Earn More Money, Save Your MoneyJuly 26, 2019August 25, 2019

How Your Health & Finances Are Connected

Remaining healthy can be quite a daunting task, especially if you’re constantly busy. Growing up, it would be much easier to find someone who has skipped breakfast than finding someone who actually hasn’t. That being said, many make their health take a backseat. As I said, this is a common occurrence. However, would it be outrageous to state that having poor health can correlate to poor finances?

To find out the answer we are going to take a dive into this topic. I believe that it is important for people to know how their lifestyle can directly or indirectly affect their finances and vice versa.

1. Physical & Mental Health

Physical and mental health can have catastrophic effects on your finances. However, the way I like to view it is in a domino effect. Once one negative habit becomes persistent, it can leave to a bunch of other consequences. Another way I like to look at it is in a triangle. Each point in the triangle is connected. Therefore, they all play a part in increasing your quality of life.

We will touch on both the domino and triangle effect. However, let’s start off with the domino effect. The domino effect being how your physical habits affect your mental health, which in-tern affects your finances in the long run.

The 1st Domino: Physical Health

The first domino starts at your physical health. Physical health incorporates many different factors. However, the two I want to focus on are exercise and diet. Although there are many different things that contribute to healthy physical well-being, these two are the most beneficial, yet hardest to sustain. Having a poor diet and exercise routine can cause many negative effects. Most people know this fact. However, many Canadians refuse to exercise.

Above is a chart from Statscan that indicates the difference people 2017 – 2018 in terms of physical activity. As you can see, while Canadians are fairly active, they are increasingly becoming less active. The highest percentage, 18 – 34 years old even saw a nearly 4% decline. However, every single category has seen a decline, some more than others.

Your diet can be viewed as the most important aspect of your physical health. The term “you are what you eat” is very true. Eating a diet that consists of high protein, low carbs and a necessary amount of calories can work wonders for your physical well-being. However, since fast food and high calorie/low nutrient food is easily accessible, most people don’t think twice about what they buy.

Growing up, how many people did you know who ate junk food in moderation? How about now? Do many of the people you know eat a strict diet or just eat whatever is cheap or easily accessible. So far, we’ve explained that the first domino is your physical health which is mainly dictated by exercise and diet. Once this first domino is knocked down, let’s see how it causes the next one to fall, mental health.

The 2nd Domino: Mental Health

Mental health is a vast subject and is filled with a ton of complex subjects. However, we’re going to see how a poor exercise routine and diet can negatively affect your mental health. Once this is done, we’ll see how all of this affects your finances.

Mind you, the main point is that having an unhealthy lifestyle will automatically make you lose money. It’s to show how one negative habit can cause a snowball effect that can drag you down to the bottom of the metaphorical hill, a hill that you were climbing.

Exercise

The mind is a very fragile part of anyone. Therefore, you’ll want it to be as sharp and fortified as possible. Exercising does this. Exercising is proven to help you (and many others) lower the risk of heart disease, increase memory, increase blood flow, help oxygen circulation, increase energy and many other factors that contribute to a healthy mind. Therefore, if you’re not consistently active every single day, it’s reasonable to believe that you will have a higher chance of heart disease, along with negative effects in all the other factors that were mentioned.

Trust me, your mind if your strongest and most reliable tool. Even if you’re busy, find it in your day to fit in at least 30 minutes of some form of exercise. Not exercising is a huge factor in why many people lack mental fortitude. Becoming strong physically is proven to help strengthen you mentally.

Diet

Diet is extremely important. It’s so important that if you were to give me a choice between exercising and eating healthy, I’d probably choose the latter. The reason is that food is your life force, everything that goes into your body is broken down and allocated.

Having a poor diet with low nutrients contributes to low levels of energy, difficulties sleeping, troubles processing information and thinking critically. How about sickness? Having a healthy diet can single-handedly kill most sicknesses people have. However, many people still eat the same food they always do, sick or not.

Have you ever eaten extremely fatty foods and felt extremely lethargic after? Well, guess what? Your body isn’t the only thing being affected by those low-nutrient foods. It’s reasonable to believe that food affects your mood as well. When you eat a lot of fatty foods or have a poor diet, your body and mind can become increasingly fatigued. This means you’ll eventually lack focus and willingness to achieve your goals.

Having focus means you’re motivated. I do want to say that this can vary between people. I’ve known many people who have poor lifestyles but have a great mentality, work ethic. However, most of those people have also expressed that they, at times, feel demotivated, stressed and constantly tired.

