Laura Motes - Healthy Living and Emotions

As a former police officer, Laura Motes knows how important it is to stay emotionally calm no matter what.

When thinking about healthy living, many people focus on physical exercise, eating properly, and sleeping enough hours, and completely forget to pay attention to their emotional well-being.

Physical energy is what we need to be able to do any kind of work or activity. At the same time, to be able to perform well we need to have pleasant and positive emotions in addition to having physical energy.

Negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, anger, and sadness release stress hormones into our bodies. This is why they are associated with feeling toxic.

In addition to having a healthy body, healthy living is impossible without the capacity to skillfully manage emotions, have high positive energy, and achieve full engagement in both personal and professional life.

Emotional energy works very similarly to physical energy. Our emotions need a balance between exercise and recovery. When our emotional muscles are weak, for example if we lack confidence or have too little patience, we need to learn to push through our current emotional capacity and then rest and recover.

Not only do physical and emotional aspects of our lives work in a similar manner, but physical and emotional capacities are extremely interconnected.

When we have a deadline that we need to meet, we emotionally feel a sense of urgency. This emotion immediately influences our physical state. We start moving faster and working quicker to meet the deadline.

This is why mastering emotional energy is so important for a healthy and productive life, especially if you work in a profession with high levels of stress like Laura Motes, who was a police officer for twenty-one years.

Laura Motes - The Importance of Exercise for Healthy Living

As a former police officer, Laura Motes is passionate about being healthy and exercising.

Given the number of benefits that even moderate physical exercise brings to our bodies, physical energy, and emotions, it may seem incredible that only a small percentage of our society exercises on a regular basis.

                                       

There is a simple explanation for why this happens. Physical exercise is about experiencing discomfort and getting our bodies out of their comfort zones. The benefits occur only after the discomfort, which makes most people quit before they can actually experience any of the benefits. 

Both strength and cardio training have a paramount influence on energy levels, health, and performance. 

The typical recommended exercise routine for the average adult includes twenty to thirty minutes of continuous exercise three to five days a week. 

In recent years, researchers have been saying that interval training, defined as short periods of intense aerobic activity followed by complete recovery, has profound positive effects, too. 

Interval training has not only physical benefits, but is also a practical reflection of our daily lives. Running up and down the stairs, bicycling, and sprinting are all examples of exercises that rhythmically raise our heart rate.   

There are many studies by scientists and businesses that prove the direct link between physical exercise and performance. 

For example, DuPont claimed a 47.5% reduction in employees skipping work over a six-year period of employee participation in DuPont’s corporate wellness program. DuPont also reported that employees who participated in the wellness program used fourteen percent% less disability days than other workers.  

Laura Motes believes that staying fit and healthy played a tremendous role in her advancement during her career with the police.