3 Lessons The Gym Teaches About Life

Most people go to the gym to get strong, build muscle, lose fat or build cardiovascular endurance. But might there be something more to learn? Something more to gain other than just the physical benefits? 

Exercises might just be the singular biggest predictor of your physical wellbeing, and the fact that it's the bare minimum requirement for looking after your body is more than likely hard to disagree with.

And, it’s for that very reason that most people start going to the gym. However, I'm here to make a case for it not being the reason they continue.

When we talk about addiction, we talk about drugs, porn, gambling and gaming. But there’s almost always one that tends to creep into that list, exercise/fitness. And the fact that it’s the only healthy one makes it stand out.

Yes, exercising can release endorphins and make you feel very good, but I’m not convinced it’s what’s making people addicted. Instead, it’s for reasons much deeper than what can be observed on the surface.

So let’s look at what they could be.

For Anything Good, You Must Wait

Delayed gratification is the ability to resist an immediate reward for a better and more fulfilling reward at a later point in time.

And, if you’ve started going to the gym for any form of physical results, this is going to become apparent pretty quickly.

Whether it’s resisting tasty foods, resisting the temptation to skip the gym for the warm, comfortable bed or refusing to cut the run any shorter than what you planned.

These are forms of delayed gratification, but learning this through the gym is a very unique and powerful way to do so, because unlike anything else, the gratification that has been delayed is very visual and measured.

Garmin watches, scales, and mirrors give us very literal, undeniable and numeric forms of progress. Being able to see progress this way tends to place the idea of delayed gratification very precisely into the mind, lodging it somewhere that makes it very hard to forget.

Similarly, this form of progress also teaches you something else, the compound effect.

When the compound effect is mentioned, it’s almost always in relation to money, finance and interest. But once again, learning it through the gym is a very special way of doing so.

You could execute your diet, training and schedule to perfection for the first week of your journey, and yet what reflects in the mirror would not match your effort.

In fact, in many cases, this may be the outcome for the first couple of months. But does that mean the work you’ve put in is meaningless? 

Something magical happens in the gym where the work you put in today does not have its desired effect until three months later. And the work you put in during the fourth month doesn’t pay off until the seventh, and so on.

These are total estimates, everyone’s different, but the rule still applies.

Many people quit long before they start seeing what their work does, and the ones that stick are the ones lucky enough to learn this wonderful lesson. 

It’s an agreement you make with yourself that during the heavy lift, or during the sprint, what you want from them will not manifest itself until much later. 

Again, learning this visually, seeing your body change in real time, allows this lesson to truly sink in.

It’s the consistent and persistent effort over time that gets you to where you want to go, not an explosion of motivation for a week. 

Pain Is Your Best Friend 

Whether you’re squatting, running or walking on the stair master, you understand that the harder they are, the more you’re going to improve and the faster you’re going to get what you want.

This isn’t unique to the gym, the same thing applies to most things in life. Friction and discomfort cause growth.

Anything worth achieving is going to be hard to get, and how much discomfort you're able to handle predicts how much of what you want you’ll get.

A big house, a successful career, a happy and loving family, none of these are a walk in the park, they take grit, determination and a willingness to persist through the suck. 

Getting used to pain in the gym not only increases your tolerance to it, but creates a connection between it and a positive outcome, it changes your relationship with discomfort.

Having a distaste or a tendency to avoid pain and discomfort only decreases the likelihood of success. The gym changes that. 

Identity Is Earned, Not Claimed

Who are you? And what comes to mind when that question is asked?

If you fall in love with the gym, it won’t take long until you identify with it, but this cannot and will not happen overnight. 

Identity is how you perceive yourself, and if you want anything worthwhile in life, you’re going to have to identify with someone who’s capable of getting it.

Buying new gym wear and rocking up for the first time does not change your identity, in fact, it seriously attacks it.

Walking into the gym for the first time makes you feel like an imposter, you think everyone is watching you and is going to laugh at you when you walk up to the machine and don't know how it works.

After a while? Well, it feels like home. The only difference is the time and work in between. 

What this teaches you is that you cannot claim to be someone, you have to put in the work to become them.

So, if you decide one day that you’re going to chase your dreams, you’re almost always going to feel like an importer at first. What the gym teaches you is that imposter syndrome is not permanent, and it might be that very insight that allows you to keep going.

It also teaches you that if you currently do not like your answer to the first question, you can actually do something about it. 

The gym changes you, which teaches you that you can be changed and opens the door to becoming someone completely new.

Conclusion

The gym teaches you very deep and philosophical lessons about growth and life, in a way that’s physically measured and experienced.

Work hard and consistently enough, and you’ll get what you want.

Discomfort is not something to be avoided, and the more you experience it, the more you grow.

If you do not like who you are, the good news is you can change. You can change your entire identity.

Learning and experiencing these lessons in a way such as the gym ensures that they’re truly learned. And whether you’re conscious of the lessons or not, there is no doubt that you’ll learn them.

In short, the gym does a hell of a lot more than just change your body!