Just Making Excuses
I’m writing this in the café section of my gym, which is busier than usual because it’s January, and everyone’s getting stuck in to their New Year’s resolutions.
My New Year’s resolution, ironically, has been to decide once and for all whether to give up my gym membership. I have been on the fence about this for months, but now the fees have gone up, which always sharpens the mind.
My concern is that I don’t use the gym enough to make it worthwhile.
But any time I think about quitting I feel bereft. I love my gym. It relaxes and revitalises me. Every visit brings me joy.
So… why don’t I use it more?
At one point or another, we’ve all asked ourselves this: why don’t we do the things that we know will benefit us and make us feel good?
We know we feel better when we get regular exercise, or drink enough water, or go to bed at a reasonable time, or keep in touch with friends, or practice the flute, or write poetry, or keep on top of the gardening.
So why don’t we do it?
We never really get to the bottom of it, because we’re not really asking ourselves the question. We are about as sure as we can be that we don’t do these wholesome things because we are lazy, or undisciplined, or pointlessly self-sabotaging.
The only remedy is to be different. To be better. Which is a simple matter of pitiless self-purification for the rest of our lives.
But things look different when we ask ourselves this question with genuine curiosity and compassion, and engage earnestly and respectfully with the responses we get.
For example, if I ask myself ‘why don’t I go to the gym more?’, I can identify the following reasons.
My free time is very limited.
When I do have free time, I’m often tired and prioritise rest.
If the weather is nice, I will prioritise spending time outside. (I’ve lived in the UK long enough that I don’t take sunshine for granted.)
If my noise-cancelling headphones aren’t charged up, I won’t go. (The gym is only endurable if I have my own soundtrack.)
I sometimes set myself gym schedules and fitness targets, and when these fall by the wayside, I begin to avoid the gym because I feel ashamed and inadequate.
In this frame of mind, I am entirely dissociated from awareness of the pleasure I take in gym-going, and am only aware of the shame, and of my resentment of the gym for (to my mind) causing the shame.
…which brings me to where I’m at, in mid-January, wondering whether to throw in the towel.
So, when I look at the barriers to my attending the gym, I can recognise that
Some are to do with scarcity of time
Some are to do with my energy levels (particularly at this time of year)
Some are to do with logistics and practicalities
Some are to do with the way I am engaging with the gym
Some are to do with my feelings about myself
I could go through this list and tell myself that these barriers are not good enough reasons not to go. That I am just making excuses.
I could tell myself that I need to make time (what a fantastic superpower that would be! But until the laws of physics can be bent to make this happen, what we really mean by ‘making’ time is re-allocating it, taking it away from other activities - which assumes we are not hopelessly over-committed, or that we are in total control of what takes up our time).
I could tell myself that energy makes energy! And sometimes it absolutely does work that way. And other times it doesn’t, and I drag myself to the gym only to end up incapacitated by fatigue for a couple of days afterwards.
I could tell myself that I just need to be more organised. And believe me, there is nothing I would like more than to be more organised. But nearly half a century on this planet has taught me that life works better when I factor into my plans a generous margin of error / inefficiency.
I could tell myself that I need to be more positive and resilient - that when I fall off the exercise wagon, I just need to dust myself off and get back on. (Which would be easy to do if I hadn’t spent a lifetime berating myself for not making time for all the many things I’m meant to be doing, for not being energetic enough, for not being organised enough…)
I could tell myself not to be a quitter. (But if I need to change so much about myself in order to do this right, maybe I’m really not cut out for it…)
There is no way to feel OK after an internal conversation like this, which is more like a character assassination, or a bad school report (‘must try harder!’), than a constructive attempt at problem-solving.
I come away with the same problem - I don’t go to the gym as much as I’d like - but with added shame and judgement, and no practical suggestions.
This is where it is helpful to turn the question around, and consider why I do go to the gym.
When I do so, I make the following observations:
It feels psychologically important to have a place for me that is neither home nor work - particularly after the Covid lockdowns.
Physical activity helps me blow out the cobwebs: I experience calm when I am exercising that is difficult to achieve in other ways.
I like it that I don’t need to commit to being there at any particular time (as I would for, say, Parkrun)
It is nice to have somewhere indoors to exercise when it’s raining (as it so often is).
I enjoy the experience of being alongside other people, without having to interact with them.
I like the variety of things I can do at the gym: work at the cafe, listen to audiobooks on the elliptical trainer, go to a class, have a swim. Even when life gets in the way, the fact that these options exist for me feels comforting, and creates helpful emotional space in my life.
So, the gym is important to me for reasons other than the obvious.
What I value about it is the feeling states it helps me achieve; the variety it brings to a life stage where variety is a bit lacking; the possibility of engaging with it on my terms.
It’s notable that none of the reasons I enjoy the gym turn out to be anything to do with improvement. Nowhere in here is a burning desire to get stronger, faster, leaner, fitter as an end in and of itself.
It makes sense to me now why I don’t go more often: flexibility suits my life stage and circumstances, and feels important to a sense of my autonomy.
It makes sense to me why I don’t quit: to do so would feel punitive - and would mean giving up the possibility of a variety of experiences that help to keep me buoyant.
The gym is good value when I think about it in my own terms. It becomes even better value if I can let go of some of the perfectionist expectations around it that make it hard for me to feel good about going - the expectation that I’ll make progress with my fitness at a certain rate, that I’ll become a ‘regular’, that it will form part of an iron-clad routine that structures my weeks.
If I can let myself engage with it realistically, in the ways that work for my life as it currently is, I can take more pleasure in it, I can feel gratitude for what it offers, rather than feeling oppressed by the tacit demands I imagine it is making on me, and I will be kept away less often by guilt and shame.
When we feel like we’re ‘just making excuses’, it is always worth taking time to look at the situation with genuine curiosity and compassion.
Why would you make excuses not to do something you really want to do?
What assumptions do you make about the kind of person you are, when you tell yourself you’re making excuses?
Can you think of where these assumptions have come from? What messages might you have received in your education or upbringing?
Think about the thing you want to do but are avoiding. What are the pain points in the process - logistical, physical, emotional?
Do you recognise any of these difficulties from other areas of your life?
What expectations do you hold about the thing you are avoiding doing?
Could you change or drop some of these expectations to make the experience better for you, and more tailored to your particular wants and needs?
When we get away from treating ourselves like naughty children who need to be brought into compliance, we create space for creativity, clarity, self-knowledge and greater self-respect.
When we acknowledge that there are reality-based limits to our time, energy, and capabilities, we empower ourselves to make fully-informed decisions that suit us better.
When we identify what really matters to us - and what really doesn’t - we are freed up to focus our energies and efforts where they will be most richly rewarded.
This is the core of what we do in my 6-week workshop, Compassionate Productivity.
If you’d like to dip your toes into the curriculim, you can click here to sign up for a free, week-long mini-course by email!
