Struggling With Commitment? Put Some Skin In The Game..
Motivation
Does this sound familiar?
You have a fitness goal. You want to grow your muscles or to lose bodyfat or to fit into a particular dress. Maybe it’s to get stronger since that will help with your sport or to be more confident on a night out. Maybe you’ve decided that your current fitness is so bad it’s affecting your life and you need to change it. (Think of your goal and why you want it)
If it’s about being more confident or living longer or feeling more attractive to your partner or being able to pick up a new partner, it really motivates you right? When you’re sat thinking about where you want your life to be you think about how amazing you will feel when you’ve achieved that goal. You have these moments where you feel really motivated and you just know that one day you will achieve this and everything will be okay. More than okay even, amazing!
But you get upset sometimes because you just don’t feel like you are getting there. When it comes down to the moment, quite often that motivation isn’t there anymore. Motivation comes and goes. When faced with a meal or snack that you know doesn’t quite align with your goals you decide to treat yourself. Sometimes you plan to go to the gym after work but when you’ve finished at the end of the day you feel quite tired and say you’ll do it tomorrow instead. Sometimes you do it tomorrow but quite often you don’t.
Some days you’re thinking “I absolutely smashed it today. I’m definitely getting closer to that goal soon”. But then some days you just think “why don’t I have that drive today?”
Motivation comes and goes and people struggle to fulfil their desires. Even when it’s something they want so badly.
Accountability
Accountability is why people struggle when it comes to their goals. If it was getting your assessments done at school or uni to a high quality and not just on the last day. If it was taking a business idea to the next level, or committing to your fitness goals and sticking with them. People always struggle with accountability.
People find it difficult to fulfil their own desires and ambitions, even when it’s something that they really want. Even if they think about it all day every day..
When it comes to fitness, people know they need to eat different and they know they need to exercise. People think they need to learn more too. But they really just need to take action. Of course there are details and techniques people need to learn, but at the core of it, everyone knows they need to eat differently, exercise more, and learn. But they still don’t. Or can’t. Accountability is the struggle.
The problem is, you always think you can do it tomorrow if today doesn’t work out. If you feel like your health or confidence is impacted by your body and lifestyle choices, there is always a feeling that you have lots of time and you can do it one day soon.
Tomorrow never actually comes though, does it? The full commitment you need doesn’t really come. But you aren’t sure why.
Remember the example I used about doing your school work? You always got your homework with one week to go or got given a project for three weeks time. Regardless of how long you had to get it done, you either did it all on the last day or two or you put the finishing touches down on the last day. This is Parkinson’s law in play. Parkinson’s law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. Basically, your goal will take you as long as you give yourself to do it. In other words, if you have one week to do your homework, you’ll get it done just time for it’s completion. Likewise with the same amount of work if you were given three weeks. But what if your teacher didn’t set you a deadline? What if your teacher said, here’s your homework but you don’t have to give it back to me and I won’t mark it. You probably won’t have even done it.
So, about that fitness goal. Do you have a deadline? Probably not. I very much doubt your teacher from school is going to mark your workouts in the gym next week and check on your calorie intake, sending a letter home to your mum if you didn’t do well enough. Furthermore, as long as you body isn’t going to kill you next week and if the partner of your dreams isn’t guaranteed to walk into your life next week (or out of your life next week), you’ve got all of your life left to work on your fitness goals. Right? Well that’s not really what you were hoping for is it? Time is the most valuable thing you have, and you want to look and feel good now.
I’m about to tell you something that will change your thoughts on accountability in the next paragraph.
Skin In The Game
When was the last time you got something for free? For how long did you use it and did you make the most of it? You probably can’t even remember it. You might not have even used it at all. That’s how much value we put on things that have no real value.
How much more carefully would you drive your car if insurance wasn’t a thing?
How careful and delicate are you with your new smart phone when you’ve just bought it and spent money on it?
Skin in the game means you have put something on the line. In relation to your goals, you miss out on something if you don’t fulfil. At school, if you didn’t do your work then you risked a detention, letter home, no GCSE or maybe even a removal from education if you’d kept doing it. And that means a pretty sorry life.
If you crash your car and it isn’t insured then you never get that £5,000 back or that £10,000 or £20,000 back. (how much do you like to spend on cars?) Furthermore, if anything happens to you in the crash, you’re not getting compensation or support to help live with your broken body. That’s some risk. I’d bet that if insurance didn’t exist, people would drive a lot slower.
Having said that, if I gave you £1000 for going to the gym three times in a week and sticking to your calories (every week), how much more motivated would you be to do that? How much more would that be worth to you?
You don’t just have to miss out on money though. Skin in the game could be as much as telling your boss you’re going to do something and then you need to get it done. Or telling your friend that you’re going to get something done for them. Looking at both scenarios, which one are you more likely to actually go through with?? Probably the task for your boss because there is more on the line if you don’t. I mean, your job, income, career, reference, and respect vs upsetting a mate. And, in both scenarios you save face if you go through with what you said you would.
But that also shows us that bigger stakes get things done. Bigger stakes and more skin in the game work better. Money and our precious income works too.
So what if we flipped it and instead of me giving you money for doing your workouts and sticking to your calories, you had money taken out of your income if you didn’t do those things..? That would probably get you shifting. As it happens, that’s one of the reasons why hiring a personal trainer is scientifically and statistically related to you not only following through on your goals but also doing a better job of that. The more money you spend the better too. Because you don’t want to waste it.
If you hire a personal trainer and don’t do the work it’s like throwing money on the floor. But if you never hire a personal trainer, you just don’t do the work, ever. So if you’re struggling to commit, put some skin in the game, hire me as your personal trainer. If you have a personal trainer and you’ve been throwing money on the floor. I would recommend not throwing your money on the floor anymore and not stopping with them having made that all a big waste. I’d recommend actually doing the work. Maybe if you want to be a billy big bollocks you could actually offer to pay them more or start doing extra sessions. At least you’d get to your goals quicker with extra on the line. Maybe what you were paying before might not have been risky enough. Just thoughts.
Personally, I think the confidence and health of your dream body is worth significantly more than personal training.
You can actually hire me as your personal trainer (online or 1-2-1) by emailing me or messaging me on Instagram (the links for which are on this website).
If your goal happens to be fat loss and confidence, you can also download a full guide on everything you need to do in order to achieve that here: https://www.brookadnitt.com/the-guaranteed-method
If you want to receive stories, advice, tips and wisdom, you can sign up to my daily emails here: https://forms.aweber.com/form/59/1002179759.htm
Some days it’s about fitness, some days it isn’t. A couple days ago I actually told a story about an inflatable parrot that used to help me out on nights out.
Of course, if spending money isn’t for you, then you can always wait for that fitness goal to just happen. But i’ll ask you first. How long have you been waiting already?
I really do want you to feel confident and happy and to be fit, strong and healthy.
Get in contact with me when you’re ready.
Brook
