Priorities – Killing Us Slowly

Priorities

I was going to start this by looking back at the year passed and reflecting on the good and the not-so-good. But, lubricated by a few bottles of cider and a glass or two of Baileys I decided to take a different tack. I’m going to talk about our priorities and how they are slowly killing us.

It’s been more than 10 years since I left university. I’m now a father, a business owner, a home owner and in my early thirties. A few sources suggest the decade following your graduation from full-time education is the most eventful of your life. I can see why.

The decade or so since my graduation has seen the birth and rapid maturation of social media. It’s seen the multiplication of TV channels. The evolution of the mobile phone into the ‘smart’ phone – a device replacing the need for so many things, in one case, actual human interaction.

In my industry, we have seen the huge growth of fitness – it’s now more mainstream than ever. CrossFit has largely been a part of that, but now there are ‘celebrity’ fitness professionals thanks to shows such as The Biggest Loser. Gym membership has exploded and more people than ever are using the services of a personal trainer. It’s an interesting point, that last one – the fit are becoming fitter whilst the fat are getting fatter. It has echoes of the rich and poor debate, but in this case it’s not down to entitlement. It’s down to effort.

On a wider note, you could argue the last 10 years has been a society going wrong.

I’m not yearning for days gone by – I don’t think things were any better then, but there was certainly less pointlessness to influence the masses. Less shit on TV, fewer ‘celebrities’ famous for no reason other than appearing on a low-rent show. Case in point, TOWIE and Made in Chelsea didn’t exist. If you haven’t seen either, essentially they are a completely pointless existence glamourised thanks to ITV and Channel 4.

We’ve a decade more Joey Essex’s and Mark Wright’s now and that’s not a good thing….

The marriage of social media and smart phones seems to have led to the growth of the ego. We now have a glimpse into celebrity lives like never before, which in some cases has created a keeping up with the Jones’ culture – people want what ‘they‘ have. When they get it, they love nothing more than informing the world via Facebook. I’ve seen dozens of pics of people on holiday in luxury resorts and driving cars they’ve had to lease because affording to buy them is a pipe dream.

There are many people doing things with purely social media in mind. I have ‘friends’ on social media who can’t even have a dinner party at home without plastering pictures of it all over Facebook. For want of a better term, they can’t ‘live in the moment’ and enjoy life for what it is. They need everything documented, as if not sharing it with your 503 ‘friends’ renders it an activity that didn’t exist.

A personal training client of mine was telling me a while back how she feels as if her life is ‘a bit crap’ compared to her friends. When I asked her why she thought that her friends lives were so much better than hers, she told me because of what she sees on their Facebook. I reminded her that Facebook is a highlights reel. It’s airbrushing for life.

It’s all part of the ‘look how great my life is’ syndrome the world suffers with now. It didn’t once. I know it didn’t, I remember the days when it didn’t. The days when you could go out without a camera. The days when your phone was just a phone and not a reason to ignore your mates in the pub. The days when there was no such thing as wifi and you didn’t need to take pictures of your food in restaurants (I’m guilty of that last one, but in my defence I run a personal training business and people often ask me about my food!!)

There are some so addicted to their Facebook that they can’t even go on holiday without updating their status or sharing their every waking thought. Facebook is part of my generations’ DNA – we were the first to use it and have grown into adults with it, but this behaviour is alien even to me.

How we act, and the results of our actions is interesting to me. It forms part of my personal training business.

My job as a personal trainer means I’ve developed an acute interest in the human condition. The essence of what makes you, you. In an approach reminiscent of the vanilla-pyschology of talk shows and Tony Robbins, I’ve observed people from different walks of life and what makes them tick. Their attitudes, their actions, their choices and their behaviours, but most importantly where that has led them.

I’ve learned we are a product of our environment. All of the things you do, people you associate with, books you read, TV you watch. It’s all part of this complex web of ‘you-ness’. Where you are, where I am, where our kids will be is all a result of our choices up until that point. Save for a few exceptions, you are, right now, exactly where you deserve to be, in terms of your income, your fitness, your location etc. None of these are accidental or chance. You are where your choices have led you to.

Shaped by our influences, the voyeurism of Facebook and celebrity magazines we are descending into a vapid existence of fake tan, expensive haircuts, cheap magazines and reality TV. There is a generation (mostly my generation) who can tell you the name of the last 5 X factor winners but couldn’t tell you what an ISA is or when carrots are in season.

