You’re Not Just Trading Time for Money You’re Sacrificing Your Health
I started to change a few years ago. At the time, I was studying psychology in college and working as a part time social worker.
I was sacrificing sleep to study and work more, sacrificing relationships for more income, and trying to be as productive as possible, with no free time left.
I hated the way I was living. All I felt was overwhelm, anxiety, and occasionally a momentary sense of accomplishment that never lasted.
A few months ago, I realized I was just another rat in a small wheel, promised wonders if I never stopped spinning.
I believed that if I focused all my time on making money and finding my passion, all my problems would disappear.
But in the pursuit, the biggest issue wasn’t just trading time for money, it was sacrificing my health and well-being for little money for that matter.
This is why I’ve been on a quest to understand why we do this desperate trade. I discovered the answer lay in the way we live - in modern life.
Society’s perspective
Modern life has led us to trade health for money, relationships for more time answering text messages from our boss, and well-being for a few extra dollars on a pay-check.
I came to Canada six years ago and quickly had to adopt this fast-paced lifestyle which is inherent to the culture.
I started working minimum wage two months after I arrived, while going to school and trying to make sense of the new way of living I was exposed to.
It was rough in the beginning, and the first thing I noticed was how little importance people placed on their time outside of work or school.
It felt like people were always working. To the point where they were literally trading their physical and psychological health for money.
Now, I’m aware this happens in other parts of the world too, but if you look at the statistics for anxiety disorders, obesity, stress, and loneliness, it’s particularly apparent in Canada and the U.S.
And I’m not here to shame society or criticize it heavily because there are also a lot of positives too.
That said, it’s clear that our health and well-being aren’t being prioritized in this type of modern life.
I had to come to find that if I just followed the steps society laid out for me, my life would look something like this:
Go to school for 20 years.
Work 50 hours a week for 50 years.
Finally enjoy my money and get my time back at 70—if I'm lucky enough to live that long and haven’t already destroyed my immune system due to chronic stress.
That’s a pessimistic view of modern life, but it’s how it feels when you’re working constantly and barely keeping your head above water.
In her book Do Nothing, Celeste Headlee describes the evolution of work. The key takeaway is that there’s been a significant shift in how people work and view their work, largely driven by progress in technology that have increased productivity.
Around the time of the Industrial Revolution, factories began systematizing processes and treating workers like resources that needs to be maximized for profit.
Hourly wages emerged during this period, and employees began working most of their waking hours just to make enough money to survive, while factories made all the profit.
I believe this is where the separation between health, well-being, and work began.
Today, working conditions aren’t as harsh as they were back then, but the mentality hasn’t changed that much.
We’re still expected to work as hard as possible, with life centred entirely around work, while other aspects of life are judged as secondary.
This is why so many people are stressed, out of shape, and unhappy. They’ve been led to believe that taking care of their health, their relationships and their wellbeing aren’t priorities.
As if the only things that matter are school or work, while everything else is optional.
But I promise you, this is a recipe for disaster. It’s why I coach lawyers, doctors, medics, and engineers who are out of shape.
You don’t want to find yourself overweight, stressed, and sick 20 years from now because you sacrificed your health for a promotion.
And if that is your reality right now, you need to shift, your entire mindset and set of beliefs around health will have to be shaken up.
You Have More Time Than You Think
I remember waking up at 5 a.m. to get to the hotel I was working at a couple of years ago, putting bed sheets on hotel beds and cleaning bathrooms.
In most of the rooms, there were those comfy chairs, and I remember taking flash naps on them—just sitting down, closing my eyes for a minute, waking up, and then going back to work.
I felt like a zombie: underslept, out of shape, with a poor diet, and stress levels at an all-time high.
What I failed to see at the time was how I was spending my time. In my mind, I thought that because of my job, school, and chores at home, I simply had no time left for my life.
And that’s the reality for a lot of people. Your life feels busy, and it seems unimaginable to fit more into it.
But that’s not true. I did have time; I was just using it the wrong way. I was spending a lot of time on two things: my phone and mindlessly hanging out.
If you think you don’t have time in your life to take care of your health, to exercise, to cook, or to meditate, pick up your phone and go to the screen time section.
I was probably spending 4–6 hours per day on my phone. The reason? I thought I needed to "unwind" or "relax." But that’s not what being on Instagram all day does to you—it does the opposite.
It overstimulates your brain and shows you all the things people are doing that you aren’t. It distorts your sense of what’s real life and what’s social media reality.
