Monday, December 12, 2011

Mental WOD 20: No Time...M-A-K-E Time

Down with the No Time Excuses...


I love this time of the year. The holiday season is filled with family, friends, holiday events and parties. There is so much excitement in the air. For others this can be an overwhelming time of the year. With the end of the year deadlines, Xmas parties, family in-town, you going out of town it can get to the point of too many things to do in too little time to do it.

So then the infamous phrase that pays in fitness I love to hear, "I just don't 'HAVE' enough time to workout". So then my response is, "Well you need to make time!". They then proceed to tell me about all the things they 'have' to do.

"But I have deadlines at work"
"My parents are in town next week"
"I have this, I have that..."

Most of us know the old saying that we all have 24 hours in a day:

Why is it that some people are millionaires and some people are in 50k of debt?
Why are 2/3 of Americans obese and some people in amazing shape?
Why is the divorce rate 50%? What is the difference between the marriages that stick vs. the marriage that don't?

What is the difference? The ones on the successful side of the fence learn and practice how to M-A-K-E time.

So when I say you need to MAKE time this is exactly what I mean:

M - odify your time. You either control your time or your time controls you. There is no gray area about it. For those people that work around the clock: Can you seriously say you are working every single second for 16+ hours a day 7 days a week? Never looking at facebook? Texting your friends? You couldn't plan 10 minutes to workout. You couldn't roll out of bad and start your day with some pushups and light stretching?? Fact is you have the power to modify what you do with your time. Look honestly at your day and what you spend your time on. Find ways to modify what you do to add more time on what is important and reduce the time you spend on less important activities.

A - dust your schedule so that HIGH priority things get done first. It is easy to gravitate towards doing what is easy but usually the easy things are not that important which is why they are easy and we want to do them first. Start or plan your day with what matters most. It is no secret that you are going to get interrupted during the day, because it happens everyday.

K - now what is important. This is the easiest but hardest thing I have found personally. Have clear priorities. Sometimes I feel I want to accomplish so much that I end up getting frustrated and end up accomplishing nothing. You know what you want. Focus on what will get the most bang for your buck. The hard part is being honest with yourself, once you are, everything else starts making sense in your life.

E - liminate your BAD habits. If you have gotten to this point you have a great idea of what to do. This part is catching yourself as it happens during the day. Our bad habits have a sneaky way of creeping up on us. Being aware as they happen and having an alternate (good) habit to replace the bad habit is the key to victory.

-During that lull in your day and you reach for the diet coke --instead-- only have water available and reach for that.
-When you call yourself fat (out loud or in your head) -- you have a 10 burpee penalty.
-When you want to stay in bed and sleep instead of going to an early morning class -- sleep in your workout clothes, with your gym bad already packed and the alarm is set in the bathroom and loud enough to hear it so you have to get up to turn it off!

Now get crackin'.

P.T.S!

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