On a grand scale, priorities are wrong.

People live in houses they can’t afford to put on a show to the world. To provide the illusion of wealth, of success. I have clients who have lived in huge houses but moved on, realising it’s largely pointless to own a massive house when you barely use any of it or worse, can’t afford to keep it. It’s not cool if your mortgage cripples you every month and you can’t let your kids go on school trips because your mortgage swallows every penny you have. They don’t tell you that when you sign on the dotted line. My clients were the sensible ones – many others aren’t.

Where I live, there are people who drive around in hundred grand cars but can’t remember the last time they spent a day with their kids. They put their work and ego first, all of the time. I know one ‘super Dad’ who is very active on twitter, telling the world about the precious time he spends with his daughter – I’ve seen him in a local play centre a few times, head buried in his laptop whilst his daughter runs around on her own. It’s parenting by proxy. He’s an iDad. He’s there in body but not in mind.

I work long hours, but I balance it out by spending good quality time with my kids, not just sitting down all day with them…

The super Dad I mentioned isn’t on his own though. There are thousands more like him. Those expensive cars have to be paid for somehow, you know. Just because it’s the only 5 hours all week they get to spend with their kids it doesn’t mean they can stop working.

It’s a shame. And it’s slowly killing them.

On a worldwide scale, health is on the decline – there are more people on medication than ever before. Yes, we live longer now so a few of us may need to be ‘propped up’ with pills, but not such a high percentage of the population and not the types of medication being prescribed – mostly statins and anti depressants.

Apparently one in four adults are now on anti-depressants, many of which have been prescribed because life events have knocked somebody down for a short while and they have ended up on medication – in a few cases, for years. I know this to be true because I have a number of friends on AD’s – some of whom were prescribed them because of work stress or a relationship breakup.

Are we genuinely more depressed? I categorise depression as a serious illness, a chemical imbalance, a debilitating condition. Not feeling a bit crap about a situation. Is life really depressing us, or are we just in need of better coping strategies? An acceptance that sometimes, life is a bit shit and you take a knock? Is it symptomatic of an age of convenience, where it’s easier to go to a Doctor and expect to be given a pill to fix things instantly?

The poor NHS. Not many people are willing to help themselves any more. When I worked with the NHS the attitude of many patients was basically “I’m sick, it’s up to YOU to make ME better”. It’s a shame. Few people take ownership of their situations.

Unfortunately, the quick fix that people want for their issues doesn’t work. It masks problems. Want proof? Anti-depressants are now the most commonly prescribed medication in the UK.

With regards to the statins, I’m yet to be convinced that for the most part, they do anything that exercise and a better diet couldn’t. You could probably even extend that to anti depressants in some cases. Let’s start by eating less crap and more carrots…

It brings me back to the priorities issue again. Where people direct their (lack of) effort.

Diet is a real problem area. I’ve spent significant chunks of my working life interviewing and advising people on their eating habits. I’ve learned that in a lot of cases, people can’t be bothered to feed themselves or their kids decent food. It’s ‘easier’ and ‘quicker’ to eat shit food.

Since when did easier and quicker become more important than ‘better’ and ‘healthier’?

My eldest son is a terrible eater, but what he doesn’t know is that the sauce he has on his pasta contains 7 different vegetables, or that he has grass-fed butter with his meals, or that he has been eating chicken, beef and lamb cut into tiny pieces. Yes it’s more effort than giving him a bag of crisps with every meal, but it’s important to us that he is healthy.

Financially, many people are shot to bits and that creates more stress – another nail in the coffin of a generation.

One of my closest friends took a loan through a friend when he was 16. He’s now nearly 32 and has been in ever-increasing debt ever since. He’s in his thirties and hasn’t known an adult life without debt. Not a single day. Let me be clear, this isn’t a student loan or a mortgage, it’s just consumer debt. The kind taken on by those who are just too impatient to save. An adulthood where debt is a constant companion. It’s so sad.

Unless he comes into some serious cash at some point, he can kiss goodbye to ever owning a property – he can’t afford to pay his debts off, never mind save a deposit for a house. The clothes, the guitars, the Xboxes, the gigs etc paid for by these loans – have they made him happy? Probably fleetingly, but I bet the pain of being financially crippled outweighs the pleasure he received from all of his spending.

