Would you like £90? Serious offer, no strings attached. Would £90 make you better off than you are now?
Stupid question, right? OK, even stupider: would you prefer £90, or £100? What if there were two queues; one to collect £100 and one to be given £90 – you’d be behind me in the long one, right? (Stay two meters away!)
I think most of us would choose the £100 over the £90. And then, you get to the front, and they are all out of £100. They give you £90. How would you feel?
Yet, at the start of this blog, you wanted that £90!
Today my friend sent a text to a group I’m in with a link to free beer. Free beer! Hold my…never mind. By the time I’d read the message there was another text saying that it was sold out. I was pretty glum about this – in the blink of an eye I had, and then, had not, free beer.
I realised this is pretty apt right now. I’m a week into 2021 and all my resolutions, including one to update my hypo-active athlete blog, are in tatters. I woke up January 2nd with such back pain that I couldn’t walk let alone start exercising. I recorded a video for Fitness Soul about food shopping for success and making the unhealthy choice the harder choice, only to receive a lovely parcel of my mum’s baking through the post.
Then all our lovely plans to launch the new “Covid Games” fun play session at Fitness Soul came crashing down as we went back to full lockdown. Back to Zoom workouts. Do I want to train with, or coach, a group of my friends and clients face to face, smiling, laughing, sweating and succeeding together? Yes – that’s what we do at Fitness Soul. And do you get 100% of this online? Perhaps not.
But here’s the thing. You get that 90% that seemed so important at the start of this article. You get the fun, the health and wellbeing, the straining and sweating and even once or twice the swearing. You get the horseplay, the banter, the in-jokes and the belonging to the tribe. That’s all still there waiting for you.
The £100, the free beer, the perfect 2021 – this is an illusion; hope, not a promise. It never existed, it was something that would be nice, but £90 will do just fine; I’ll buy a beer and share it on a bench with a friend instead, and I think 2021 with my friends will be just fine. A calorie is still a calorie, 20KG of kettlebell steel hasn’t changed, and 45 seconds is always going to be too long to do burpees.
Some things you can rely on. See you at the gym
*****postscript*****
We originally planned this blog post for mid January but things got away from us. What’s interesting, three weeks on, is the postscript.
When writing, I was focussed on recognising that my plans had gone off course and the frustration that creates – disappointment, annoyance, and thinking of giving up. But by recognising these valid feelings without giving into them, something else happened.
The bootcamp crew finished January on a high and with determination to win at February too. And by the end of the month, my own training was back on track with 20kg added to my deadlift! So whilst setbacks and failures are disheartening, if we accept them as temporary and stick the course! My lost week left me with 95% of my year left. So take the £90 and be happy!
Richard