The Downfall Of The Mind

As this is not a health and wellness blog, I do not want to go too in-depth by explaining the science behind negative health patterns. However, if you lack exercise and a healthy diet, that’ll lead you increased amounts of these two specific things. Stress and depression. Both of which run rampant.

To put it simply, if you lack a healthy diet or exercise routines, you are more likely to experience some sort of depression and stress. However, since stress is extremely common and a necessary part of life, you’ll feel it regardless of what you do. Although, there are varying degrees.

Once you find yourself drowning in stress and depression, that’s when you know your second domino has truly fallen. For a lot of people, their physical health is the first to go which is then followed by their mental strength.

Once the mental strength is gone, it’ll be harder to reach those goals that you’ve set out to do. Why will it be more difficult? Well, you’ll lack motivation. Since your diet isn’t that great, you may lack the thinking capabilities to make the most optimal decisions given the circumstances.

Depression

A big player in the mental health deterioration field is depression. Depression is more common than you think and has many physical and mental effects. Here are some of the symptoms:

As you can see, depression is no joke. Let’s take one symptom, difficulty concentrating. In order to reach your goals, in any capacity, there needs to be a level of concentration and focus that can’t be broken. Having dreams and ambitions are great. However, if you’re not doing everything you can to reach those goals, they will remain dreams forever.

Now, let’s say you’re feeling stressed and depressed. Coupled with the fact that you aren’t living the healthiest lifestyle, let’s see how this affects your finances.

The 3rd Domino: Finances

You fiances being effected will usually be indirect unless you get paid to workout or live a healthy lifestyle. Since it’s the start of the connection between health and finances, let’s kick off this section, with an example.

Example

Let’s take creating a blog that brings in income (since this is a post and health AND finances). In order to create a blog that is constantly growing and creating profit, you need to consistently create content. Furthermore, you will need to figure out how to monetize your content and provide information that you think your readers may like.

All of this takes time, research, effort and most of all, concentration. You can go for months or even years without seeing a single dollar. It can truly be difficult and the only thing that may keep you going is that level of concentration.

Let’s take this a step further, say the blogger is already making money. However, they start going downhill. The blogger stops working out, following his diet and can’t find the motivation to create anymore due to them having serious writer’s block which leads to depression. This means that since the content isn’t being created, they aren’t able to earn money.

How about a regular 9 -5 job? If you’re not mentally prepared to do your job, especially dealing with customers, your performance may suffer which can affect your earnings.

I want to state that I am not making light of depression, stress or anything anyone may be going through. However, I do want to say that if you lack motivation, physical/mental strength, will power, or have trouble focusing (among other things), there is a way to fix it.

As you saw from the example, the blogger was creating content and earning money. However, as they became demotivated and ran into a depression due to writer’s block. Their finances were indirectly affected by their inability to think and lack of motivation.

Writer’s Block & Health

Some of you may say “What does writer’s block have to do with health?” Remember when I said that lack of exercise/diet can lead to trouble thinking and processing information? Don’t forget that since the blogger is going through a writer’s block, the problem persists because they aren’t doing anything to fix it. As time goes on, this causes a depression which feeds into the writer’s inability to create content. Don’t forget depression is more common than you may think. However, there is a way to help fix depression, stress, and even the writer’s problem!

2. It Works Both Ways: The Triangle

Before we continue onto how to fix the problem, let’s briefly talk about the triangle, as I like to call it. Although I used a domino effect to express how one problem can lead to another, the first domino doesn’t always have to be your physical health.

Like a triangle with physical health, mental health and finances on every point, they are all connected. This means that any point can be the first domino and once that falls, the rest will follow. Let’s start with finances in this next example.

Example

Let’s say you have a great career and are completely content with your life as it is. Now, what would happen if you fell under harsh time? Chances are you’d need to start budgeting and one of the affected things will be your diet. It’ll be time to start cutting down on what you’re eating. Furthermore, it costs much more to eat healthy than to just eat junk food.

Going through harsh times will not only give you stress but also affect your diet significantly. Not only can you not afford the food you once could, but the nutrients will also take a hit since you need to spend less money on food. You can definitely remain health. However, on average it costs $1 – $2 per day more to eat high nutrient foods.

See how the domino effect can take its course if it were the other way around? Once the finances go, your mental health can fall due to stress. Furthermore, your physical health can decline due to the lack of consistency in your diet. Call it what you will, a triangle, circle or even a square. All of these things are connected in some sort of way.

3. How Do We Fix The Problem?

Everyone is different. Therefore, you’re going to need to test a bunch of different things to get the right formula for you. As I stated, physical and mental health are connected with your finances. Therefore, It only makes sense that anything you do to benefit one will have positive effects on the other. There is no sure-fire way to cure your mental and physical health. However, there are many ways that, if integrated with each other, can help you progress towards recovery.

