There are a lot of great reasons to start and have your own business. You get to set your own hours, which is great. You can take a break in the middle of the day to spend some time with a friend (or run an errand) if you want. As the person in charge, you decide what to do! If you don’t want to work on something, great. If you want to do something, then you do it. You don’t have a boss telling you what to do. You can take off and go wherever you want, whenever you want. You don’t have to commute, so you have extra time in your day. You can make as much money as you want, instead of having a set salary. Those are just some of the incredible benefits that you’ve no doubt thought about if you’ve ever considered starting your own business (or if you have one!)
But there’s one amazing side benefit that you’ve probably never considered: Better health!
There are a ton of reasons for this, but here are a few that you might find interesting…
You Eat Better
When you’re in an office, you most likely eat your lunch as quickly as you can at your desk so you can get back to work. That food you’re eating? Maybe it was something that the entire office ordered in, or something fast food that you ran out and picked up…or if it was something you brought in, most likely it wasn’t the healthiest thing because you were rushing this morning to get ready.
When you’re working home on the other hand? You have your entire kitchen to take advantage of! You can have fresh fruits and vegetables and whatever else you’re in the mood for. Even if you don’t want to spend a lot of time, you can easily spend a few minutes making something fresh and healthy. It’s probably just you (or other family members) and they aren’t eating fast food next to you making you crave it, so you’ll probably take the few minutes to get yourself something healthier.
Plus, when you’re home you can have healthy snack breaks. No boss is looking down on you for taking a 5 minute break to eat something. When it comes time for dinner, you don’t have that horrible commute home, so you most likely spend a few more minutes on dinner too, and have something healthier (and bonus: you got the groceries during the day when the store was empty!)
You Work When You’re “in the Zone”
When you work for someone else, you have to be there for a certain amount of hours, and they tell you what those hours are. You’re expected to get work done the entire time you are there. But you probably don’t feel like working each and every one of those hours. Let’s face it, we all have times where we are more productive than others.
When you work for yourself though, you decide when to work on tasks. You can do other things around the house when you’re not productive, and work on your business when you are. If that’s at 1am because you’re a night owl or at 6am because you’re an early bird, that’s not a problem. You work when you’re “in the zone” and get more done in less time.
You Exercise More
When you’re at a job all day, if you want to exercise you have 2 options: first thing in the morning when you wake up, or at night after you’ve come back from work and most likely had dinner. It’s not horrible, but there are always a lot of excuses to make it easy to skip a day here and there. Plus, there’s a good chance you spend 8 hours a day at your desk sitting and barely moving.
When you’re working from home, it’s completely different. You can exercise whenever you want! On top of that, you can get up from your desk (or wherever you’re working in your home) and take small breaks at any time to move around, stretch, do a minute of jumping jacks, whatever you feel like. You can go for a walk outside during lunch or at some point during the day when it feels like a good time to take a break. If you’re sick of sitting, you can stand while you’re working. No boss will be complaining about how you work…you can do it however you want! You can even have music on and move around “dancing” while you’re getting work done.
You Accomplish More
When you work for someone else, you have to spend those hours at your job. You can’t do anything else, even if you don’t have anything to accomplish at the moment! They’d rather you sit there bored than let you go home early. Plus sometimes when you’re doing tasks you don’t want to do…they drag out and take a lot longer to accomplish than they should.
When you’re working on your own business, you can work at your own speed and no doubt you’ll get more done since you’re working on things you WANT to instead of things you HAVE to. Not getting things done because you’re just not feeling it? You can take a break and read a book, do laundry, or accomplish something else you wanted to get done that day. You’ll probably find that you can get more done than you did at a job in a lot less hours each day!
You Get Better Sleep
When you work for someone else, they tell you when to show up and when to leave. Depending on your commuting time, you might be getting up a lot earlier than you want to! Maybe you’re a night owl and want to sleep in. Or maybe you’re a morning person and want to start your day earlier so that you can get home earlier (and then go to sleep earlier.) Unfortunately it doesn’t matter, it isn’t your choice. Then, by the time you get home from work and do all of the other things you wanted to do, it might be a lot later and you don’t have enough time to get a good night’s sleep. And then there’s the stress you might have worrying about your job, whether it’s things you have to do or even if your job will still be there 6 months from now!
When you have your own business, you choose your hours. You can set up your schedule so that you sleep in if you want, or get up extra early to accomplish things. You’ll get to sleep at the times you want to, and more likely the amount of time that you want to. If you’re the type of person who likes to nap, then you can even take a nap in the middle of the day! Yes of course you’ll still have stress in your life, but hopefully the work will be a good kind of stress and you’ll be able to sleep a lot better.
You’ll Be Happier
When you work for someone else, there’s a good chance you’re just doing it for the money and don’t actually enjoy what you’re doing. Or at least don’t enjoy being told what to do and when to do it. You’re not in charge at your job and are told what to do.
When you have your own business, you are in charge. You’re hopefully doing something that you enjoy and want to spend your time doing. In fact, most likely you look forward to what you do with your business each day. And when you work, doing what you want, when you want, you’ll be making money. There’s a good chance you’re a lot happier because of this!
Happiness brings a lot of other great mental (and physical) health benefits too.
As far as physical health benefits, you may not believe it, but by being happy, you might have a lower heart rate and blood pressure, a stronger immune system, lower stress, less disease (and even feel less pain), and you might even live longer!
There are a lot of mental health benefits as well, such as improved productivity, better decision making and creativity, and it even might help you make more money!
Being happy encourages you to try to be healthier too, so it’s a great circle. Having your own business helps you be healthier, which makes you happier, which makes you healthier, and so on…
So if you’ve been contemplating starting a business, now is the time. Don’t wait another minute for all of these great benefits! And if you already have your own business, keep up the great work!
Enjoy,
