The Social Contract
On Day 2 of Awesome Facial Hair, which is day who-the-hell-even-knows-anymore of the quarantine and Day 11 of StoryAthlete® GRIT for April I made a startling discovery which is revealed in the video. Julia's been telling me, but I wasn't hearing it.
All jokes aside, the Covid-19 situation is creating big problems for a lot of people. Along with the death and sickness, we’ve got millions suddenly unemployed, unable to pay bills, and unsure of what to do next.
It’s terrible, yes.
But it’s also an opportunity.
Since it began, I’ve been studying markets and paying extra attention to what’s happening in the business world as the pandemic unfolds. Yesterday morning when I picked up my 35lb kettlebell, I thought about where I bought it.
Care to guess?
Right, Amazon.
Guess the brand?
Also Amazon.
And, for three in a row, can you guess what you can’t buy on Amazon right now?
If you said an Amazon brand kettlebell, well then, winner winner chicken dinner.
In fact, except for a reseller who wants $230 plus shipping, there’s not a single 35lb kettlebell on Amazon today.
Why?
With all the gyms closed, the home-workout market has exploded. But I predict that when this is all over and we’re back to business as usual, most of the equipment will have collected dust.
Let’s face it; working out at home is nothing new. Anyone remember Jane Fonda on VHS? But the reality is that most people buy the equipment and then don’t do the work because, given the opportunity, we will quit on ourselves.
Especially when nobody is looking.
It’s easy to stay inside rather than go in the garage and do squats.
It’s easy to stay in bed rather than get up and jog around the park.
And it’s easy to leave that kettlebell you bought three weeks ago sitting in the corner.
The other day my buddy Robert Bell, who’s doing his first round of GRIT this month, asked me what the difference was between it and doing CrossFit workouts at home on your own. Having been on the home-workout train for a couple of years, his question was easy for me to answer.
It’s the social contract.
It’s knowing that if I don’t show up and do the work, I get kicked out, and the ones I leave behind get stuck doing an extra two burpees every day for the rest of the month.
It's going from a "nobody knows" situation to an "everyone knows" situation.
It's, as someone on my team put it today, making sure that you're not the asshole.
So while it’s easy to quit on myself, it’s not so easy to quit on my team. So much so that, death or severe injury aside, they know I’m not stopping. They can count on this; there’s no question, and I've never missed a GRIT workout.
The social contract is a powerful, powerful thing. We’ve had people do their workouts in the stairwells of hospitals, in airports using luggage as weights, and on exotic beaches while they were on once-in-a-lifetime vacations.
During this pandemic, we’re all getting an up-close look at the extent to which we are social beings. And it’s reminding me that, for most of us, we’re better off running in a pack than going it alone.