Exercise Routine

Exercising has many benefits. It reduces the risk of heart disease, anxiety, depression and keeps you within a healthy weight range. Working out can be difficult. Therefore, Youtube some 30 minute home workouts to start. Trust me, you’ll start to see the difference immediately. Medlineplus.gov has listed many benefits that exercising can do for you:

As you can see, exercising keeps your mental health strong. This will result in you staying focused on achieving your goals and performing better when at work! Not to mention, no one likes feeling lazy and unhealthy. Therefore, the reward is well worth the 30 minutes per day that you’ll be spending working out.

Healthy Diet

Having a good diet provides you with the energy that is necessary for you to succeed. It can be quite a difficult task. However, start slow and constantly progress. Having a good diet reduces the risk of many diseases, clears up “Brain Fog” or mental clarity. More mental clarity is always a good thing. Furthermore, the longer you stay disease or sickness free, the more you’ll be able to work on your financial situation and physical health.

Remember, how you look is 80% diet and 20% exercise. Therefore, if you look better, you’ll naturally feel better. This feeling of confidence is needed in many aspects of life. For example, confidence is usually needed in your career life and social interactions, to name a few.

As you can see, HHS.gov even states that having an unhealthy diet or even habits can carry into adulthood. Remember those people mentioned who didn’t eat breakfast? Chances are that they still follow that same unhealthy routine. Although they are functional, I truly believe that their quality of life, performance and financial situation (indirectly) will benefit from a healthier lifestyle.

Meditate

This is a big one. Meditation has taken the mainstream by storm. Most billionaires have meditation on their daily itinerary. However, is there really a purpose? Well, yes there is. In fact, the purpose is quite colossal. Meditation has to do with fortifying your mental strength.

Meditation can relieve symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, help you think clearer and many more amazing benefits. Have you heard of Forbes? Chances are you have. If you haven’t, even they created an article that specifically tackles the positive effects of meditation. (Click the picture to read the full article).

The best part about meditation is that it’s free and are able to acquire benefits with only 10 minutes a day! Mind you, meditation is hard. The concept may seem easy. However, actually sitting still in 10 minutes of complete nothingness is difficult. That being said, it’s worth it.

When I was going through a tough time, a few doctors actually suggested that I should meditate. After the first doctor said it I was skeptical. However, once the second one advised it, I decided to give it a shot. It works, for me at least.

As someone who’s brain is constantly running to the point where I have trouble sleeping, meditation was hard. I started off using apps like Headspace & Calm to eventually sitting in complete silence. Since I started meditating, I feel more clear. I’m able to relax at night and sleep better. One of the more important benefits is that I feel less stressed because I am not constantly worrying.

Meditation has helped me look at certain situations objectively and find a path to correct it without worrying too much. Meditation is one of the most relaxing things you can do. Youtube some peoples experiences with meditation and more often than not, it’ll be positive.

Make More Money

As the last part, I thought I’d state something obvious. Making more money can help your mental and physical health. More money will allow you to purchase more nutrient foods, have more time to go to the gym and do things you actually like.

Making more money isn’t necessarily easy. However, starting a side business and working on it in your free time can eventually become another source of income. A lot of times you’ll see people say that money can buy happiness. Although I agree with this to some degree, I’d like to share my take on this subject.

Money can’t buy happiness in itself. True happiness comes from fulfillment. However, money can buy comfort and make those around you feel better if you’re being generous. Most people dream of being comfortable. They dream of living in a world where they won’t have to worry about how they’ll afford their next meal. Some would say that this type of comfortability or financial freedom can lead to happiness.

Being comfortable and able to provide for those around you is a huge stress reliever. Having more money and security alone can help improve anyone’s mental health. However, I digress. Let’s move onto the finishing thoughts.

4. Finishing Thoughts

Everything is linked. In one way or another, if one domino were to fall, the rest will eventually come tumbling down. This is difficult to deal with, trust me I’ve been there. However, there are many things that you can do to help this situation. Exercising, eating right and meditating all have significant effects in increasing your physical well-being. Once this is being taken care of, you’ll have the energy, drive, and lack of sickness to pursue your endeavors.

Balance is key. Don’t focus on strictly getting money to the points where you’re not eating or exercising. You’ll burn out and lose motivation. Keep a healthy balance and remember, health and finances are connected more than people may think.

Shameed Chris Khan

Shameed is just a man on a mission to help those around him gain financial success. Obsessed with writing about all things finance, this GTA native is constantly learning and sharing his experiences with others.

How Your Health & Finances Are Connected