I Beg Your Pardon (Or Will Even Pay You For It)
Last modified 2 weeks ago.
Years ago, I took Legal Studies 201 in college. (I’m no legal expert, of course, but humor me). I learned that not all contracts have to be in writing. Some are implicit, which is why they are called implied contracts.
Take your local friendly barbershop, for example. . .
If you walk into a barbershop, the barber calls you over, gives you a haircut, and you are expected to pay afterwards. The barber doesn’t say, “Before you sit down, I want you to know the haircut is $25. Do you agree to that?” No, given the circumstances and environment, the parties involved are entering into an implied contract (or silent agreement). You are expected to pay, and the barber is legally entitled to expect you to pay, as well. (I suppose you could try to make a different case and not pay, but I think a police officer would disagree with you).
It works well at a barbershop, and many other businesses, too.
But implied contracts can creep up where they shouldn’t. . .
They can be disabling in health & fitness matters.
For example, when I was working at gyms that cost good money (you know, the private ones with fancy machines), many clients would come in and exert an effort that did not remotely approach a productive training session. They never got past a warm-up effort during their exercises.
I thought these people weren’t really paying for training. They were paying to be pardoned.
The thinking goes something like this:
‘I am going to show up, pay this guy, barely learn, barely push myself, but since I am paying and he’s allowing me to do this, I can keep doing what I’m doing, feel like I am doing something, and never, ever really have to change.’
Crazy, right?
Just as the agreement is silent, so too is the thinking nearly silent. People might not be conscious of what they’re doing, but as the saying goes, deep down they know it.
People use the medical establish this way, too.
Suppose you go to the doctor for a preventable condition or ailment, maybe even at urgent care. The doctor shows up, you get a prescription, but no advice on how to prevent or resolve the cause of the issue. That’s buying a pardon. Maybe the doctor does give you advice on how to resolve the cause of the issue, buy you don’t take the advice. Instead, you continue to rely on treating the symptoms with prescriptions, and come back again and again. That's buying a pardon.
Implied contracts. . .
Sometimes they make all the sense in the world. . .
Sometimes they ruin our health & fitness. . .
Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself what you want out of life. Figure out what you specifically need to do to make those things happen. Then be willing to truly make the changes necessary for that to happen in your life. Do it incrementally. Do it however you can. But do it.
Do you really want to be one of those customers (or patients) that’s not willing to make the changes needed to really improve? Do you really want to be one of those people that’s paying to be pardoned for your (bad) behavior?
What would happen if ten years had since passed and you were looking back on your life?
Just my honest opinion, folks.
I would hate to see you doing that to yourself, especially when you could do so much better.