This is the second entry in a three part series looking at what my next personal hyperfocus will be once my student loans are fully repaid later this summer. The series started on Monday with a discussion about which of my long-term goals I could potentially choose from to hyperfocus on. The first possibility was completing a doctoral program and the second possibility was focusing on improving my health. The big decision is below as this series continues…
Our health is that ever-present aspect of being a human that we cannot get away from because we are an active participant in our health each and every day of our lives. If we don’t focus on our health, then we run a very real risk of becoming unhealthy. And being unhealthy manifests itself in so many ways. For example, I stopped sitting in booths at restaurants a number of years ago because I just don’t fit comfortably in them any more (same goes for those chair/desk combos in most college classrooms). Further, finding good clothes with a decent fit and modern style is nearly impossible for someone who is overweight. Another constant reminder of not being in good health is the variety of pills that I take on a daily basis to combat my type 2 diabetes. And, of course, there’s the guy staring back at me in the mirror every morning.
My next big hyperfocus will be improving my health – it has to be!
Reading Monday’s entry and the beginning of this entry makes it seem pretty apparent that the next big hyperfocus for me is… improving my health.
However, this is a much different goal to achieve than paying off a financial debt and the methods by which I might achieve this goal are altogether different than the methods by which I was able to accelerate repaying my student loan debt. For instance, I could live frugally to stockpile additional funds so that I could afford to make a larger payment on my loans each month. There’s no easily equatable variable that I can manipulate to achieve being a healthier person overall. Sure, I guess you can make an argument for calories being a somewhat equatable variable, but money is more of a set variable where you can reasonably predict the amount coming in and the amount going out over a long period of time. Calories can change by the day – even by the hour! – and calculating them is not an exact science.
The inexact nature of achieving “healthiness” is another one of the apprehensions that I have about diving into this thing head first. With money there is a level of exactness that you can achieve. In the American monetary system everything is built off of a base of ten. It’s a very easy system to understand and master. However, with health there isn’t an easily understood system that you can grasp and master. Instead, you’re tasked with mastering a series of lifestyle changes with the hopes that they become habits. You’re tasked with learning about food and exercise both in general and in certain specifics. Health isn’t an exact science and because it’s not an exact science it has the potential to be a very frustrating area to hyperfocus on.
Yet so many great things spring from being in good health. I have minor aches and pains now that I shouldn’t have at this age. Sometimes, I get odd internal feelings (not the emotional kind, the physical kind like pains in my stomach) that I know must come from having a destabilized system. Each morning I take a handful of pills and I’m the type of guy who doesn’t even like taking an aspirin when I have a headache because I don’t like putting foreign entities into my digestive system. Ridding myself of these inconveniences (and so many more that I won’t write in this space right now) is reason enough to hyperfocus on becoming healthier.
I’ve got a few ideas on what I’m going to do to hopefully achieve a healthier state of being. Stick around the blog for this Friday’s entry where I’ll write about some very specific approaches that I’m considering to help me improve my health. I’ll see you all back here on Friday!
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