[This is the tenth post in a series about how to overcome the setbacks we all face in sales. To read the first post, click here.]
My friend Big Joe is enormous. And when he’s stressed out, he gets even bigger.
Joe has grown big on comfort food, and the food that comforts him most is bad for him.
At age 45, Joe refers to himself as “a big boy.” Everyone else thinks of him as very fat. At 6 ft. of height and more than 340 pounds of weight, he’s more than fat. He’s a time bomb. I often think what I’d do if I’m there when his countdown timer goes to zero.
You can barely go a day without seeing a story in the media about the harmful effects of stress, excess weight, eating disorders and insufficient sleep. Not only will those conditions ruin your health, but they’ll also damage your interpersonal relationships and impair your job performance.
So why are so many of us still overstressed, overweight, improperly fed, and under-slept?
I think it’s related to boiling frogs. You’ve probably heard the metaphor — You can boil a frog in an open pot of water as long as you turn the heat up slowly. He won’t notice till it’s too late.
I don’t like that image, but it makes a good point.
Although most of us seldom feel the urge to whip out our tongues at passing flies, we share at least one trait with frogs: We can find ourselves cooked before we know what’s happening. We’re less likely to notice things that occur gradually, no matter how bad their effects.
When you’re stressed, depressed, over weight, undernourished or otherwise running on empty, you may be the last to understand how bad it’s gotten. Sometimes you need a loved one or a friend to give you the push you need to put yourself back on a healthier path.
So I’ll take the liberty of standing in for your Mom with a few quick reminders.
1. Eat right.
Stress drains your energy and weakens your immune system. So avoid foods that are high in empty calories. Also avoid highly processed foods (like Pop Tarts, Chips Ahoy, frozen waffles), foods with refined carbs (such as sugar, corn syrup, potato chips, white flour, bleached rice, etc.), and foods with a lot of animal fat.
My doctor tells me the “Mediterranean diet” is probably the most healthful way to eat. For details, check out one of the South Beach Diet books by Dr. Arthur Agatston, a cardiologist.
Eat three square meals a day. Be sure to get plenty of fruits and vegetables. Drink plenty of water, though experts disagree on how much is the right amount.
As you try to maintain your energy throughout the day, don’t let yourself get caught in cycles of carbohydrate binges followed by glucose crashes. This will only make matters worse. If lack of energy is part of your problem, read The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.
2. Exercise.
Well, duh. If you don’t know about the many benefits of lifelong exercise by now, you may as well have been in a cocoon longer than Jack Lalanne’s been doing leg lifts. It’s time to transform those rolls of squishy pupa flesh into the firm, flexible thorax of a titanium butterfly.
For years I’ve been inventing reasons why it would be a bad idea for me to start exercising today.
In case you have a similar gift for creative excuse-making, I’m reminding you here: This is urgent. Find a way to do it now. When you’re under stress, you need it more than ever. You’ll be less tense. You’ll eat and sleep better. You’ll be more productive. You will look and feel better.
So put it on your schedule. Make an appointment with yourself. Get up earlier to if you have to. Make it the first thing you do each day.
Take it slow and easy at first so you don’t give yourself a reason to quit right away.
Check with your doctor to see if you have any potential health issues. I’m talking straight to you, Big Joe. You know who you are. Make the appointment now.
Do it before you die. You owe it to your friends and family. And you’ll feel better. I promise.
3. Get enough sleep.
A genetic irregularity allows a small percentage of fruit flies to get by on a third as much sleep as their peers. These bugs carry a mutation of the Shaker gene. Scientists call these little dynamos minisleep flies.
You’d recognize them as the occasional diehards zooming around the ripe pears and bananas in that bowl on your kitchen counter. They’re still charged up like little Energizer aerobats when most of their buddies are sleeping off the party. Yet Sunday morning the minisleeps do as well as normal flies at solving the New York Times crossword puzzle.
But there’s bad news: For all the added motion the minisleepers pack into every 24 hours, their lives are shorter.
You and I have behavior in common not only with frogs, but also with fruit flies. Scientists say fruit flies are normally inactive for six to 12 hours a day. When deprived of their normal rest time, both species recover by sleeping longer and more deeply the next night. Flies sleep harder and longer as adolescents and less as they grow older. Both flies and humans feel less sleepy after they consume caffeine. I am not making this up.
The human equivalent of minisleeps can get by on just three of four hours of sleep a night, without any side effects other than maybe a shorter life. The rest of us need six to 12 hours. The norm is seven to eight hours.
You’re probably kidding yourself if you think you can get more done on less sleep.
An article in the Harvard Business Review noted that sleep deprivation can impair your performance more than alcohol or misuse of drugs.
“We now know that 24 hours without sleep or a week of sleeping four or five hours a night induces an impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.1%,” says Harvard Medical School Professor Charles A. Czeisler. That’s 25% higher than the blood-alcohol level that makes you drunk enough to be arrested if you’re driving in any of the 50 U.S. states.
Here are four especially bad situations to avoid:
- going too long without sleep
- not getting enough sleep over the course of several days
- not working around your daily cycles of alertness and fatigue and
- trying to make good decisions soon after you wake up.
Do caffeine and other stimulants help solve the problem? They may help fruit flies more than us. Most sales people are more ambitious than flies, and we expect a higher standard of living. We need to perform better for longer.
Use of stimulants won’t improve either your productivity or the quality of your life if you use them to mask the symptoms of sleep deficits. You’d be better off just sleeping longer and harder.
I’ll post a few more motherly bits of advice, then that’ll be the end of this series on recovering from setbacks.
Once you’re prepared to overcome your common adversities, you’ll welcome my future post about the inappropriate behavior clueless sales people sometimes share with undersexed dogs. You won’t want to miss that.
Stay fresh
– Scott Silverback