Last week I was approached by a friend to talk to a new gym business owner who she knew was struggling. She had opened a gym in Toronto a year ago and was finding it hard, really hard. When I spoke with her she was lamenting how hard it was and that she had to do everything. She was the instructor, the marketer, the admin, the cleaner, the…well you get the picture.
I had to break it to her…
That was what starting a business was like.
In the beginning most entrepreneurs wear all the hats. But, with the right systems in place you eventually start to grow and you can hire someone to do the jobs that maybe you aren’t as good at or are not worth your entrepreneurial time. That’s the beauty of opening your own business, or climbing the corporate ladder, or taking the right financial risks at the right time…eventually, if you play your cards right, it pays off and you may not be able to coast, but you won’t have to work so hard. And eventually you can retire and not work at all!
But guess what? You can’t do that with your health. You can’t work your butt off when you are 20 or 30 and then hire someone to go for that walk for you just because you don’t like it. You can’t pay a trainer to lift your weights. You can’t pay someone to eat your broccoli. And you can’t work out really hard for a few years when you are young and then coast.
If you want your body and mind to be healthy and happy for as many years as possible you have to keep on moving.
Pretty much every day.
Don’t want cavities? Brush your teeth. How often? Every day.
Don’t want to fall asleep at the wheel? Get enough sleep. How often? Every day.
There are a lot of things we need to do every day or most days of the week that we don’t debate, let’s make movement one of those things.
And it’s not negative, it’s shouldn’t be akin to ‘taking our medicine’. It’s how our bodies were designed. We were designed to move it is essential to our survival.
I want to share with you a fun excerpt from an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger recently, when he was asked why he still exercises everyday. His answer is priceless.