In my opinion, your phone is the biggest obstacle to changing your habits and taking better care of yourself.
Even without considering the content you’re watching, the time alone is robbing you of precious hours—hours you need outside of class or work to work on yourself.
Think about it: if you cut your screen time in half, you’d have enough time to work out consistently.
I know it doesn’t work that way immediately. The shift isn’t that fast…
Right now, if you don’t already have these habits in your life, it will demand a lot from you to start cooking your meals, exercising, or meditating whatever your plan of adopting to improve your life.
I’m not expecting you to stop using your phone and start doing everything perfectly. I just want you to realize that the "I don’t have time" excuse is just that—an excuse. The truth is, "I’m prioritizing Instagram or video games over my health."
Your brain doesn’t want you to face that truth because it means you’ll have to take action.
But cutting down on phone time is the easiest way I’ve found to free up time to work on myself, my health, and my well-being—without changing my job or compromising anything.
If your goal is to get in shape and start going to the gym, you should check out my program, Fitness Autonomy.
You Do Not Need a Lot of Money
The second idea I’d like to deconstruct is the belief that you need to be a millionaire to start prioritizing your health.
This is completely wrong. In fact, becoming a millionaire might do the exact opposite. To get there, you often have to condition yourself to prioritize making money above everything else.
And in doing so, you’ll likely use all your time and trade your health for money on the road to riches.
I believe the goal should be to prioritize your health while working toward your ambitions—whatever they may be.
Nowadays it feels like you can’t have both, you have to choose between money or health. Take a look at the people around you, those that have a lot of money may not be the ones that seem to have taken care of their health that much.
Sleep, diet, stress management, and physical exercise should be integral parts of your life, whether you’re a lawyer, a business owner, or a student.
There is a way to improve your health and change your lifestyle without shortening your life by trading all your time for a dream that only sounds better in theory.
If you’re relatively young and making an average income, like I am, maybe the focus shouldn’t be on how much money you’re making but on how you view and use the money you have.
By reframing your mindset and changing your habits, you can build a healthier perspective about money and make more money in the process.
The reason most people feel like they don’t have enough money is because they focus on all the things they want to buy. In comparison, their current income makes them feel powerless.
For example, if you make $50k a year and dream of a car that costs twice your annual income, you’ll definitely feel broke.
But if you shift your focus to a car that costs $5k, then you realize you can more or less cover that expense.
The worst part is that as you make more money, the things you want to buy—and feel like you need—become more expensive.
You buy a house, then you want a penthouse. You have a car, then you want a supercar. You fly first class, then you want a private jet.
This tells us that the solution isn’t in making more money but rather in reframing what money means to you and the role it plays in your life.
When I was living below the poverty line, I reframed money as a tool to cover necessities: rent, food, transportation, and my phone bill.
To me, money wasn’t a source of enjoyment—it was a source of safety. Having money meant I could take care of the essentials.
The problem in modern life is that we’re constantly bombarded with ads, marketing campaigns, and social status games.
This creates buying impulses that can add up and cost you a lot of money. Money stops being a tool for safety and starts becoming a source of emotional validation and gratification.
That’s when the use of money, in my opinion, becomes dysfunctional. That’s when it turns into a chase for happiness—a chase that has been tested for centuries and consistently fails.
So, if you can cover your basic needs right now and have a little extra for rainy days—if you can pay for rent, groceries, and a $20 gym membership—you already have everything necessary to start working on your health and well-being.
You don’t need more money, you have enough money to start the process.
How to Reconcile Your Life and Your Health
The first step is what I’ve been doing for the first half of this video: freeing you from the limiting beliefs that hold you back and helping you start cultivating the mindset that you already have everything you need to begin working on yourself and your health.
It’s not going to be easy. In modern life, health is rarely treated as the most important thing. But if you want to live better and longer, it should be the most important thing to you right now.
Don’t wait to be 40 years-old and start feeling pain in order to begin.
Here are the steps that helped me most to get there:
Do Less
You probably do too much. You stack habits on top of each other, try to squeeze as many tasks as possible into your to-do list, watch productivity hack videos, and attempt to apply the Pomodoro technique to your life.
It’s too much. You’re forcing productivity out of yourself without balancing it with its counterpart: Rest.
This is why you should stay away from the self-improvement world if you already feel overwhelmed or like you’re "late to the party." It will only amplify those feelings.
You need to do less. You need to engage in fewer activities and reduce the number of things occupying your mind so you can focus better on what truly matters to you.
