Welcome back! I hope you enjoyed my last blog about time, and how to find it when it seems unfindable! If you haven’t read it, no sweat, we have another topic today that might relate even better to your fitness challenges! (Although you are always more than welcome to go read that one as well, and feel free to leave a comment too!).

“I can’t afford it”. “That’s a lot of money”. “I can’t afford to spend that right now”. 

Have you heard THESE sentences come out of your mouth? If so, then this is for YOU. (Imagine me staring into the screen pointing directly at you; yes YOU). 

This week let’s continue on a similar (and slightly more sensitive) topic, and talk about MONEY and how it’s tied to VALUE. 

Let’s paint a picture here together before we dive in… 

You are fed up with your lack of consistency in the gym, you’re tired of not knowing the right path to go, and you feel horrible about yourself because you haven’t gotten to the goals you set for yourself YEARS ago. And to top it off, your health is deteriorating and you feel physically horrible as well.   

Then, while mindlessly scrolling Instagram to distract yourself from the mental exhaustion and overwhelming feelings from the day you come across an ad. An ad for a discount on personal training. It states that if you sign up, they’ll help guide you on the right path to your goals, help you feel more confident about yourself, and promise to get you to your goals within the next 6-8 months, while helping you become healthier as a side effect. Wow. That sounds like the answer. 

You immediately click “Apply” and get a text right away to set up a free consultation. You set it up for the next day, and can barely contain your excitement. FINALLY you get to feel better about yourself. FINALLY you can look the way you’ve been striving for for the past 10 years. And FINALLY you can start getting your health on the right track. You feel motivated for the first time in a long time. 

You walk into the gym, sit down with the trainer, and they ask you all sorts of questions about yourself, share in your excitement to get to your goals, and you couldn’t be happier. You’re ready. Let’s do this. 

But THEN… you see the price. And you get ready to say “Sorry, I can’t afford that”. Just like that, you make the snap decision to not get to your goals. Without even realizing, you’re about to add MORE years to not getting to where you want to be, you put more obstacles in your path, and you allow yourself to continue feeling horrible about yourself. 

Not a fun reality, is it? 

I’m sure you have dealt with decisions based on price, and can relate to this person’s feelings of frustration, self-loathing, and overwhelm. Let’s talk about exactly how to make sure this doesn’t happen to you, so that when you do finally sit down for your free consultation you are able to make an informed decision. (Notice how I’m not saying decide to definitely do training, just make an informed decision; that’s all you need to do! Gain the information, and make a decision).

Let’s dive into HOW money and value are interconnected, and how the price of something isn’t actually the reason you are saying no to achieving your goals. 

Just like the last post, this involves you being incredibly honest with yourself. I’ll guide you through, ask you the tough questions, and all you have to do is answer and be as vulnerable as possible. 

First, if something is expensive for you, let’s talk about how that is a GOOD thing. Sounds weird, I know, trust me, it will all make sense! (Hopefully, sometimes I doubt my “putting pieces together and making a picture” skills). 

If something is expensive for you, that means you are going to try your absolute BEST to make sure the money you spend on that training is worth whatever sacrifice you have to make to make that happen. You are going to work HARDER, be more CONSISTENT, and be more DRIVEN than anyone else, especially those who can afford it easily. AND, you are very likely going to get to your goals faster because of it. That’s because it’s going to mean more to you in more ways. 

In reality, if something is expensive for you, that is one of the best things for you and your training. 

Expensive = Good. 

Another thing, if training was worth a quarter of the price, would you really believe it would work? Probably not. When you see something that’s “cheaper” it usually means it’s also of lesser value. If training is expensive, then it’s probably because it WORKS. 

And finally, how long do you want to let “it’s too expensive” be on your list of excuses? I’m sure you’ve heard this example before, but I will repeat it again because it still rings true. 

If you buy a grande (that’s a medium, for the simpletons (like me) out there) Starbucks every day, you spend about $49 every week, $196 every month, and $2,352 a year. There you go, if you start making coffee at home a few days a week, or all of them, then we just found how you can afford training. There are TONS of little things we spend money on that we don’t need to. If you really want to afford training, you can. Sometimes it’s as simple as that. 

Next, let’s talk about how the price of training actually is NOT a lot (this sounds like it goes against what we just talked about, but again, stick with me and you’ll see where I’m going with this). 

So let’s say you reached the EXACT goal you had been striving for, would the price then be worth it? Imagine looking and feeling better than you ever imagined. Health issues have gone down, you look younger, feel better, can physically do more stuff, and have the body of your dreams. That would be worth it for you, right? 

Then the issue isn’t that it’s too expensive, it’s that you don’t believe you can get there. That’s a confidence problem, not a price problem. 

The best way to build your confidence then, is to sign up for training and prove to yourself that you CAN do it. Best part is that you just hired someone who has done that for a multitude of other people, and can guide you to do that as well. 

If you DID in the past hire a trainer, or try a workout program, and found that you didn’t get to where you wanted to be, then this next section is for you. 

Maybe you’ve been burned in the past, and now you’re hesitant to try again. First of all, that’s completely understandable. Second of all, you are smarter and wiser now, and very likely will not make a bad decision again. That being said, let’s try and not let a bad decision burn you twice; once when it didn’t work and once when you let it allow you to turn something down that COULD work. 

A great way to think about this is,  let’s say you met the love of your life, and married them, and had lots of wonderful children. When you were in middle school and went through your first breakup, and swore you would never date again, can you imagine if you actually went through with that? If you had sworn off dating forever, you never would have met the person you’re with now!

Another thing I want to touch on, is what exactly is the point of money anyway? It is going to get spent one way or another, would you rather spend it on a bunch of junk you don’t need or would you rather spend it on something that’s good for you?

If you look at how you spent money in the last year, were there a lot of things you spent money on that you didn’t need? 

In reality, if fitness, health, longevity, physique goals, etc. have been on your mind as goals for a long time, then you are going to be buying the lessons you could be getting from a professional rather than random things online either way. 

Would you rather spend the next 10 years trying to figure it out? Or would you rather spend the money NOW and save that time? 

People value two things; time and money. We usually spend the thing we value the least. If you value time, then you spend money. If you value money, then you spend time. 

What is money good for anyway? To buy you things that you want. And you want to get to this goal, right? 

Sometimes when people say they don’t want to spend money, it’s because there’s something else they’d like to spend money on. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to spend money on health and fitness? Something that literally buys you more life, and a more content life at that. 

FINAL thing I’d like to talk about, is how resourceful people become with money when they REALLY need or want something. Have you ever pulled cash out of thin air when you absolutely HAD to pay for something? 

Something huge that I learned was that you don’t need to have resources in order to be successful on your fitness journey or with finances, you need to be RESOURCEFUL. 

So, after all of this, REALLY think about whether price is the reason you are saying no to getting yourself to your goals. 

If you were extremely honest with yourself, I’m sure you came to the conclusion that the real issue may not be the price at all. 

I hope this made you think really hard and really deeply about what is in your way when it comes to getting to the goals you very much deserve to get to. You are important and worth spending money on. Just in case you didn’t know that, I am here to tell you. 

Until next time, thank you for reading all the way through! We’ll be back in a week to talk about more fitness-related topics, now that time and money are no longer a problem 😉 

-Taylor