In part thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, home exercise equipment has been flying off the shelves. Some of the more popular items (if you can afford them) are the Peloton bike or treadmill, the Mirror home training system, and the Tonal smart home gym.
Two things that separate the above three from their competition is the virtual personal training / stimulus that comes with them plus an additional monthly fee. They are often marketed as a way to save money compared to a gym membership, but aren’t they?
A high percentage of people who join gyms stop going to them after a few months and I would expect that the use of these products would have a similar arc. So if you’re like most people, these machines will end up costing more, as most gym memberships don’t require the same upfront costs as all of these.
People are always looking for ways to buy things that solve their problems, in this case the need to exercise. I have a friend who saw the dismay on my face when he told me that I had two separate gym memberships. Before I could ask him why he had two gym memberships, he quickly said “and I’ll join a third if I don’t start seeing results soon!”
Buying solutions rarely works as planned, because (in this case) the problem is not a lack of proper equipment or gyms. The problem is the common approaches that most people use in their attempts to solve this type of problem.
This is why I would recommend investing in Better Habits over all of the above options. You see, investing in others may help you initially / superficially, but it will also subtly lower your self-esteem. You start to depend on external forces to move you in the right direction.
Why not invest in yourself and develop better habits? Most people have failed to create better habits in the past, and this is often the reason why they turn to outside for help to solve their problems.
The problem was not you, but the way you tried to develop better habits. Most people try too much too soon and end up failing. It is the feeling of failure that stays with you rather than the habits you were trying to build.
Instead, start small and you’ll probably feel good about yourself and want to do more. In fact, the smaller the better when it comes to developing better habits.
The two most important factors in successfully building Better Habits are linking the activity to something you already do regularly and making the action small enough to overcome the inertia that prevents you from starting.
If you want to get in better physical shape, start doing a push-up immediately after getting out of bed in the morning. Once you’re successful with that for a few days, add in something like walking down the street after dinner. If you are like most people, that sense of success will drive you to do even more, and before you know it, you will have developed some better habits that will almost effortlessly help you achieve your goals.
Your success in creating these better habits makes any future attempts to create better habits even easier than before. Plus, you can save thousands of dollars by not buying any of those fancy training systems and using that money to go on a trip or adventure.
Best of all, when you take that trip, your best habits will automatically come with you, unlike any of those training systems. Because your Best Habits go with you, you likely won’t be left behind and will have to catch up when you return, as you would if your gear and the artificial inspiration you relied on were missing.
There is no better time than the present to start creating a better version of yourself, so why not give it a try today?
You can follow Sam on Twitter @SuperTaoInc
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