The morning we all woke up and heard on the news or read in the paper that Steve Jobs, creator and (former) SEO of apple had died from a respiratory arrest resulting from the spread of his pancreatic cancer, it was a huge shock to most of us.
Obviously the world has lost a major visionary who seemed to have an incredible talent for ‘getting it right’. (Remember, not only did he found Apple and shape the dominant future that it ended up having, but he also had the foresight to see the potential in a little known company called Pixar). But what does he have to do with a site dedicated to health, fitness and physique training?
Quite simply, his death has re-enforced a point I’ve been trying to enforce for some time now. That you cannot buy your health back once it has gone.
If you have already read the article I wrote on [intlink id=”901″ type=”post”]Work Getting in the way of Training & Results[/intlink], you will remember that I made the point that we work to live not the other way around.
That said, Steve Jobs demonstrated a counter to that, in that he found a career that was more of a passion than a job and that is something we should all really be striving for. I know that by switching to the career I have now I am much happier for it, as it is more of a passion than a job. But regardless, if you don’t have balance in your life you don’t have anything.
If your job is just a job (you work for someone else) then there is absolutely no excuse for sacrificing your health, fitness and wellbeing in order to make someone else richer. However, even if you do have a career path that you are passionate about, without your health you will never be able to achieve the targets you have set yourself and your career will come to a very abrupt halt.
Just remember, without your health you have nothing and you can achieve nothing. So whilst it may feel like other things are more important, nothing comes close to the importance of your health.
You may well think that skipping a meal or chowing down on a candy bar ‘just this once’ isn’t going to hurt. Or that you can skip the gym today and you will catch up tomorrow. But these things very quickly become habit forming and ‘just this once’ becomes a regular occurrence. “How you do anything is how you do Everything!”
Just to be clear, Steve Jobs did not die due to a lack of exercise or nutrition (that I know of) but I only sight him as an example as he was worth, at the time of his death, around $7 Billion, yet no amount of money could change the course of his health.
The point being, there are things that could affect your health regardless, but rather than creating them yourself through poor diet, over stress, lack of exercise and poor sleep patterns, isn’t it about time to take a step back and realize that the most important commodity you have is your health and start making the most of it?
As the man said himself:
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me…” – Steve Jobs 1993