If you take the average person in the western world, chances are the most expensive thing they will ever spend their money on is the house they live in. In fact a lot of people will spend the majority of their lives paying off the massive amount of money they have chosen to spend on the shelter in which they live.
While I was at university I had a summer job working in the building consents department at the local city council. I was involved in some administration work which meant I would often be handling the physical building consent documents. There was a question on the building consent application form that I would often stop and look at out of interest.
How long is the proposed building intended to exist?
The answer to this question was almost always the same – indefinitely*.
When people go about building a house they mean it to last the distance. They will spend a lot of time and money to ensure it looks the way they want, and that it’s built just the way they like it. You see, for most of us we’re only ever going to build a house once (maybe twice) in our lives – so we may as well make it last.
Do you think of your body as a house?
How many bodies does the average person go through in one’s life?
One! You’re only ever going to have the same body. There’s no way to replace it on this earth.
It is not surprising then that men and women will spend huge amounts of money on their bodies (just as they do on their houses). The make up, clothes, haircuts, hair product, gym memberships, exercise equipment, ‘healthy’ food, plastic surgery – all these things are to make our bodies look better and feel better (and hopefully last longer).
The problem I keep on seeing is that although the desire and motivation is there, unless they start using ‘quality materials and workmanship’, they’re in for a leaky building.
Is your ‘house’ built well enough to last?
Just as those people write ‘indefinitely’ on their building consents, most of us would like our bodies to last a very long time. The truth is we live in a world that is constantly taking its toll on our physical bodies.
Let’s face it, our bodies will eventually wear out and stop working, but just as some houses are designed and built better than others, so some bodies are built better than others. The important thing if we want to last the distance, is to make sure we are doing something to maintain our bodies and that what we are doing is actually profitable.
Building lessons
I am by no means a builder. I built tree huts when I was a child but apart from that the following has simply been derived from very simple logical observations.
1. You can spend a $10 million on straw but it’s never going to make as solid a house as one which uses $100,000 of stone.
Make sure you are spending your resources, your time and money on things that will make your body stronger and fitter for the long run.
2. You can have an unlimited supply of solid oak timber, but if you employ and inexperienced and lazy builder you may as well build your house out of the cheapest wood in the yard.
Get your facts straight. The fitness industry is full of information – most of it is just puffed up words that are based on the latest trends. Next time you read something, hear something or watch something, just ask yourself – would they be telling me all this if they knew it wouldn’t get them money in the long run? I only ever started making progress in my fitness efforts when I started learning the real truth.
3. You never build a house on sand.
This deserves its own article by itself as so many people do not understand this. If you want to make your house as strong and durable as possible, you’d better make sure its foundations are as strong as possible. Too many people think they can focus on one area of their body, and once that is looking the way they want it they’ll be happy. It just isn’t possible. First focus on getting your whole body as strong and as healthy as you can, and then you’ll have a base on which you can build your body.
*Which was rounded down to 50 years, but that kind of loses the point!
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