Today Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States. Leadership junkie that I am, I was up early with coffee in hand to watch this most magnificent and peaceful transfer of power.
Around 8:30 the President Elect and Mrs. Obama emerged from Blair House to begin what would be arguably the most important day of their lives. Then I heard TODAY host Matt Lauer, as he outlined the tightly-scheduled and pressure-filled agenda ahead, make the almost off-hand comment that the Mr. Obama still managed to get in his workout this morning.
That our new President plays basketball, and that both he and Michelle work out regularly, are already well known facts. And maybe we can only guess the precise impact of making time to exercise on this amazing success story. How Barack sustains his energy, focus and infamous calm ultimately only Barack can say. But the mind-body connection is well-researched and immensely powerful. More than just a way to proactively manage stress, regular exercise actually shifts the mind into a radically different gear – what Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist, calls the relaxation response.
Put most simply, the relaxation response is an emotional and physiological
shift from what I call Crazy-Stress mode to Balanced-Ground mode. When we are on balanced ground, we experience a sense of well-being that increases our feeling of empathy and makes genuine connection with others possible. Even more, we release our psyche from the primal, fear-driven parts of our brain and we move into the upper echelons – our mental Oval Office – where visionary, creative and objective thinking reside.
Today is a day when once impossible dreams came true. So let me mark this occasion with my own pipe dream: if the busiest leader in the world wouldn’t start a day of his life without a little exercise and quiet time for himself, why can’t we all? Who might we become and what might we accomplish, individually and as a nation, if we did?
