Chances are, since you are pursuing a career in public health, that you eat a healthy diet and get physical exercise. But has it occurred to you that you need to keep your career physically fit as well? Peter Weddle, author of “Work Strong: Your Personal Career Fitness System,” says, “As with physical fitness, you have to condition your career on a regular and repetitive schedule. You have to develop occupational strength, endurance, and reach by working on your seven centers of career vitality…” 

Here is how Weddle describes these seven areas:  

1. Pump up your cardiovascular system
   The heart of your career is your occupational expertise, not your knowledge of an employer’s standard operating procedures. Re-imagine yourself as a work-in-progress. This way, you can approach learning out of curiosity, adding depth and tone to your workplace knowledge and skill set along with memorializing that enlarged capacity on your résumé.
2. Strengthen your circulatory system
   The wider and deeper your network of contacts, the more visible you and your capabilities will be in the workplace. Adding to your network, however, means exactly what the word says — it’s netWORK, not net-get-around-to-it-whenever-it’s-convenient. Make nurturing professional relationships a part of your normal business day.

III. Develop all of your muscle groups
The greater your versatility in contributing your expertise at work, the broader the array of situations and assignments in which you can be employed. Develop ancillary skills — for example, the ability to speak a second language or knowledge of key software programs — that will give you more ways to apply your primary occupational capability in the workplace.

1. Increase your flexibility & range of motion
   In the 21st century world of work, career progress is not always a straight line, nor does it always look as it has in the past or stay the same for very long. Moving from industry to industry, from one daily schedule to another, or even from one location to another is never easy, but your willingness to adapt will help to keep your career moving forward.
2. Work with winners
   Successful organizations and coworkers aid and abet your ability to accomplish your career goals, while less effective organizations and less capable peers diminish it. Working with winners enables you to grow on-the-job, develop useful connections that will last a career, and establish yourself as a winner in the world of work.
3. Stretch your soul
   A healthy career not only serves you, it serves others, as well. A personal commitment to doing some of your best work as good works for your community, your country, and/or your planet is the most invigorating form of work/life balance. It regenerates your pride in what you do and your enthusiasm for doing it.

VII. Pace yourself
A fulfilling and rewarding career depends upon you getting the rest and replenishment you need in order to do your best work every day that you’re on the job. The human body and mind have limits, and those limits cannot be extended by multitasking. Instead, you have to discipline yourself and your boss to set aside time to recharge your passion and capacity for work.