A look at the five dimensions of health

A reminder of why they are important

Some resources to start raising your NQ

1. NRG (physical energy) is critical to being able to accomplish your mission. No energy = fail. Don’t sacrifice your physical health for professional success - it’s a bad trade. Your NQ matters!

2. There are 5 dimensions that contribute to physical health: Food, Exercise, Water, Sleep, and Breathing. Growth in all 5 brings signficant results to accomplishing what matters most to you.

Let’s start with why physical energy is important.

NRG, or NQ, impacts all aspects of a human being (i.e., it has an impact on XQ, TQ, EQ, and SQ). The literature on this is becoming overwhelming. Suffice it to say that if you don’t have enough NRG to do what you need to in order to accomplish your purpose - you will not succeed.

Our society is plagued by people that focus so much on their “at work” performance to the neglect of their physical health. In doing so, they significantly compromise the larger more meaningful personal arc of their life. In short, a low NQ will hamstring your XQ.

A low NQ can seriously limit:

Time with your loved ones

Your emotional presence with others

Your ability to think critically

Your patience with yourself and with others

Your ability to handle diffdicult situations

Your ability to overcome adversity

And much, much more.

In order to invest in our NQ, let’s take a look at the 5 dimensions of physical energy that comprise it.

Eating healthy is critical to sustainable NQ. This doesn’t mean you can’t eat anything that is fun, sweet, or liquor ... but it does mean those need to be the exception, not the rule.

I will highlight some resources on eating and diet as they come to me in the References section. For now, there are a couple points that will be helpful:

1. If you don’t eat the right kind of food, you won’t have enough glucose to fuel your body.

2. Too much glucose, and you can fall victim to a number of maladies

3. If you’re overweight, the only way to lose that weight is by spending more calories in a day than you consume. Eating healthy gives you more energy with less calories. Vegetables are not my favorite either.

4. If you’re underweight, you can be in a caloric deficit that causes you to be lethargic and/or disengaged

5. Many of us tie up emotional management in our food intake. That needs to be decoupled for health.

Movement and/or exercise are critical to your overall health. Exercise increases the number of calories your body consumes, which can help with weight loss (if you’re eating well). It also builds muscle, which helps with metabolism. Again, there can be weight benefit.

Exercise is also important to keep energy levels up. Research is now leaning heavily towards resistance training as being optimal for building muscle, burning fat, and building stamina.

Being dehydrated can lead to not only fatigue and/or lethargy but also medical issues. For optimum health, you’re supposed to drink around 64oz of water a day.

Drinking that much water is surprisingly hard. Carbonated or flavored water may help.

I remember Jack Groppel (co-founder of the Human Performance Institute) saying that you can increase your energy levels by 50% just by drinking enough water.

This has been gaining momentum as a critical issue in our society. We are chronically sleep deprived. Having battled a sleeping disorder for 30 years, I can tell you that being sleep deprived helps nothing and brings with it depression, ansiety, and a host of other limiting conditions.

Get. More. Sleep.

Breathing is getting a lot of hype lately. Using your breath to manage your moods and mental clarity is a growing area of research and experiment.

The US Special Forces swear by the impact and necessity of being able to control your breathing for all manner of combat and mission.

I’ll work to get resources in the Reference section, but a simple box breathing exercise is a great place to start: breath in for a 4 count, hold that breath for a 4 count, exhale for a 4 count, and then hold that for a 4 count. Do that for 60 seconds at a time to control your heart rate and emotional state when it’s elevated.

Yes, this really was a simple overview, as I think many of us have heard about physical needs ad nauseum. This course is not meant to be the final resource for all of its dimensions. It is meant to give you a wholistic way to look them and grow systematically. These areas all deserve further time and investment.

TBD