Women in Financial Services
Lovedip Dhaliwal - Why I run?
Katie.Dix / 12 Oct 2021
E2W member Lovedip Dhaliwal ran the London Marathon last week and wrote a short blog to share amongst our community around resillience and mental health.
Last Sunday I ran the London marathon. Its not my first marathon but it is the first time I have run the iconic London route starting from Greenwich and ending up finishing in front of Buckingham Palace on Pall Mall.
When I came back to work this week, I was asked by colleagues what made me run a marathon and why do I run.
The physical benefits of exercise are well known - lower blood pressure, protection against chronic diseases, weight management. Besides these, I’m a strong believer that exercise and especially cardio based activity like running helps my mental wellbeing.
How?
Exercise, and especially running has improved my mental stamina. You will often hear people say the hardest part of the marathon is not the physical challenge but actually the mental one to keep going to the very end. Running has made me more resilient and determined to finish no matter how difficult the journey.
Running a marathon requires patience and discipline. In training for the marathon, I spent many hours training in my local park, working to a plan to get the miles run to ensure I had the physical fitness to achieve my goals.
On the days that I run, I find this helps my concentration and alertness. I am more focused and running helps me to think more clearly about challenging situations and how to move forward. Running improves my mood, and stress levels and this in turn also improves my judgement and I have more energy to get things done.
All of these benefits can be applied to the workplace – having the mental stamina and resilience to complete a difficult task or project, being disciplined around deadlines whilst managing multiple priorities and being able to concentrate while multi-tasking. And the good news is, you don’t have to run a marathon to benefit!
Regular forms of exercise from walking to yoga to more vigorous activity have been proven to boost physical and mental health and productivity in the workplace, so it’s a win-win for employees and employers. On #WorldMentalHealthDay, it’s important that employers recognise the benefits of regular exercise to support the wellbeing of employees and encourage this in the workplace.
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