I Don’t Have Time for the Gym
It’s amazing what happens when you tell someone you’re working on eating healthy or improving your fitness. Without asking, you hear back one or more of these:
* I would eat that stuff if I had more time to cook for myself.
* Yeah, but you probably don’t have kids to feed, too.
* I’m starting my business. I couldn’t take that kind of time to get to the gym.
Without asking, excuses and justifications fly at you. And the truth is, everyone is right. If they don’t have time for the gym, they don’t. Because they’ve made that choice.
Only, they have to accept that it’s a choice. And you? Let’s talk about your choices.
We All Have the Same Watch And Calendar
Here’s how I make time to go to yoga every morning: I go to bed around 8:30pm. I wake up at 5am. I get to my 6am class before the world has really begun what they’re doing. I’m done before 7:30am.
I learned this by learning how to work like I’m on vacation.
By comparison, maybe you catch those extra hours because you stayed up late last night watching Dancing with the Singing Ducks or whatever’s on TV, because, you know, it was the finale. Only, while someone on the finale is going to make some money, you are going to lose sleep, not wake up early, not hit the gym, not give your body a chance at a huge energy boost, and not relieve all kinds of stress to give you a much better fighting chance at the day.
Sorry, but you just got voted off your own island.
Choice. It’s always choice.
Your Gym Doesn’t Have to Require a Membership Card to Get In
I’m really fond of Mark Lauren’s book, You Are Your Own Gym. I interviewed him about it here. Mark teaches a bodyweight regimen that you can do pretty much anywhere with very little equipment (if any). There’s even a great smartphone app.
See, you can’t even use the “not enough money for a gym membership” excuse. Have any others?
“Working out is boring.” Make it less boring. I bought the Zombie Apocalypse Survival Workout. You can be assured it’s not boring.
“I have an old injury.” My friend, Diamond Dallas Page, pro wrestling celebrity has a yoga program called DDPYoga. He works with lots of injured people (like former wrestling pros). You can get your health back.
Keep coming up with excuses. I’ll give you another way to get around it.
You Are a Superhero. Start Treating Yourself Like One
When people tell me they can’t find time for fitness and health, what they usually say is that they’re integral to the future existence of their company, or their family, or wherever else they’ve appointed themselves the unenviable role of “person who can’t leave or the world will collapse.”
I’ll tell you a somewhat stinging and depressing truth: you made it that way. If everyone needs you to survive, your ego put that together. And it’ll require your hardest work to untangle all that.
Once you get that figured out, work on treating yourself better. Put your own mask on first. You need a healthy and strong body to carry out the missions you want to accomplish.
With all this said, make tomorrow the first day of your jump-started fitness efforts (if you’re not working on that already). Or, if you are, commit to doing this with passion and the belief that it’ll help your business and the rest of your life succeed. Either way, let’s get back to work, okay?
Chris Brogan starts his morning at Human Business Works after his morning yoga.
