People with Purpose Thrive

In our working life we have a problem of prioritisation between work, family, friends and health. The one that gets dropped most often is health.

The UK employment rate is around 96% of people who can work yet:

• Only 65% of 45-64 year olds in England do moderate exercise e.g. walking for more than 150 mins per week (Source: Sport England)
• Only 7.3% men and 4.1% of women do the recommended resistance training of two 30 minute sessions per week (Source: Sport England)
• 44% employees are offered work wellness packages but only 59% use any of what is offered (Les Mills survey 2021)

Which means a very large proportion of the adult population are working but not doing the minimum amount of activity to preserve their health.

This is important as a recent paper in the British Journal of Sports Medicine identified a 47% reduction in All Cause Mortality if a person maintains aerobic and strength training till they are 75 (Source Volume 56 Issue 22).

Why do people not prioritise health as their main purpose?

The simple answer is humans react to rewards. Career, family and social life offer more immediate rewards.

Saying you should focus on your health to benefit you when you are 50, meaning no reward for 20+ years makes it a tough sell when work promotions could be coming every 2-3 years.

In my client base I work with people in their early to mid 30s who are high achievers and as they say are “focusing on their careers”.

But they are already overweight, have high cholesterol, low muscle mass, low strength and cardiovascular fitness. Which are all indicators that their health span may become shorter than their working life and undermine all their work building their career.

Health span is the time in your life when you can live a high quality of life with good health, free from debilitating chronic conditions. Unfortunately ageing means our health span is always less than our life span.

We are starting to see a health span crisis. Long-term sickness is the main reason why economic inactivity in the UK rose to a record 9.4 million – or 22.2% of adults aged 16 to 64 years – in February 2024, costing the economy £43bn a year.

It has been predicted that at least 80% of the health inequality outcomes in the UK are driven by chronic yet potentially modifiable diseases. Only 9% of men and 16% of women born today can expect to reach pension age in good health!

What triggers some people to make their health span their core purpose?

There seem to be three main triggers:

1. They get a chronic health condition have to make health a priority to survive.
2. There is a history of chronic disease in close family members and they want to do something to reduce the risk of it happening to them.
3. They get a medical warning from a routine check up, with the most common being high cholesterol or blood pressure.

In all cases the person is trying to extend their health span as the clear visibility of the risk is a compelling call to action.

Most high performing people have a dominant work purpose.

Many organisations have become purpose led and encourage employees to develop a purpose led approach to their work and career. This can be inspiring to many and with high performance comes rewards, recognition and status. This is a powerful short term reward, which can be at the expense of the time and energy that needs to be put into investing into health span.

There isn't much point being a high performer at work, while your health deteriorates so you cannot enjoy the benefits of your success. But until employers start rewarding activities that preserve health span then you are left to this reality.

Make your overriding purpose your health span so you can thrive

Your primary purpose should be to optimise your health span for as a long as possible. This enables you to get the most out of your work, family and social life and really thrive.

But this isn’t a very compelling call to action as it doesn’t provide any short term rewards.

Therefore I recommend you create a long term purpose based on three elements that you can focus on and maintain, that provide short term rewards while also optimising and preserving your health span.

We call it the why questions.

1. What are the things you love doing and always will want to be able to do?
2. How did you feel at your healthiest and happiest?
3. How do you always want to look that makes you feel confident and attractive?

If you can identify and write down the answers to these why questions, you will have the basis of an overriding purpose. You can use the answers to these why questions to guide all the choices you make and the investments you make in your health span, knowing that their are rewards now and in the future that have a deep meaning for you.

If you want to thrive, own your health, you only have one body, so look after it as you can’t enjoy life if it doesn’t work well.