Have you ever been sitting at Starbucks, nursing a grande soy mocha latte and feeling frustrated about your income? You know the thoughts: If I could just make a little bit more money, I would have so much more freedom and be so much happier. Rich people suck and my life is so unfair, boo hoo…. Hold that thought.
Yesterday Rick and I ate lunch in Old Town. As we were walking back to the car Rick says, “I want ice cream”, so we made a detour to the ice cream shop which was conveniently located right by our car. I was perusing the flavors and deciding what I wanted when Rick says “Unless you’re really set on this, I’ve changed my mind.” I wasn’t really set on it so we left. On the way back to the car I asked him what happened. “It just seems silly to pay almost $4 for one scoop of ice cream when pints of Ben and Jerry’s are on sale for $3.99 at Albertson’s”, he said. Hard to argue with that.
I use the coffee analogy all the time. For the cost of two drinks at Starbucks you could buy enough coffee beans and Hershey’s syrup to serve mocha latte’s to the whole neighborhood so why spend $9 on only two drinks that don’t even have alcohol in them? Where’s the rationale in that?
The other biggie for me is going out to eat. Eating out is arguably my most favorite pastime but it makes no sense. For two people to go out and have a reasonably nice dinner one could realistically expect to spend at least $50, probably more, maybe even a lot more. That’s one dinner, one night; you go home empty handed and wake up hungry again the next day. How many really great meals could you prepare at home with $50 worth of groceries?
It took me a long time to figure out that I can spend my way through any amount of income. The answer to having more is not necessarily making more, it’s spending better. Past a certain point, financial freedom is not contingent on income, it’s contingent on how the income serves you.
You might be wondering what frivolous spending has to do with fitness or PiYo. Well, what it really has to do with is priorities. How do you allocate your resources so as to provide yourself with freedom and happiness instead of being enslaved by debt and ego? I can only speak for myself but I don’t want to work 16 hours a day just to pay the bills so one day I can drop dead from exhaustion. To me, health and fitness falls under the heading of freedom and happiness so I continuously look for ways to make these things work together.
The number one reason people site for not working out is a perceived lack of time and the number two reason is a perceived lack of money. Why don’t people have time? Usually because of work and why do they work so much? Because of money. This is the cover story but in many cases it is simply not true because untold dollars and hours are being wasted every day. It’s easy to say “I’m too busy to work out” but yet there seems to be plenty of time for watching TV or surfing the internet. Easy to say I can’t afford a gym membership or home workout dvd’s but where is that money going instead?
Don’t get the wrong idea, I’m not criticizing anyone for going out eat or spending time on facebook but I am only pointing out that many times the things we think are missing in our lives, like time and money, are not missing at all. We have both of them in abundance but fail to capitalize on what is already available. We allow resources to slide through our fingers instead of using them to better ourselves.
My great uncle recently died at the age of 91. My cousin, who is a well known baptist minister in Arkansas, flew out to preside over the ceremony. He said a lot of stuff, most of which went right in one ear and out the other, but he said one thing that just may have changed my life. He said “No one has any more time than anyone else. We all have the same 24 hours in a day, it’s what you do with that time that will set you apart.”
DeAnna Dimmitt Mind Body Fitness 