Everyone knows about the benefits of exercise, it helps to keep our body fit and help fight disease. But apart from physical benefits, exercise can also provide mental fitness. It cannot make your problem disappear, instead will make your brain strong enough to cope up with them. Exercise play vital role in reducing exhaustion, enhancing alertness and other cognitive tasks. In fact, certain medical professionals also prescribe exercise when stress has taken its toll on energy level and fight off anxiety and depression.
The researcher says that people unable to tackle stress can feel extremely exhausted. In a recent study, researchers analyzed the consequences of stress that arise while trying to balance the work and personal life. They found exercise can be beneficial when it comes to mitigate stress caused by everyday work-life balance.
Researchers studied 476 working adults in the research. These participants were asked about their exercise routine and about their ability to maintain a balance between professional and personal life. They found that the participants who exercised on a regular basis were also the ones who are proficient at handling the work and life balance.
As per the assistant professor of management at Saint Leo University, located in Florida and study author, Russell Clayton, people who exercise frequently and feel competent in achieving day to day exercise goals, feel confident and good about themselves. These in turn push them to perform and achieve even tougher challenges with conviction.
Clayton said to Medical Xpress:
We found that [participants] who exercised felt good about themselves, that they felt that they could accomplish tough tasks, and that carried over into work and family life.
The researchers observed that 55 percent were women, who participated in the study. On an average, they worked for 40 hours in a week. The average age of the participants was about 41 years and approximately 29 percent had one child that was under 18 and lived with them at their place.
With these data, researchers could draw a relation between physical activity and empowerment at the personal and professional front, but did not determine a cause-and-effect relationship.
Clayton still advocates that there is a very strong link between exercise and work life balance.
Researchers, however suggest to make exercise part of daily activity. This should be done gradually for the beginners, as exercising too much at the starting could add mores stress.
Dr. Natalie Digate Muth, who is a spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise:
People should think of it as a kind of investment. If you put some time into physical activity,you may be active for 30 minutes a day, but the productivity and mental focus you’re going to get out of it is going to far exceed what you put into it, from a work and family perspective.
For those who does not have time for exercise can opt for other ways of exercise like taking stairs instead of elevators and escalators.
Source: Counsel & Heal
