Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

“If you take all the money you spend on Starbucks and spend it here instead, you can totally afford this .” 

Or some kind of weird math about how much something costs side-by-side with your expenses like coffee, date nights, take-out, etc.

While the math technically adds up, this whole approach is fundamentally flawed. It doesn’t take into account your actual priorities and what you value. 

When people say they don’t have enough time or money for something, what they’re actually saying is that they’ve budgeted their time and money toward other things. And that’s totally okay! 

It’s helpful to think about both time and money as limited resources that we need to budget, and we can budget those things based on how important they are to us. Because everyone values and prioritizes different things, everyone’s budgets are different too.

So why does it seem like some people have endless amounts of time and money to travel *and* go out to eat *and* get to the gym *and* expertly decorate their home *and* get the kids to school *and* whatever else you see on their socials?

You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating… social media is not real life! It’s simply a highlight reel.

So forget what everyone else is doing, and focus on you. What’s important to YOU and YOUR family? What do YOU value?

Your morning trip to the local coffee shop might be an important part of your physical and mental health. It’s important to have routine and social aspects of your day. A smile from the barista, a quick chat with the other regulars, and a hot cup of your favorite brew might be the best way to start your day. If you value that time, we would *never* ask you to eliminate that part of your routine.

Similarly, you might go out on a weekly date night with your partner. Could you save some money and calories and make a healthier meal at home? Probably. Do you need to? Probably not! Dedicating time, money, and energy to your relationships is super important. There’s nothing wrong with spending that time and money on a dinner out on the town.

That said, we have finite resources. There are only 24 hours in a day, and only a certain amount of money in your bank account. If you want to add something new to your life, you will probably need to scale back something else.

So decide what’s important to you. Maybe your morning coffee is just a drive-thru stop at a fast food chain, and it’s not actually that important to you. Cool. Ditch it. Maybe you don’t get a lot of sleep because you’re up late scrolling social media. Do you need to spend that time on socials? Or would you rather spend it getting to sleep early so you can get up early and hit the gym? 

We can’t answer that question for you. But what we *can* do is help you figure it out.

Start by imagining what you want your day to look like. When do you get up? Where do you wake up? What do you do? Who are you with? How do you feel? Walk yourself through your whole day. Picture every detail. The more descriptive you can be, the better.

Then you can start to think about how to make that vision a reality, and the things that are most important to you start to become more clear. 

That might involve more time at the gym, or it might not. It might mean doing more grocery shopping and fewer restaurant trips. You can also potentially combine things. For example, you and your partner can try cooking together. It’s quality bonding time, and it’s generally pretty economical. Everybody wins!

The reality is that you cannot have literally everything. But you can have the things that are most important to you personally. 

Need help figuring it out? We’re here for it! You can book a free coaching call with a PPG Coach using this link: Book a No Sweat Intro.

We’ll talk about what’s most important to you and how strength and fitness potentially fit into that. No matter what happens, we promise to point you in the right direction.