45-minute workouts every day.
But I found ways to make it happen, and the results I found for my mindset and my thinking were incredible.
The whole 75 Hard program really gave me a mental clarity and calmness that I have never experienced before.
I feel like I’m able to cope with my growing business in a way that I never have been able to as well.
I can really feel the benefits of these two workouts a day, not only on my physical health, but on my mental health – it’s been really significant.
So let me share with you the five ways that you can make time for daily exercise in your lawyer life.
#1: Find time
This sounds simple, right?
Obviously you need to do this, but it can be hard when you’ve already got a lot on your plate.
If you’re struggling to find time, then you need to do a bit of brainstorming around this.
Often it starts with your mentality.
Instead of saying, “I can’t find time today”, you need to turn that statement on its head to, “How can I find time today?”
I mentioned before that exercising with my kids on the weekends could be difficult.
So sometimes on a Sunday I would get a babysitter to look after my children while I got out of the house and did my workouts.
It’s just about being organised and proactive so you can fit in your exercise, because it’s something you’re committed to doing.
I’ve done a video about designing your perfect week, and that’s all about making sure that every week, you’re fitting in all the things that are important to you – like exercise.
So finding time, blocking out your calendar for exercise and honouring that commitment, and showing up for yourself, is super important.
#2: Be accountable
This is about finding somebody to hold you accountable for doing the exercise you want to do.
You can call it an accountability buddy if you like. It could be a work colleague, a friend, maybe even a coach of some sort.
Another way to go is getting a personal trainer once or twice a week to help you set some goals and work with you to achieve those goals.
Being accountable to someone else just means you’re so much more likely to honour the commitment to exercise, because it’s much easier to skip it when it’s only yourself you’re doing it for.
#3: Make it fab
One of the reasons why I stopped exercising as much in my 20s was because it stopped being fun.
Yes, I was getting really busy at work, but the enjoyment of it just faded.
Making it fab is all about finding ways to move your body that feel amazing.
While I was doing two workouts a day on 75 Hard, lifting weights and going for walks got pretty boring pretty quickly.
So I started looking for other ways to exercise that I would really enjoy.
I started doing yoga. That was actually quite funny, because I never thought I would get into yoga.
I like a fast-paced life, so I just didn’t think I would get into something that is quite slow… but it turns out I love it!
I also got back into running, which I’d wanted to do for a while. I used the Couch to 5K app to build up from nothing to 5k’s, and from there I used the 5K to 10K app to build up to 10k’s.
I even started getting tennis lessons.
I’ve always loved watching the Grand Slams, particularly Serena Williams, and I thought, how hard can it be?
Turns out it’s pretty hard, but anyway, I’ve been really enjoying my tennis lessons, and learning more about how to play tennis.
You can actually get really creative with the exercise you do, so you have lots of variety and enjoyment.
You might have seen something before and thought, “Ooh, that looks cool, I’d really like to do that”. This is your chance.
#4: Break it up
If you’re having trouble planning the time it takes you to exercise each day, you need to find a way to break it up.
I’ll give you an example.
I have all my team meetings on a Monday, and there are two particular meetings that I always have back-to-back, and I hate.
What I try to do is finish the first one 10 minutes early, and go for a walk around the block.
That walk takes six minutes, so it’s a really great way to stretch my legs, clear my mind, and get a little bit of exercise done.
So how can you bring shorter bursts of exercise into your life?
I also do five minutes of yoga every morning when I get up as part of my morning routine.
I follow Yoga by Kassandra on YouTube, and there are some Pilates videos that I follow as well.
They have all sorts of shorter exercises from 5-15 minutes that are a great little burst in between meetings if you’re struggling for time.
#5: Put yourself first
For me, this is the most important one.
When I started 75 Hard, I decided that to get in two workouts a day, I would need to prioritise my exercise above my work.
Instead of getting busy at work and saying, “Oh, I’ll have to skip that workout today”, I always had to put my exercise first.
And that was actually a hard thing to do, and I was quite worried about it to begin with.
My business is growing quickly, we’ve got a lot of momentum, and I thought if I wasn’t prioritising work then things would slow down, or the results wouldn’t be as good.
I had to cancel some work meetings here and there so that I could exercise, and some things on my to-do list had to be pushed back, and I was nervous about what that would end up meaning for the business.
But I knew I really wanted to invest in myself in this way, so I thought “I’m just gonna give it a go and see what happens.”
And those things I was worried about, things like slowing down and not making the same progress, it actually turned out to be the opposite.
We got even better results over that time.
I was able to think so much more clearly, and make better decisions that were more thought out.
Because when I was out working out, I could actually give myself that space to think things through in a way that I hadn’t really been able to before.
Even though I was spending less time on work and more time exercising, it actually meant that work was going better.
It meant that when I was working, I was able to be way more productive.
My mind was clear, and I was having better quality interactions and conversations with my team.
That’s all because I had been able to think things through while I was exercising, instead of shooting from the hip.
I was amazed at how much I was able to grow my business over this time when I was actually prioritising exercise over work.
If you’re interested in scaling a law firm, or building, designing and selling online legal solutions and learning about how to do the marketing around that, then there’s plenty more for you to discover over in my Savvy Lawyers Facebook group.
