I haven’t been as consistent with my blogging this month as I would like, and I have been brewing this idea in my head for a little while now, but I have only recently found the angle that I would like to approach “investing” in oneself. My coach uses the line “invest in yourself” many times on all of his social media posts, especially the progress photos of his competitors and clients. Ever since the New Year, I’ve been thinking about what it means to invest in yourself. Most of the time when we think of investments, or investing, we think about money. This is the most obvious form of investing, but my plan is to tell you that it isn’t the only form of investment, especially when it comes to your fitness and health.
First of all, I would be lying if I said that absolutely no monetary investment is required to improve your fitness, health, and lifestyle. Money has a huge impact on your ability to live a fit and healthy lifestyle. However, what I am trying to say with this article is that you cannot just keep throwing money at a problem and hope that it goes away. If you really want to make a change in your life for the better, you must invest more than just money. For example, if you bought the fanciest gym clothes, went to the most upscale gym, and bought an expensive personal trainer, that doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed to reach your goals. Your chances of reaching your goals definitely increase, because now you have a means to reach your goals, but that’s about it. There are a lot of people who think that now that they’ve paid for a gym membership they are going to loose weight, or now that they have a personal trainer, they are going to reach their goals. These things definitely help, especially having an educated trainer, but they are not a guarantee. Why? Well that’s mostly because of you. You need to be fully committed and invested in your goals. Not only financially, but mentally, emotionally, and physically. You literally need to invest your ENTIRE self into any goal that you set for yourself if you truly want to be successful. Investing in gym clothes, a gym membership, and a personal trainer, are all very superficial, and they mean absolutely nothing if you’re not fully committed to making a change in your life.
I was having lunch with a friend about two weeks ago, and we were talking about our businesses, and how most people like the idea of change, but they are not actually committed to making a change. This is why so many people make these superficial, financial investments like new gear, a fancy gym membership, and so on, but they don’t invest anything else into making a change. Just because you went to the gym, trained with your coach for an hour does not mean that you’re going to get ripped in no time, it almost means nothing at all… Now some of you may be asking yourself why that is? And well, sure you went to the gym, and sure you trained for an hour, but were you mentally present and focused for the entire hour? Did you put forth all your energy and effort? Even if you did all of that, that still doesn’t mean you’ll be getting ripped.Why? Well that’s because you only invested in just the one hour, there are 23 hours left in the day for you to mess it up! Some of you may be laughing at this point, and yes it is funny, but it is also true. If you don’t want that hour spent in the gym to be in vain, then you must invest the rest of your day towards your fitness goals. In fact, if being fit and healthy is important to you, then really you need to be centering your entire life around it. Like I’ve mentioned before, if you want to be successful at anything you must invest your entire self to it.
Now a lot of you may be thinking woah, wait… What is this girl talking about? What does she mean, center my life around being healthy? Or investing my entire self into being fit? I’m not a gym rat, I’m not that vain, I don’t need a six pack. And this is where my point is proved once again. A lot of people say, “I don’t want to diet, I want to be healthy, I want to make a lifestyle change…” However, a lot people don’t realize the amount of things they need to change and/or give up if they really do want a “healthy lifestyle.” Most people do not lead a healthy lifestyle, and most people don’t realize how unhealthy their lifestyle really is until it’s almost too late. This is why there is so much obesity, mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and disease plaguing our population! Now I don’t expect everyone to have the discipline it takes to train, and eat like a bodybuilder. Especially when it comes to getting ready for shows. I do believe in balance, and for each individual that means something different. But let me make this clear, you need to be very realistic with the goals that you set for yourself. You really can’t have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. Don’t ever expect to have abs if you don’t plan on drastically changing how you eat and how you train. If however, you would like to reduce your body fat to a healthy level, and improve your overall fitness, you won’t necessarily have to drastically change your entire life to the complete opposite of the spectrum. Meaning, you don’t have to start training twice a day, and eating 6 meals a day right away, if being completely ripped isn’t your goal.
If you do want to make a lifestyle change for the better, start off small. Be realistic!! Make your goals manageable! Do not set yourself an impossible goal of going to the gym 5 days a week if you’ve never set foot in there before. Start at maybe twice a week, and increase it from there. You will stay much more motivated, and you will be much more successful if you can set attainable goals for yourself right at the start. After you feel successful at going twice a week, then add in a third day. After you’ve been doing that consistently, you will then have the confidence to make other lifestyle changes to further help you reach your fitness goals. This takes time, an essential investment that needs to be made when you decide to commit to a fitness goal. There is no magical pill, or invention that will do the work for you. Like I’ve said before, being fit and healthy is work. It is a labor of love, a love for yourself and your well being that is. It is also an investment that requires you to be mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially locked in. You can’t eat well for five days of the week and then every weekend you get completely derailed. You will never get any further in your pursuit for fitness and health. You need to be consistent with your diet and your workouts. You can’t diet during the week, fall off on the weekend, and then punish yourself Monday by dieting really hard again. Set manageable goals for your diet just like your workouts, AND STICK TO THEM!! Change requires COMMITMENT!!! You need to be fully committed aka fully invested in all your pursuits, fitness or not because money unfortunately doesn’t solve all of life’s problems.
Alex Rinaldo 