We’re in the business of providing greater health and better quality of life in exchange for money. From time to time, the money part becomes an issue.

People hear a price of around $200/month and start comparing to what they could get for that $200 instead. Rather than comparing the price to what else they could buy, I want to help people realize what they’re giving up.

Dr. Sean Pastuch, founder of ActiveLife, has a great selling technique when it comes to onboarding new clients. Sometimes he’ll encounter someone who wants and needs his services but balks at the price. He’ll ask them to imagine the opposite scenario. Instead of you paying me money for the transformation you want and need, I will pay you the same amount to stay the same. I will pay you to not workout, to not have a better quality of life, and to not get out of pain and discomfort. Would you take that deal?

This question is something I’ve thought about often since I learned of it from him over 3 years ago. I don’t use it often in selling someone, but simply use it to reaffirm my own belief in my own health. It reminds me how much I value my health, and once I’m reminded of how much my health means to me I tend to make better health-related decisions.

With this prompt in mind, I think about how you can’t pay me to eat foods that I know are doing harm to my body. You can’t pay me to put something in my body I don’t want to. You couldn’t pay me any amount that would keep me away from my family. You couldn’t pay me enough to stop me from going to my gym or going to my church.

These are the things that make my life worth living. I’m protective over these things because they matter to me.

I recently listened to Peter Diamandis on Jay Shetty’s podcast “On Purpose” and I was impressed by how protective he is about what he exposes his mind to. He is an engineer, physician, and entrepreneur best known for being the founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, he’s also co-founder and executive chairman of Singularity University, and co-author of The New York Times bestsellers “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think” and “BOLD: How to Go Big, Create Wealth, and Impact the World” and “The Future is Faster Than You Think”. I’ve read the last one and enjoyed it a lot.

Peter says on the podcast, “One of these things we have to do is be very careful to what we let into our brains. You couldn’t pay me enough money to have a lot of the content presented by television, newspapers, and magazines…they couldn’t pay to have me absorb it.”

Peter is so guarded about what he lets into his mind because he’s such a big believer in your surrounding environment influencing you. Through his research, he’s learned how easily our mind changes based on what it’s been recently exposed to.

Watching money leave your bank account is a very tangible thing and makes weighing the cost of A vs. B. a somewhat easy decision. Or I should say, we view the decision as easy, and of course rational (sarcasm), because we were able to evenly weigh the pros and cons of each transaction. We weighed the cost vs. reward and went for the greatest reward with the lowest cost.

When it comes to your physical and mental health, the costs and rewards aren’t so clear-cut. It’s only until you start paying more for coaches that know what they’re doing, or that you stop trading your attention to the news companies, that you truly see the value in what you’re doing. The value is very hard to see from the outside.

But let’s bring money back to the table. If you could get paid to cease any activities that helped further your physical and mental health…would you take it?

I think about this question when it comes to being tempted by the lesser brand in the grocery store that will save me a dollar. I weigh this question when it comes to hiring coaches for myself to help me grow. There are times when I want to eat way more sweets and desserts than I already do but look at what it’s really going to cost me in the long run.

I do my best to not compromise on anything health related. This goes for my mental health as well. I pay money to watch YouTube and Hulu without any advertisements and don’t have traditional cable. I can’t stand watching commercials because they are such a waste of my time. They can’t pay me to watch their commercials. Instead, I will pay them not to.

This question of getting paid to be unhealthy could sound like a joke to some, and get a response of, “of course you can pay me to sit on my ass and do nothing.” But when you watch enough time go by, you’ll realize moments are worth more than money. When you’ve seen enough death, you’ll start to value life and living above all else.

You may think losing money isn’t funny, but there are far greater things in this world you can lose than money.

Next time you go to trade money for something, think twice about what you’re actually giving up and getting.

-Coach Tony

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
1 John 2:15-17, ESV