Many people will tell you that you need to have Goals in each of a set of defined categories. I’m less strict about that, but I definitely think you should have Goals for your Health. How do you have health Goals you may ask?

First you need to take stock of where you are right now. Go to your doctor and have a full physical done, including blood work. Most insurance will cover this as part of your preventative care, except for the blood work. Get your weight, your cholesterol and everything else you should track noted.

Then you need to determine what the ideal is for all of these. Ideal weight. Ideal cholesterol. Ideal glucose level and so on. Wherever you’re not in that ideal range, you need to create a plan to get there. Your doctor will give you ideas. They LOVE doing that.

Now WHY do you need Health Goals?

Without good Health, nothing else can get done.

I speak from experience here. The last month or so I have been trying to get over a bout of bronchitis. It knocked me down for a couple of days early on, and it just keeps hanging on. It’s draining my energy and creativity, and it’s really knocked me off track on pursuing my Goals this month. It’s essential to be physically and mentally able to actually DO the work to achieve your Goals.

Without good Health, what you do isn’t as productive.

When we’re sick, our bodies are busy fighting whatever bacteria or virus has attacked us. Or our bodies are busy healing from whatever pain or injury we’re suffering from. When you can work at all, you simply aren’t going to have the energy to get as much done. It affects your thinking and your ability to make things happen. It can affect your judgement too and cause you to make costly errors.

Without good Health, we aren’t as motivated to get things done.

Let’s look at weight here. When we’re overweight, it’s more difficult to get excited about certain things. We can be self-conscious about how we look compared to those we see as Successful. Sometimes it’s not our imagination either. Certainly Hollywood makes us think you have to be thin and beautiful to be a Success. Look at leaders in places you’ve worked or know. Does upper management tend to be fat and ugly or thin and good looking? In my experience, thin and good looking gets you farther.

Without good Health, we are more stressed than ever.

When we’re not at our optimum health, it’s stressful. When we’re sick, we naturally want and need to rest. Yet we know there are so many things that aren’t getting done. We NEED to get up and do something, but when we do, we can’t do it for long or we make a mess of it. Poor Health itself is stressful. It creates extra demands on the body to carry extra weight, process more sugar, salt, fat and chemicals than it should or to pump blood through clogged arteries. Not to mention the physical stress to joints and muscles.

Our Health is the one thing we cannot ignore when we set our Goals. It’s too important. Our Health is what enables us to think and do the work well and quickly to achieve our Goals, but it’s not just a tool to do that.

Our Health has to be good to excellent if we’re going to be the best that we can be.