I Don’t Have Time, I Don’t Like Exercise & Other Excuses

Highlights:

• The busiest people can find time to fit in exercise.
• It’s easier to do exercises earlier in the day before your day gets in the way.
• When you are fit, healthy and strong, you get inspired to find more opportunities to travel, explore, take new adventures and find new things to experience.

People who don’t exercise or don’t take the vacations they’ve been dreaming about typically have a variety of reasons for why they don’t. In this chapter, we look at some of these and offer reasons for why exercising and traveling go together.

Most Common Excuses For Not Exercising & How To Tackle Them

1. I don’t have time.
2. I hate to exercise.
3. We spend more time watching TV than we realize.

“I don’t have time.”

Hands down - that’s number 1 excuse.

“We’re all really busy. It’s amazing that we find time to take vacations at all.”

I have worked with unbelievably busy CEOs who have families and 80+ hour work weeks. I’ve worked with Olympic athletes who train all the time and sometimes have trouble fitting in the rest of life, especially with the demands of air travel. The busiest people can find time to fit in exercise and still have time for friends and family.

As the old saying goes, if you want to get something done, ask a busy person. It’s the same thing with exercise. Ask a really busy person. They’ll tell you how they fit it in.

There is no “best time” to start your fitness program (bit.ly/r2m3EI).

Most common excuse number 2: “I hate to exercise.” I hear it all the time - from my own family. Learn to love it or set your priorities.

“We spend more time watching TV, staring at the computer and playing Xbox than we realize.” Save time and DVR your favorite shows. Watch them when it’s more convenient without 20 minutes of commercials.

Overcoming Excuses

When people tell me they don’t have time, or that they hate to exercise, I ask them if they would like to be fit. The answer is always yes. Do they have health concerns? Very often, the answer to that is also yes.

I ask people to describe what they think would be an ideal life. If they had more opportunities to try new activities, explore faraway places and be more active, what would they want to do, where would they want to go, what would they want to see, what kind of energy would they like to have, what sports would they want to play?

They invariably tell me that they would like to do more, be healthier, go more places and have more energy, but they’re too busy to do anything about it.

What people don’t realize is that the more energy you exert, the more energy your body has.

One of the business executives I worked with, who also works 70-80 hour weeks, said that he just didn’t know when he could fit in the time to exercise. We started finding short stretches of time before his day started and started scheduling “get out of your chair to move and stretch breaks” during the day.

As he continued to get in a little time here and there, he started to feel a lot better and then he was finally able to commit to working out on a regular basis. He knew it made everything else in his life go more smoothly.

Finding Time

It’s easier to exercise earlier in the day before your days gets in the way, even if you’re not a morning person.

Something always comes up, even if you have all the best intentions. Your kid needs to go to soccer practice. The dry cleaning needs to be picked up. You forgot to pick up milk. Some little thing is always going to come up.

What’s the first thing you blow off? Exercise.

You’ll say, “I’ll do it after I get home or after dinner, after I put the kids to bed, after…” and after never seems to come. Then you say “Okay, I’ll do it tomorrow,” and then the whole cycle happens again.

Deal with improving your health now instead of waiting till you have more time. When I ask most people how “after” is working for them, I get the same guilty smile from everyone. It doesn’t.

It’s the same thing when you’re on a trip. If you’re going to stretch, get up and do it right away. Even if it’s just a few push-ups, lunges or stretches, it’s a great way to start the day.

If you’ve been sitting all day and your neck hurts, even a couple of minutes of stretching a day will alleviate the pain. Any time in the day you exercise, you’ll feel better for it.

If your days run away from you due to that list of 50 priorities waiting for your attention, it’s going to be hard to fit in any exercise. So do it first, if you possibly can.