What Exercise Can Teach You About Life

All who have made exercise a part of their lives know that it does more than just get your body in good shape. In fact, exercise teaches many lessons and improves other areas of your life as well. All the more reason to get in that exercise! So here I wanted to lay out some of the key aspects that we learn and practice through exercise that apply to our success in life too!

Consistency

Exercise teaches you the value of consistency. When you exercise, the biggest asset you have is showing up, and showing up consistently. (Or getting to the gym or out on the field.) If you show up every day, you make progress and you see results. If you don’t show up, you don’t see results and you don’t make progress. This is a concept that can be applied to anything, not just exercise. It can be applied to work, school, a relationship, a startup, etc. You have to make small consistent efforts to achieve your goals. 30 min of exercise 5 days a week will help you more than 2.5 hours of exercise one day a week. It is technically the same amount of time, yet it is the consistency that brings better results. Showing up and putting in a little bit of work but consistently is the key to success. The more you do it, the better the results and the more it becomes a part of you.

Goal-setting

Life is all about setting goals. Without goals you are just drifting through life without a purpose. If you look at the top men and women in any field, they all have one thing in common: they are all goal-oriented. So, what does exercise have to do with goals? Quite a lot actually. If you think about it, exercise is all about achieving your goals. If you want to lose weight, you have to set that goal and figure out what to do to achieve it. You need to plan your meals and training. If you want to build muscle, you need a weight-lifting regimen. If you want to run a marathon, then you need to figure out how much you need to run and how often in order to achieve it. 

Through exercise you practice setting a goal, and making daily plans which lead you towards that goal. And, you learn how to track your progress towards that goal through means such as progress photos, weight measurements, etc. 

You need the same skill in life. You need to constantly set big long-term goals with mini goals along the way that help you achieve them. Exercise and health goals help you to practice that and enjoy the satisfaction that comes from achieving your goals and seeing the results from your work!

Discipline

Discipline is something we all struggle with. Part of discipline is forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do. A lot of us think that we have discipline, but most of us only have a small amount of it. We use our discipline to accomplish the things we need to do, but we often burn out. This is where exercise comes in. When you exercise, you have to have discipline. You have to push yourself even if you don’t want to. You’re going to get tired. You’re going to want to stop, but you must push on. There will be days you don’t want to wake up and go to the gym but you set a goal and know you must achieve it. When you exercise, you are learning to overcome that initial reluctance, and that is a skill that can be applied across the board, to your job and to your home life. No one has been successful in their life without learning self-discipline.

There is a famous study in the world of psychology involving children and marshmallows. At Stanford University, they measured children’s ability to delay gratification. They could wait to get a preferred treat or eat what they had in front of them. Those who were better able to delay gratification ended up being more successful later in life. This is a great example of the importance of discipline. You must give us temporary pleasure for long-term gain. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it in the end.

How to Push Through Pain

Exercise teaches you to push yourself through pain and to keep going. We always talk about “no pain, no gain”. This goes against our instincts which are to avoid pain or discomfort. However, pushing past the pain is how your body grows, and how you can achieve your life goals. Exercise teaches you to focus on the present and to keep pushing past failure. Not only that, it also teaches you that failure isn’t the end of the world. In fact, you are actively trying to fail when you exercise because that’s when you know you’ve given it your all. Failure is often the first step towards success. There’s no feeling quite like the one you get after a great workout or run. It’s a feeling of accomplishment, pride, and satisfaction. You might be wondering if those types of feelings are worth the pain. They definitely are. Every successful person has failed and they actually fail more often than most people. But that is why they are successful. So practice pushing through the pain.

Everyone Goes at Their Own Pace

In exercise, like in life, we all go at our own pace. One person does not know where another is coming from. One person does not know where they are going. And one person does not know the struggles another is going through. But we all have the same goal: To get better. To feel better. To live better. To be better. When we look around at others, we tend to compare ourselves to them. But it’s important to remember that everyone is different. And that’s okay. We are all working towards the same goal.

In the gym, one person may have a great body and you feel envious of them. However you may be a novice lifter and they may have 20 years of experience and follow a perfect diet. Everyone who has achieved a great body didn’t start out that way. They also had to look around and see people who looked better than them but kept going. The same applies to our own success in life.

There is always someone that is further along than us in something whether it is education, career, family, etc. But even if it takes you 10 years to get a 4-year degree, you still have a degree. No one cares how long it took you to get it and the same goes for anything. There are billionaires who started their businesses after the age of 40. No one looks down on them because they didn’t become a billionaire earlier. They still became a billionaire! 

So work towards your goals and dreams no matter how long it takes. Everyone’s circumstances are different and don’t be so sure you’d like to have the life of another. Psychologist Jordan Peterson mentions this analogy. Maybe you see the guy in the sports car with a girl and think how great it would be to be him. Yet you don’t see that the girl is a prostitute and he’s thinking about wrapping his nice car around a tree. So be careful what you wish for.

Focus on yourself and progress little by little every day and you will achieve your goals whether it be in the gym or in life.

Wrap Up

There are many more lessons that can be learned through exercise but these are the main ones that come to mind. In short, exercise is not only great for your health, but for your life as well. That is why it is important to implement daily exercise and encourage it for those who are children and adolescents. The lessons that you learn are invaluable, and the results, happiness inducing!