DV Health & Performance

Opportunity > Necessity

A healthy lifestyle demands effort. There is no question about it. The mindset we take towards a healthy lifestyle can support us on our journey or it can undermine us.

What if, instead of “I have to exercise” we took the approach of “I get to move my body” or instead of “I have to eat vegetables” we took the approach of “I have the opportunity to fuel myself with good quality foods.”

So much can be found in the perspective we take towards the daily situations in our lives.

I’ve been quiet on social media lately. This has been intentional. I’ve spent some time observing my relationship with technology over the past 2 weeks or so.

It’s unreal when you step back and observe just how much technology pervades our lifestyle (at least mine).

I’m setting course to be much more intentional about my screen use, whether it be 💻 or 📱from now on. I can only imagine that this is also a challenge for others. Especially when work demands so much screen time and social media has meld into our culture.

For anyone interested in understanding you phone usage, I’ve used Moment ( —inthemoment.io) to track my screen habits.

Only you know what you need in your life. Listen to your body. Spend a few moments in quiet reflection. We can learn a lot when we look internally and listen. In our fast-paced society now days, we don’t get the chance often enough to do that.

As the recent documentary “the social dilemma” highlights, we are in a battle for our own attention on a daily basis. This makes it that much more important for our intentional moments of mindfulness.

Is there just. one. thing. this week you can to do support moving the needle for your health? Perhaps something that you wouldn’t have done otherwise?

Coach: A facilitator of growth. A supportive partner on your journey. A sounding board. A strategist. A guide. Above all, a servant.

My calling: Support humans in being the best version of themselves

My vehicle: Health coaching

I couldn’t think of any other way to utilize my time on earth that helping other humans lead a healthy lifestyle.

When it comes down to it, change can be intimidating. Even more so, when we understand that our 🧠 really are not the biggest fan of change.

This is why we need to be intentional in our approach. 🎯 The approach we take towards change is just as important as the changes we are looking to make.

When it comes to eating well, a “crash diet” is the exact opposite of what we want to do.🙅🏼‍♂️Our focus should be on making the small & sustainable shifts that will compound for us down the road.

So what does that mean? Well first is creating the vision of what you want your health & well-being to look like in the long run. That will drive the shifts that we choose to make in behaviors.

When it comes to eating well, small & sustainable looks like making an effort to get enough water throughout the day. If that feels like too much, then it’s trying to get a glass of water in the morning to start the day off right. It’s whatever is small enough and sustainable for YOU.

A house is built one brick at a time. So is our health & well-being. Lay one brick (behavior, intention, action), build a foundation and grow upon it.

If you’re unsure what bricks to lay first, coaches are here to help you make that path easier. 🧱

In our increasingly hyper-connected, always “on” society, we find ourselves with less opportunity available to shut down or charge our batteries and recover properly.

Like many other practices to improve our health, this always “on” environment requires that we now need to be deliberate about making time to recharge our batteries.

A concept I call “deliberate disengagement” can be used each day to support our health & well-being and recharge our batteries. It’s important to find time daily to disconnect and allow the body and brain some rest and downtime. This can be taking a short walk (especially in nature if you are able to), reading a book unrelated to your line of work, meditation or breathing practices, or simply just not doing anything at all (what a thought!)

Downtime is important for our brain health and should be apart of a well-rounded approach to our health & well-being practices. A great way to start out is by scheduling it in for a few minutes each day.

This week, let’s bring some awareness and intention to how we set ourselves up for a restful night’s sleep.

What are your specific go-to practices? Do you have a pre-sleep routine?

Some common useful practices include:
Meditation or breathing exercises
Listening to relaxing music
Reading fiction
Keeping of computer or phone screens
Taking a warm bath or shower

What can you put into practice this week to make a 1% improvement in your recovery?

The process-oriented mindset.

The things that are worth doing take time. The small decisions we make today can snowball into success down the road.

I’ve been using the strap for a few months now and have very much appreciated the insights it provides between strain and recovery, especially right now. It’s been useful ensuring that I’ve been able to maintain physical activity while at home over the past three months and it’s metrics around sleep and recovery are second to none.

Turning physiology into useful and accurate data is a great pathway forward for the future of health and well-being.

Two interesting research articles point to the conclusion that how we perceive our daily physical activity can support or hinder our health in the long run.

The first study performed at Harvard by Crum & Langer in 2007 investigated 84 hotel room attendants to understand the role of psychology as it relates to physical activity. Half of these participants were informed that their daily job duties satisfied the daily recommendation for physical activity, while the other half were given no information. After 4 weeks of observation, with no changes in daily physical activity levels in either group, the informed group saw decreases weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio and body mass index, while the control group saw no changes in these categories. These finding demonstrate that how we view our activity may certainly play a role in our outcomes.

In a more recent 2017 study by Zahrt & Crum, a nationally represented sample of 61,141 US adults were studied to further understand the role of mindset towards exercise as it relates to mortality. The authors share that “individuals who perceived themselves as less active than others were up to 71% more likely to die in a follow up period that those who perceived themselves as more active.” Further “the participants perceptions of physical activity strongly predicted mortality, even after accounting for the effects of actual physical activity and other know determinants of mortality.”

These studies demonstrate that our mindset supports and facilitates our health, possibly to a further extend that we even are aware of.



Crum AJ, Langer EJ. Mind-Set Matters. Psychological Science. 2007;18(2):165-171. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01867.x


Zahrt OH, Crum AJ. Perceived physical activity and mortality: Evidence from three nationally representative U.S. samples. Health Psychology. 2017;36(11):1017-1025. doi:10.1037/hea0000531

If we are not clear on what we plan to do, how can we do it? Today let’s take a moment to bring some attention to our well-being and how we can best support it this week.

Is it perhaps ensuring that we get a good night’s sleep a few times this week? Or maybe it’s making the delicious and healthy dinner on Wednesday night that we’ve been meaning to for a while.

Whatever it is for, let’s set ourselves up for success now by creating that intention today.

I’d love to hear what intentions or practices you plan to put in place this week! Let me know in the comments below ⬇️