The Easy Way to Get to the Gym Everyday in 2014

You want to get fit? Want to build up strength and endurance? So, you went and purchased a gym membership, with the new plastic membership card taking pride of place in your wallet. Well done!

Thing is, getting to the gym can be a bit of a process, can't it? It's cold/raining/hailing/blowing with gale force wind outside. You're hungry/tired/stressed/looking forward to watching your favourite television show. There are 1,001 things you could do rather than go to the gym.

The buyer's remorse sets in. You've signed away £40/£50/£80 a month for the next year on that gym membership. If you don't use it, you're wasting resources. You won't get strong. Most importantly, you won't be caring for yourself in the way you intended.

But you're in luck! I have learned the secret to getting yourself to the gym every day. What's more, it's easy! You will wake up in the morning looking forward to getting to the gym. The weather won't matter. What's on TV won't matter. You'll find yourself thinking about the reasons to go rather than the excuses not to go.

The best part - I will share my method with you completely for free.

The easy way to get to the gym every day in 2014 is to have a shower like this in your home:

Enter the shower

First, you need to build it where there is no heating, and with single pane windows that face directly onto a wide open surface. There should be nothing between the outside and the glass to break the wind.

The tanks... basically glorified pressure washers

Then, have no running water. Don't plumb that shower in! Instead, make it a process, where you need to boil up hot water to fill the tanks. Once full, you need to pump them to build up enough pressure.

The 'shower head'

Finally, use no fancy shower head attachments. A large aquarium cleaner head will do!

Once you have constructed your shower, the gym instantly becomes a magical place. There's hot running water you can use, hands free. There's central heating, meaning that you don't risk pneumonia every time you wash and then stand in a freezing room soaked from head to toe. And the shower can last for more than 4 minutes!

Using the easy way to get to the gym everyday in 2014, I've already gone everyday since December 1st, with the exception of Christmas Day and Boxing Day (when I got just a little bit ripe). That's all there is to it.

You'll find that going to the gym becomes as much a part of your day as taking a shower.

The Evolution of Ownership

Ownership is a funny concept. Variously defined, I've settled on "the right to the possession of a thing".

As children, we are taught what is 'ours' and what belongs to others. We're taught the art of sharing, all the while being reminded that what is ours should remain ours, and should return with us at the end of play time.

As we grow, some of us lose our things by force, or by bad fortune, or by our own forgetfulness. We experience loss and it is painful. We then have to do without our things, or save up to replace them.

With time, we learn jealousy, seeing the things others have and wanting them for ourselves. We look at our own lives, and think, why do I not have these things?

When owning things has meaning, we learn that owning relationships does, too. We obsess over others, we chase others, we feel jealousy when we cannot have others. We plant flags in our relationships.

Finally, if relationships with others can be owned, logically we, too, can be owned. We sell our time to our employers, we declare to partners that we are 'theirs', and we contract out our futures by acquiring debts.

Oddly, it is following this move from owner to owned that we are called fully adult.

I'm not the first one to muse on ownership - plenty of philosophers, sages, and prophets have done so before I moved onto this boat to think about life. Now, though, I understand why it's a much discussed subject:

• The concept of ownership is false. Nothing is ever owned. Things can be borrowed, used, taken by force, but never really owned. Life is finite - what is ours today is lost tomorrow.
• Ownership has a great power over our minds. It drives us to make massive trade offs in our lives. It discourages us from chasing our bliss. It compels us to hoard. At the worst, it brings out our cruelty; it arouses in us greed and malice.
• Rejecting ownership is a revolutionary concept. The established social order is predicated on ownership as a central aim in life. Dropping ownership as an aim is a direct challenge to that order.

So, what can you do to break the habit of ownership? I imagine living life in a barrel or suggesting that you sell all your posessions and give the proceeds to the poor might be a bit extreme. Instead, begin with the following:

• Aim to create more than you consume.
• Be kind to yourself, and to others.
• Give time, rather than things.
• Recognise the abundance all around you. Make a conscious effort to see it everyday.

And ask yourself, if everything you own disappeared tomorrow, what would you really have left?

How to Prioritize

Is your to do list longer than your arm? Does thinking about the things that need to get done discourage you?

We often choose to spend our time without thinking about it. Our lives are filled with external distractions - advertising entices us, our bosses ask us to work late, and our tech bings and flashes with news and updates.

Getting a bit of head space, then, is a challenge. With the constant distraction and the endless ways we could spend little bits of our lives, how to choose? How to decide?

I went to a time management seminar at Inner Space. The seminar details were posted at work, but I think our HR team didn't know that Inner Space is a hippy haven. This wasn't to be your typical time management seminar, drawing grids and deciding if something is both important and urgent or not.

Instead, the seminar leader encouraged us to focus on our ultimate aims in life. Not on hitting targets. Not on achieving the highest profit in time for quarter end. Instead, she suggested the following 3 aims:

1. Unconditional contentment
2. Unconditional love
3. Unconditional peace

These 3 aims are focused on your internal state rather than on the external world. They are also achievable, regardless of what is going on around you. 

The seminar ended with the leader advising that, if we consider our aims in all that we do, and if we let go of the things that won't help us achieve these aims, many things on our to do list will fall away.

Think about something on your to do list right now. Ask yourself - will doing this thing lead me closer to a state of internal contentment, love, and peace? If it won't, then is it truly necessary?

The more you do this, the more you may be surprised to learn how many things on your to do list are externally motivated and directed: 

• Are you chasing that promotion to increase your esteem in the eyes of others, or are you doing it because you are passionate about it, and it will bring you contentment in your work?
• Are you trying to lose weight to appear more attractive to others, or are you trying to improve your health and fitness so that you can pursue your passions and show yourself love?
• Are you buying things for your home in order to display it with pride to others, or are you working to create a space where you can find peace?

Following this simple self interrogation technique, you may find that some items remain on your list, but the motivation behind them is clarified. By knowing that you are working on something that will bring you closer to your aims, you will find that life becomes less of a chore and more of a joy.

Take a look at your to do list right now. What will those things help you to achieve?