Competing & Compelling Priorities

We all desire body confidence – FACT! This is one of the most basic and compelling motivators behind many people’s health and fitness ambitions. I know because it was a huge motivator when I was struggling with my own weight. I wanted to have more body confidence and shake off feeling like the fat kid at school and build some resilience against the many health problems that run in my family. This was compelling enough for me to start going to the gym, often seven days a week, reading Men’s Health cover to cover each month and cleaning up my bad diet. For me, getting the most out of my 20s was an absolute priority as I felt I had missed out during my teens due to my size, confidence and often crippling shyness.

Jump forward twelve years and I now find myself working in the health and fitness industry empowering others to go on their own unique journeys. I regularly hear clients lament the younger generation and how they are putting them to shame in their local gym.

Now it’s easy to point out that they have more spare time and fewer responsibilities in terms of family and work commitments, which is often very true. Clients regularly say if the shoe was on the other foot they would have no problems achieving the same outcome and that the playing field simply isn’t level.

Now firstly I would never recommend comparing yourself to others regardless of age, gender or ability as this is a shortcut to feeling despondent about your own valuable achievements.

Secondly, this comparison is not about age or gender it is about competing and compelling priorities. While it is true to say the younger generation do have more time; which certainly helps matters, it is the compelling nature of the goals and willingness to prioritise them, that is the overriding factor in success. The younger generation wants to build body confidence, possibly perform well in a given sport but ultimately meet a partner.

If we compare this to the older generation, we could still say that body confidence is important but in my experience, this is truer when a relationship ends and the motivator becomes more about empowerment and reclaiming their body (building body confidence for a new partner). For those in a steady relationship however this is much less the driver that it once was, and this is the important part.

As we get older, we cannot escape the fact that our lifestyle and bad habits will start having a more noticeable effect on our health. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes are just a few conditions that become more prevalent as we age, each heavily driven by our lifestyle choices.

This is where the divergence occurs, as the older generation too often do not feel that this is compelling enough to make the big changes necessary to really prioritise their health. Work commitments, time and growing families do drain our time and energy but in my experience, people have forgotten the benefits of being a little selfish and putting themselves first.

Ask yourself what would need to happen to make your health a compelling driving force that you had to prioritise it above all else? Don’t wait for your health to take a turn before you decide to take action.

If you are ready to be a little more selfish and prioritise your health and fitness for the future then get in touch and learn how our online coaching and face to face training services can help you prioritise your health, we can even help build body confidence too.

Schedule a consultation above (online or face to face available).

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