As the Year Ends, How Is Your Health?

As we approach the end of the Jewish year, with the secular year not too far behind, it’s a natural time to do what we call a cheshbon hanefesh. Where do we stand in life? Most importantly, where do we stand in our service to Hashem? How are we doing with our relationships, our responsibilities, our spiritual growth, and our professional lives?

For all the CEOs, business owners, executives, and really anyone who works, this is also a good time to ask a simple question: How are you doing professionally? There are many ways to answer that. Are you meeting your goals? Is the business growing? Are you earning enough to pay the bills? Are you making the right connections and closing the right deals?

But I want to focus on something that I don’t think gets talked about nearly enough: Are you taking care of your health in a way that helps you meet your professional goals?

We tend to think business success is about crunching the numbers, making deals, networking, hiring the right people, and doing whatever else is necessary in our particular industry. Of course, all of those things matter. But I believe there are two things underneath everything else.

First and foremost is our relationship with Hashem. We need to remember that ultimately our success comes from Him. We daven, we ask Hashem to guide us in the right direction, and we try to bring Him along on the journey rather than thinking that everything depends entirely on us.

At the same time, we have to do our physical hishtadlus. And part of that means taking care of the body Hashem gave us.

Being physically healthy doesn’t mean you need to exercise for an hour every day. It means developing a reasonable balance of cardiovascular exercise, resistance training, movement, proper nutrition, sleep, and recovery. The goal isn’t to become a professional athlete. The goal is to have the energy, strength, focus, and ability to function at your best.

Think about your own workday. Imagine trying to prepare an important proposal when you can barely keep your eyes open. Think about trying to crunch numbers when your mind feels foggy, or giving an important presentation when you’re exhausted and stressed. Now compare that with the days when you’ve been exercising consistently, eating well, and taking care of yourself. You feel stronger. Your mind can feel clearer. Stress can be easier to manage. You have more energy to deal with everything being thrown at you.

That matters in business.

Your body and mind are not separate from your professional performance. You bring them to work with you every single day. Behind all the emails, meetings, presentations, sales calls, spreadsheets, and deals is a living, breathing human being. Taking care of that human being should be part of your business strategy.

And if you’re a CEO, business owner, or someone else in a position to influence your workplace, I think there’s another question worth adding to your year-end cheshbon: What kind of culture of health are you creating for your employees?

It’s easy to fill a company pantry with junk food and call it an employee perk. But is that really helping people? What if we provided more water and healthier options? What if we encouraged employees to move during the day? What if we gave people the tools, incentives, or even financial support to exercise on their own time? What if physical wellness became something the company actually valued and encouraged?

You don’t necessarily need an expensive corporate gym or a complicated wellness initiative. Sometimes simply communicating that health matters, giving employees realistic opportunities to take care of themselves, and creating some accountability and encouragement can begin changing the culture.

As the year comes to an end and we examine where we’ve been and where we want to go, take a few minutes to examine this area too. How is your own fitness? How is your nutrition? How is your energy? And if you lead others, what kind of culture of health exists in your company?

We spend tremendous amounts of time planning how to make our businesses stronger in the coming year. Maybe part of that plan should be making the people behind those businesses stronger as well.

Many blessings for a year of success, health, growth, and tremendous Siyata D’Shmaya.