How to donate to your gym
And what to do when you want to stop
How to donate to your gym in 3 steps (as told by an expert, me):
Get a monthly gym membership
Hold ideal time slots to go to gym classes on your calendars, with no backups whatsoever
Get sick, get off track, see ideal times come and go, make no adjustments
And drumroll please.... you've donated to your gym! In my case (this time), from November 19-January 5. Congratulations!
Habits are fickle, aren't they?
I've been a member of Orange Theory for at least three years, generally going twice a week, and even with that tenure, I fell off. The result? Well, 1,000 words.
So what do we do when it's time to change a habit or get back on track?
My go-to reset source is James Clear's Atomic Habits which offers a few quick checks:
How can we make this new habit obvious, the most clear, unforgettable thing to do?
How can we make it attractive, a magnetic pull, grounding, and a feel-good activity?
How can we make it easy, especially in the first 2 minutes we start engaging on it?
How can we make it rewarding, that fuels our sense of accomplishment and self?
How I actually stopped donating to my gym:
First, I had to reset my goal: get back to the gym...which is not the same as forcing myself to do what worked for me two months ago. By giving myself permission to reset the early AM time I arrive to a mid-day or later-in-the-day option, I made the gym more appealing. I'm lucky to have other choices than dragging myself in the cold Wisconsin darkness and I can make it.
Then I went to the class time options and reset the way they show up in my calendar so I could see with ease which option worked best each week (it was obvious!). Even deleting the old early AM calendar holds (that had been holding my self-esteem over my head in some ways) was rewarding.
But here's the lesson: Can you guess what made going back attractive?
The people. The coaches at Orange Theory said, "Hey Claire, I'm glad to see you! How have you been?".
No judgemental, "Where have you been?", no pressure to explain myself, just a high-five. This was the nudge I needed to not beat myself up for the next 60 minutes of work. It was more appealing for me to say, "I'm back today and this is where I'm starting." than, "Where have I been? Why is this so hard?!"
And I don't know about you, but I'd rather go back to a place where I felt good about myself than a place where I was talking myself down. Are the post-gym selfies any better? Of course not. I'm shrimpy and frazzled as ever - but feeling good.
The people around us matter when we've got big goals. And it's worth asking yourself if you've got the right people around you.
You're worthy of a teammate, a person who will non-judgmentally welcome you as you are while still honoring where you want to be. The path in between can be more joyful, strategic, and effective when you're kind to yourself. If you think about your goals for 2025 (whether they started with resolutions or not), and you realize you could use a teammate, let's talk! I'd love to discuss how coaching could serve you or your team.
