Life Events or Lack of Time Holding You Back?
“I have a demanding job, 3 kids, coaching little league and all of my time goes towards helping my family. I just don’t have the time to workout.”
“I used to workout, but then a few years ago we had our first kid and I haven’t been able to make it to the gym since.”
Life or Lack of time holding you back from doing what you love?
Time is one of the most difficult hurdles to clear because it seems like there is never enough. When we are younger time seems more abundant, but as we age we tend to gain more responsibilities whether that is at home or at work that require more time and attention. In reality this isn’t a problem with time so much as it is priorities and making sure those are both in alignment. If it is on you to take care of your family or others, you can’t do that if you don’t take care of yourself first. “You can’t pour from an empty cup.”
Take care of yourself so that you are better able to take care of others. Here are some steps you can take to overcome a lack of time.
First write down your top few priorities in life and stack rank them by order of importance to you. Maybe that’s Family, Health, Friends, Work, etc.
Now write down how you spend all 24 hours of your day and compare how your time spent ladders up to the priorities you listed out. You will always end up making time for the things that are important to you, so it may be that you need to reevaluate your priorities and time spent.
Start small with non-exercise based activity. If you are now looking at where you could possibly squeeze in exercise into your busy schedule, don’t worry about scheduling 1 hours training sessions right away. Start small by:
Parking at the back of the parking lot and walking to store.
Go for a 5 minute walk after a meal.
Take the stairs instead of the elevator/escalator.
Stretch out and do a few squats for 5 minutes when you wake up before you start your day.
Multipurpose your time. Zone 2 cardio is amazing for your health and gets a bad reputation for being very boring. Many people also may spend 3 hours or more per day watching Netflix on the couch. You don’t have to give up Netflix to workout, you could take 1 episode of a TV show and watch it while walking on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike. Find ways to multipurpose your time to maximize your tight schedule.
Just show up. You may have planned to go to the gym for an hour, but then your meeting ran 30 minutes over and now it feels like you no longer have enough time for your workout. Go anyways. If even if you only have 15 minutes to do your workout, the act of showing up is THE most important part. Sure an hour would be great, but you can still get a descent workout in 15 minutes and it will make a world of difference in your results. Something is ALWAYS going to be better than nothing. Don’t wait until tomorrow, because tomorrow will never come unless you show up.
Get back to doing what you love without apprehension! If you need help figuring out how to establish a routine or how to maximize your limited time, setup a free consultation with me.