Sweatworking: It’s Not Just Business
There’s a saying in PR that guides those looking to generate press for their businesses: “go where the ink is flowing.” That means that if a topic is on the tip of everyone’s tongue or the only thing anyone can talk about at the water cooler, make yourself a part of that conversation ASAP.
“Sweatworking,” or combining networking with working out, has been all over your favorite news sites and blogs, finding its way onto Today.com, the Huffington Post, Fast Company, NY Daily News and Refinery29.
I’ve been quoted in a few of these stories because of our long-standing monthly #Sweatworking events. One theme remains pretty constant throughout all of the coverage – it’s all about business.
While pulling your boss away from her desk and getting her butt onto a Soul Cycle bike next to you can help that relationship blossom, there’s more to this trend’s success than multi-tasking sweating with a business card exchange.
When we think about health at asweatlife.com, we think about your mind, your body and your soul and the way all of those things work together. It’s happiness. It’s how you handle stress. It’s how you make time for the important people in your life.
Sweatworking, or our version of it, is formed around that idea of health – the idea that your relationships, your time at the gym and how you handle stress all work together to form a single picture of wellness.
Whether you’re working out with a friend, a colleague or a significant other, #Sweatworking allows you to fit three healthy behaviors into one block of time:
Healthy behavior one: exercising
Happiness is so closely tied to your health and your fitness is so closely tied to your happiness. When you’re active, you’re more likely to feel happiness and to experience an enhanced mood. Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin spends a lot of time encouraging people to prioritize exercise, not for weight loss reasons, but for reasons associated with mood. Psychology Today goes so far as to call exercise “nature’s mood enhancer.”
Healthy behavior two: building stronger social ties
People are hungry for strong social ties – it’s a basic, human need. Working out with people that matter to you helps you form those social ties.
Relationships – those that are forged and maintained in real life – are hugely beneficial to your health, both physically and mentally. In her book The Happiness Project, Rubin discusses the significance of strong social ties and your health. She points to studies on her blog that show “if you have five or more friends with whom to discuss an important matter you’re far more likely to describe yourself as ‘very happy.’”
Not only do strong relationships make you happier, they have been shown to make you physically healthier. Harvard Women’s Healthy Watch stated that connecting with others can “relieve harmful levels of stress, which can adversely affect coronary arteries, gut function, insulin regulation, and the immune system. Another line of research suggests that caring behaviors trigger the release of stress-reducing hormones.”
Healthy behavior three: taking time away from technology
All of this exercising can also give you a break from the device that never seems to leave your side. Technology and the Internet allow us to do some pretty amazing things, but everything – yes, everything – should be enjoyed in moderation. The overuse of technology can be damaging to your health, including the use of your favorite social networks, which are are linked to “feelings of loneliness, as well as a decrease in happiness and satisfaction.”
And to us, planning one activity that can do so much for your health just makes sense. Forging those three healthy habits in one block of time is what #Sweatworking is all about.