April 7th is world health day. It is a great time to take stock of yourself. Are you taking care of your own physical and mental health? Are you taking care of your family and your relationships? How about your colleagues and fellow employees? Are they "built to last"?

The problem is even more challenging if you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner. The purpose of a company or a business is to solve a customer problem in an innovative manner and to do it fast. To build a great company, you need to build a sustainability and longevity which requires a strong mindset and long-term thinking.

"Built to Last" starts with YOU.

By the way, no one would deny that you need make a lot of sacrifices to build a company or run a business. Entrepreneurship has never been, nor is it ever going to be a 9 to 5 job! However, I think it has become a false bravado that unless you are putting in 80+ hours a week and "killing" yourself, you are not going to succeed. Honestly, this is just not true. In fact, it might be the contrary.

While speed is of the utmost essence, entrepreneurship, like life, is a marathon and not a sprint.

One of the best HBR articles I read a long time ago asserted that one needs to focus on managing one's energy and not one's time. I strongly recommend that everyone read this article.

Time is a finite resource; energy is NOT! ~Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy

We have limitless mental energy and possibly even physical energy, if we train and channelise it properly. That said, both mental and physical energy definitely form a virtuous cycle; the more physical energy you have the more mental energy you will have and vice versa.

To manage your energy, you need to understand and invest in yourself. I have also written about this earlier in terms of focussing on the inputs as a way to get great output. I had the benefit of visiting the South Asian Heart institute, a volunteer led not-for-Profit organisation based in the SF Bay Area. They have a wonderful framework for managing your overall health called MEDS, which is an acronym for Meditation, Exercise, Diet and Sleep.

For greater well being, you need to pay EQUAL attention to all of these pillars. Over the last 2 years, I have consciously cultivated all 4 practices quite religiously and have seen tremendous results. My body and mind feel 10 years younger as a result of cultivating these.

So even if you are doing all the exercise and nutrition but only sleeping 5 hours a day on average, you are probably missing the boat. Let's go through each of these in detail.

MEDITATION

Meditation may seem a bit esoteric and for the "evolved". I thought that for years and hence didn't even attempt to do this. While I've still only been doing this for 6 months, the biggest benefit I see is that I'm much more present in the moment and there's a distinct awareness between "action" and "reaction". That's the first step to emotional intelligence.

Even 20 minutes of meditation every day can have a profound impact on your mental well being. Most successful people around the world from investors like Ray Dalio, entertainers like Jerry Seinfeld, self help gurus like Tony Robbins, to top athletes like Roger Federer do this on a regular basis, often twice a day!

There are many different styles of meditation - concentration based, awareness based and transcendental. There are different schools and paradigms with different styles of meditation. You can try a variety of them and see what works for you. One big myth about meditation is that you need to become a Zen master or Buddha and have "thoughtlessness". To me, meditation is not about thoughtlessness. It is about being in the moment, about being fully present and not being "reactive" no matter what the stimulus. Trust me, that comes in very handy in all aspects of life and most certainly in Entrepreneurship or other Leadership positions.

Quick Start plan for Meditation:

• Find an "Introduction to meditation" class with a trained practitioner. I was fortunate to have been introduced to one such practice by my friend Kartik Ramakrishnan.
• Download apps like Insight Timer (my favorite "Freemium" app), Calm and Headspace.
• Start with guided meditation for 10 mins every day and gradually increase it to 20 mins a day after a few weeks or a month.

EXERCISE

One just needs to do vigorous exercise for 150 minutes per week and that is sufficient for most of us. That's it. You don't need to hit the gym every day or run a marathon per week. That's less than 3 hours (or less that 3 meetings per week). There's absolutely no reason to not do it. You will start seeing results in a couple of weeks! Enough said.

Quick Start plan for Exercise:

Formally, calendarise 60 mins 3 days a week just like you would for any business meeting. Use that for any (or all) of the following activities:

• Join a group class for 3 days a week (Zumba, Yoga, Pilates, etc.)
• Pick up a sport that's "accessible" and can give you a great cardio workout (Badminton, Tennis, Squash, Swimming come to mind)
• Hire a personal trainer.
• Or, at the least, walk briskly (you should NOT be able to hold a normal conversation for it to be brisk) for 45 mins a day.

DIET

The entrepreneurial lifestyle has long days (and nights!), travel, lots of eating outside and an irregular schedule for nutrition. Now, there are a lot of services available to help you get access to good healthy food, including on the go. My better half, Preeti Somani, who is also the Food Czar in our household has written a fantastic blog post on 10 hacks to eat right while living your life fully.

Quick Start plan for Diet (Nutrition):

• Become mindful and deliberate about food; eat at REGULAR and PREDICTABLE times.
• Consider work with a nutritionist. I'd worked with Shona Prabhu and saw terrific results and became much more mindful about eating.
• Have a few go to health food options that are accessible for snacks and your meals.

SLEEP

If there's a ONE hack that can have a tremendous impact on your well being and is often understated, it is sleep.

Sleep is for those who want to be strong

There are so many advantages of continuous 7 hours of sleep that its surreal that most of us ignore this. It is good for restorative health, for building muscles (go figure) and believe it or not, even weight loss. In fact, lack of sleep has also shown to have direct correlation to obesity. The reason you need to have continuous sleep is because sleep happens in 3 or more REM/NREM cycles and the 3rd cycle which is post 5-6 hours of sleep is the "deepest sleep". So, no, you can't doze off on the way to the airport or a meeting and count for that in your 7 hours a day. Those power naps are showing that you are exhausted and possibly sleep deprived.

Quick Start plan for Sleep:

• Figure out if you are getting enough sleep (7-8 hours is prescribed)
• Resist temptation to be near any gadget such as a smartphone or TV for at least 30 mins before bedtime and 30 mins after getting up.
• Fix a predictable time to go to sleep (even if it is 12 midnight, so be it); assuming you are deficient, add 30 mins every day for the next 15 days. Even if you can't sleep, stay in bed!

To sum it up, entrepreneurship is a lonely and arduous journey. Its full of ups and downs. The best thing you can do is to prepare yourself mentally, physically and spiritually, so both you, and your company can be built to last. One of my entrepreneurial friends, Tarun Goyal, recently mentioned this quote that nicely summarises this philosophy:

Be Kind To Yourself
- Anonymous

About the Author -

(Amit Somani is a Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early stage Venture Capital firm based out of Bangalore, India. Prime VP invests in category creating, early stage companies founded by rock star teams. Prior, Amit has held leadership positions at Makemytrip, Google and IBM. He is also deeply engaged with the early stage startup ecosystem in India and actively volunteers with iSpirt, TiE and NASSCOM. He tweets at @amitsomani)

This article was originally published on Linkedin