My mate isn’t alone though, lots of the people my age that I know are in some sort of debt. They don’t save anything or have a pension, because that’s for another time. It’s for when they’re old. For now, saving for retirement or paying down their debts just eats into their beer money.

I read a fantastic article on Vice about a generation who can’t grow up. It’s so brilliant because it’s so real to me. I know very similar people – people in their thirties, crippled by debt, on a road to nowhere and haven’t had a hangover free weekend in a decade. If you listen to Russell Brand (not something I recommend by the way), it’s the ‘system’ (whatever the hell that is) that’s the problem. As a product of this so called system, I’ll argue it’s not the problem. The problem is a generation of people haven’t accepted responsibility. Responsibility to themselves, to society, to their family. They’ve delayed the inevitable by adopting the head in the sand approach to life.

If they don’t take any notice to their life, their problems, their lack of direction, their debt then it doesn’t exist.

Debt is the bedfellow of consumerism. I think I remember the change, the time when it became normal to be in debt. It was post-1997 when Tony Blair and his ‘new’ Labour party took the reins of power.

Through my juvenile eyes I saw the increase of the middle classes – everyone seemed to have more money. Families went from one car to two. Mums started to work. Was this because of an increase in available jobs or because, well, someone needed to pay for sky TV and mobile phones? I don’t know, but family life for all changed then.

(By the way, don’t leave comments below about politics, I’m a personal trainer, not a politician – it might have all been built on debt, I don’t know (or care)).

More so now than ever, family life is dictated by a screen in the corner of the living room. Christmas has just gone by and I must have heard people complain about how bad the programmes were at least 20 times. It’s as if we have lost the ability to be entertained by anything but the TV. Family life should involve days out and fun playing, not hours of TV watching.

Personally, I don’t watch much of it, just a few shows. I detest the fact that every weekend is full of programmes where people are bullied and have their talent (or lack of) judged by a panel of cretins.

With viewing figures in the millions though, it would appear I’m the outlier.

Waistlines have grown at the same rate as the screens. It wasn’t that long ago a 40 inch TV was a decent size – now most houses have a 50 inch TV. Likewise, when I started working in GP referral exercise, a twenty stone person (280lb) was rare. When I finished working in that field (2012) I’d see 2 or 3 every week.

We live in an age where there is more available to us than ever before – in the western world even people on low incomes live in more luxury than the kings of relatively recently. Hot water, food, electricity, internet, phones, cars, hundreds of TV channels and more shops than we could ever visit. It’s ruining us. I’m not suggesting we should get rid of those things – that would be hypocritical as I sit here in my warm house, with a HD TV on the wall playing a show on a paid-for channel, writing on my MacBook Pro, but I am suggesting we exercise a bit of restraint around some of it.

Why should I, or anyone else care about the fate of a generation? I don’t know to be honest, I don’t have the answer. I suppose I’d just like to see the world in better nick really.

Hey, it’s January the first. It’s the time-honoured day to make changes, so in the interest of improving ourselves…

As a collective, let’s do more things. Have more experiences. Rather than sit down all weekend watching TV, go out for a walk. Leave your laptop at home. Sell the car you can’t afford and use the money you save to invest in your future. When you have a bit of spare cash, take a holiday.

That feeling of exhaustion you get when you climb stairs? It’s not normal. Change it. Get some exercise. Buy a bike. Join (and use) a gym. Cook and eat real food. Learn when vegetables are in season. Understand how your body reacts to certain foods. Stop boozing for a week or two or five. Stretch. Challenge yourself once in a while.

Read more. Watch less. Learn a new skill. Build something, repair something. Go somewhere new. Talk to the bank about saving options. See if you can cut down on money you waste. For a whole month, take a packed lunch to work. Drive less and leave work on time for a change.

I’m going to work hard to do and see more this year. I don’t do badly, but there’s always another level.

Get your money together by reading these books…Rich Dad Poor Dad and Money Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom.

Get your health together by reading this one…How to Eat, Move and be Healthy.

There aren’t books to get you off your arse and away from the TV – that’s where you have to take ownership yourself.

One last thing…

These are the days of our lives and they are ticking away one by one. When you look back at your life, I hope you have more than countless hours in front of the TV and too many takeaways as your memories.

I know I will.