Wellness Rituals For Leadership Excellence: Unleashing Your Potential

True leadership excellence thrives when you prioritize self-care

As a musculoskeletal expert, I have a unique vantage point to observe the impact daily routines have on health. Physical posture reveals a truth there is no hiding from. A patient's approach to life, the choices they make, and the importance they assign to self-care have always intrigued me. While my clinical expertise is helping people recover from physical injuries, today's leaders seek more than just a return to normalcy when their bodies break down. The pandemic has revealed distractions and poor choices that hinder health and performance and prevent us from reaching our full potential. In a world where competition is fierce and peak performance is the standard, careful consideration must now be given to pace, work habits, and daily choices if you wish to succeed in business with your health intact.
 

In my practice, I focus on 7 Wellness Rituals to help individuals elevate their health, performance, and happiness. By crafting a wellness strategy built on the framework provided by these rituals, leaders are learning to tap into their healing potential by activating the therapeutic powers found in sleep, food, metabolic health, movement, resistance training, mental fitness, and play. To assist you in your journey toward optimal health, we must first differentiate wellness rituals from healthy habits.

Rituals > Habits: To Improve Performance

Habits are defined as routine actions or regular tendencies, whereas rituals hold a deeper significance. Rituals are intentional practices that carry meaning and purpose and are more likely to hold firm when we are challenged, and life gets hard. By cultivating rituals that ground you, inspire you, and promote self-care, you can enhance your leadership performance and lead with greater clarity and authenticity without sacrificing your health in the process.

The Power of Stacking Healthy Choices

Having worked closely with professionals who have successfully converted their casual awareness of healthy habits into hard-wired, strategic wellness rituals, I know what the human body is capable of when healthy choices are stacked together.

Over 80% of the degenerative diseases affecting our society today are lifestyle-driven. The seemingly small choices we make daily - our sleep habits, the foods we eat when we eat, how we play, and our movement patterns, postural preferences, and inner dialogue- all profoundly impact our overall health and success. By stacking healthy choices, we gain influence over the expression of our genes and pivot our trendline towards good health and longevity. Here are a few simple, evidence-based practices to get you started.

Natural Light: A Catalyst for Sleep Success

Sleep hygiene is essential to effective leadership. Using natural light to your advantage will help you boost the health benefits experienced in rest and recovery (Wellness Ritual #1). Limiting screen time and dimming the lights 60 minutes before you turn in for the night and then seeking exposure to natural light in the first 30 minutes upon waking goes a long way to helping regulate our sleep-wake cycle. Sunlight exposure also stimulates vitamin D synthesis and lifts our mood. In time, this practice will improve the quality of your sleep, which translates into greater focus, resiliency, creativity, and a more positive outlook, allowing your nervous system the time it needs to de-stress.

Move to Stay Young: Defying the Effects of a Sedentary Lifestyle

In our modern world, sitting has become an unavoidable aspect of work. However, excessive sitting takes a toll on our health and vitality. Research suggests that replacing just one hour of sitting with a low-intensity walk each day can reduce all-cause mortality by up to 30% and lower the risk of major depression by 26%. By incorporating movement into our daily routine, we not only improve our physical well-being but also enhance cognitive function and slow down the aging process.

Break Free from Prolonged Sitting: A Key Leadership Practice

In addition to incorporating more physical activity into your day, breaking up prolonged periods of sitting is vital to good health. As a guideline, aim to get up and move at least once every hour. Doing so promotes circulation, reduces muscle tension, and improves overall energy levels. As a bonus, by encouraging your colleagues to take movement breaks with you, you will help foster an active work environment that values holistic well-being and fuels engagement.
 
TIP: Set a reminder on your phone to get up and move every hour. The intention here is not to disrupt your focus, flow, or productivity. Regular micro-movement breaks have been shown to improve all three. The goal ritual is simply to unpack the compressive load caused by sitting and giving your body a chance to physically reset. Get creative with these movement breaks and try to incorporate a variety of different movements that challenge your functional mobility.

Use It or Lose It: Strengthen Your Leadership

Resistance training is essential to healthy aging (Wellness Ritual #5). By the time you reach the age of 40, your muscular strength is already a decade into decline if you are not actively protecting it. The good news is that this trend is reversible. Working this ritual into your routine will keep you strong, but with a surprisingly small investment in time, it will also help improve sleep, energy levels, insulin sensitivity, weight management, bone health, cardiovascular health, and cognitive function. Two 15-20 minute sessions of resistance training each week is enough to support your physical strength.

The Mind-Body Connection: Nurturing Mental Fitness for Leadership Excellence

Prolonged exposure to stress decreases activity in areas of the brain that handle high-order tasks and stimulates more primitive parts focused on our emotional response and survival. As a leader, if you find yourself stuck in a fight or flight stress response all day, you are training your mind to constantly be on the lookout for threats. Choosing to operate from this position will cut your life short. Breaking free from this pattern by learning how to harness your thoughts and improve your resiliency is at the heart of mental fitness (Wellness Ritual #6). As a starting point, devote 1% of your day (fourteen minutes and twenty-four seconds) to self-care that supports your mental health. Find a quiet place, unplug from outside demands, and focus on deep, slow rhythmic breathing.
 
The simple choice to live a healthier life is the greatest gift you could give yourself. It is not bound by age or circumstance and is the first step to be taken. Jim Reid, Executive Coach and former Chief HR Officer at Rogers Communications shared with me that “mastering the art of managing one’s health and energy is what the very best leaders do differently.” The anticipation and acceptance of a decline in health as some sort of pre-programmed and inevitable part of aging or the life of a senior leader is a common and closely held belief that must be left behind. True leadership excellence thrives when you take good care of yourself first.

Author Bio

A trusted musculoskeletal expert, Dr. Dwight Chapin holds his honors degree in biology from Queen’s University and a Doctor of Chiropractic designation from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College. In his private practice, he has successfully demonstrated the role chiropractors can play in acute, chronic, and preventative care, corporate health, and sports performance. He is a two-time Grey Cup Champion as a Team Chiropractor for the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts Football Club, has co-authored workplace wellness e-learning modules for the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health & Safety-CCOHS and lectured extensively on human performance and injury prevention. Dr. Chapin has made it his life’s mission to care for, educate, and inspire others in their journey toward optimal health. His new book, Take Good Care: 7 Wellness Rituals for Health, Strength & Hope, is available now.