How Prioritizing Exercise Can Help You Achieve Your Life Goals

You know that prioritizing time at the fitness center has a positive impact on your health, strength, and weight loss goals. After all, it’s what helps motivate you to get up for that early-morning workout or head to the gym on your lunch hour. But did you realize that prioritizing your fitness has benefits for other areas of your life, as well? Both formal studies and real-life examples provide proof that consistent exercise can impact your work performance, your personal goals -- and even help you with your bucket list.

How Exercise Improves Your Work Performance

In the last several years, many studies have revealed that regular exercise (at least 30 minutes a day, three times a week, and especially on work days) improves employees’ workplace performance. One study showed that active workers experienced as much as 15 percent greater productivity. That’s because physical activity comes to the benefits of heightened energy levels (without the need for as much coffee), alertness, and ability to focus. In fact, you might even get smarter: some studies link aerobic fitness with more of an important nerve tissue that supports learning and brain function!

You’ll also be better at managing your time. After all, you can discipline yourself to focus intensely for 30 minutes a day in the fitness gym, so why not other portions of your day? Getting into a routine with one area of life has the tendency to create consistency in other areas, as well.

Many studies also point to benefits like less stress and better moods, which are important in a work environment. Mental stress can have physical symptoms in your body because it increases your levels of cortisol and adrenaline – the hormones released when your body believes it’s experiencing a threat. Exercise doesn’t just decrease this effect; it stimulates the release of endorphins – the body’s “feel-good” chemicals. With more positive and less negative, you’ll be more likely to approach everything with a more positive attitude.

How Exercise Gives You Confidence and Motivation for Personal Goals, Bucket Lists, and Hobbies

Making it through your 30 minutes of cardio with less panting, knocking out reps, and reaching new time, distance and speed goals at the fitness center makes you feel proud of yourself. There’s a personal sense of accomplishment. An exercise routine can show you how much you’re capable of if you set your mind to it -- a quality some call personal efficacy. At first, it might show up as greater motivation for going to the gym, more confidence about enrolling in a fitness event, or the drive to push yourself even harder than before. Inevitably, it will also rub off into other areas of your life.

The confidence-building (along with the body building) you’re doing at the fitness gym can give you confidence to pursue those goals and dreams you’ve been hesitant (or didn’t have the energy) to tackle before. After all, what’s building a deck if you can crank out pull-ups and burpees at the gym?

Clearly, the benefits of exercise go way beyond physical results. The next time you’re tempted to skip your workout, think about these ways prioritizing exercise impacts not just your fitness goals, but your life goals.