Work or school will likely be your biggest focus, but outside of that, you need to create other areas of your life that you want to prioritize.
When it comes to your health and well-being, here are the areas you should focus on:
Physical health (nutrition, exercise, sleep)
Mental health (relaxation, meditation, stress management)
Relationships (family, friends, partner)
If you’re just starting your journey, I recommend focusing solely on physical health for the next few months. Build a strong foundation of discipline there first, and the rest will follow.
Get Your Mind on Board
You can’t lie to yourself. If you try to cheat the system or hack your way through it, you’ll quickly realize it doesn’t work—you’ll just end up falling back into your old patterns.
If you watch my videos, you’ve probably heard me say this before : if you want to change for good, you need to find an internal and powerful source of motivation.
This isn’t the kind of motivation you get from watching inspirational videos on YouTube or following empowering influencers on Instagram.
The most potent source of motivation comes from the pain of staying the same. You need to be brutally honest with yourself.
Look at your current situation and fully embrace the fact that it’s probably not where you expected—or wanted—to be.
I didn’t expect at 17 to feel so out of shape, to work as much as I did, to not have the physique I wanted, or to feel so anxious.
For me, this created so much internal discomfort that I was finally ready to make a change.
You need to connect with that pain. Take an honest, unfiltered look at it—because that’s where real change begins.
Decide What Matters to You
Most of the things we think are important feel that way because we’ve been told they are—not because we truly want them.
It’s not fair, but if you haven’t asked yourself this question yet, the main thing directing your life and choices right now is probably the society you live in.
This is something I realize more and more in my own life: most of the things I’m chasing aren’t things I really want—they’re things people told me I should want.
Money, status, power, fame, material possessions. But when I truly ask myself, “What do I want? Where do I want to focus my time and attention?”—those things don’t matter nearly as much.
Being honest, this is really hard to do. Not only do you have to detach yourself from the external expectations, but you also have to turn inward and genuinely ask yourself uncomfortable questions.
When I did this, I realized that I value my health far more than my job title or the amount of money I make.
And despite what others around me are doing or thinking, I have to stay true to this belief and act on it.
For me, this meant drastically reducing the number of nights out, changing my diet, exercising daily, cutting back on work hours, and deleting social media.
But none of this would have been possible if I hadn’t had those conversations with myself about what’s most important to me.
So, I highly suggest you have that conversation with yourself too.
Build a Plan for Your Future Self
People are always making plans—setting goals, telling themselves, “Tomorrow, I’ll start doing this.”
Every January 1st, there’s a fresh wave of resolutions to take better care of health and well-being.
Yet, most of these plans last only a few days. Not because they’re bad plans, but because of everything we’ve just talked about.
Most people think the main reason they’re not exercising or eating better is their lack of planning.
But I’d argue it’s not. The problem isn’t that you don’t know what to do—the problem is that you don’t know why you’re doing it.
While the how (the plan) is crucial, the why (the reason) is what gives it meaning and makes it stick.
You need to fully embrace the belief that your health is more important than anything else. Without health, nothing else matters.
If tomorrow you were diagnosed with stage III cancer, would your job, the promotion you’re chasing, or the car you’ve been saving for still matter as much?
I’m not suggesting you live your life as though you have stage III cancer. But you do need to put things into perspective—this ties back to my earlier point about societal expectations.
Do you want to live by society’s rules, or by your own rules for what makes life fulfilling and enjoyable?
When you ask yourself these questions, you’ll discover your why. That why will give you the reason you need to change and make it work for good.
If you ask yourself those questions, you’ll get to you why and have enough reasons to change to make this work for good.
Start with One Goal
The rule here is simple: have one goal when you begin. Don’t overwhelm yourself—changing your habits is already hard enough.
This idea of focusing on just one goal is a key concept I refer to often. I even talk about it in Fitness Autonomy, where I guide people through starting at the gym, losing weight, and building muscle.
Focus on one thing at a time. Laser focus on one single, a clear goal.
And if you’re unsure where to start, begin with going to the gym. In my opinion, this unlocks everything else.
Learn how to exercise properly. Learn how to be consistent. Learn how to become disciplined.
If you adopt this mindset, your only goal should be to go to the gym regularly. Start with a specific, manageable frequency—if you’re unsure, I recommend going three times per week. It’s challenging but realistic for almost everyone.
Do your best to put this into practice using everything we’ve talked about.
Your life won’t be radically different tomorrow, but in a few months, if you stick to it, you won’t be the same person anymore.
So anyway, I hope this helps. Trust the process.