The world is occupied by 6 billion people and keeps growing exponentially every year. Upon hearing this statistic many people roll their eyes and say “whatever” as they would not like to think of their life as being a futile existence. But many people suppress a Saturday morning cartoon watching 7 year old inside of themselves that wants to make a difference in this world. When I was 7 years old, I wanted to change the world into a better place but my mind was far from comprehending the vastness of the earth and the amount of people that dwell on it. I’m sure many other people had that need for change. So, many older wiser people in the child’s life try to put the child’s thought into perspective, that it would be absolutely impossible to change the entire world by oneself, a prime example being world peace. The wiser figure in that child’s life, if the child is lucky, tells the child that if every person changed just one’s person’s life for the better, than the child’s dream of positive difference would come true by collective help. I was fortunate enough to hear that wise piece of advice many times throughout my life and I think that I have changed people’s lives for the better, though in a menial way. But, the feeling associated with helping someone achieve a goal, reach their absolute potential or notice their true inner-self is an amazing feeling, one that I must delineate in full detail.
As many people may know, or may not know, that I have many interests, jobs, talents and hobbies. Often I have heard many people say you do too many things and you must be stressed all of the time. I snicker under my breath and think about telling them my whole story, but to save time and keep the person’s interest I just opt with the easy answer “I love what I do. You can’t get stressed doing what you love to do.” The conversation keeps going from there.
I will first describe my job as a personal trainer. Personal training I would have to say is the most rewarding job I have ever had, period. Many people think that it is the most superficial job that you can have on the planet, but I disagree with that opinion so much, for many reasons. Though on the surface it might look like a personal trainer helps someone achieve superficial beauty, but in actuality a good personal trainer changes the person’s life by reconstructing their media induced superficial beauty beliefs, poor dieting habits, poor posture, poor lifting technique and poor body image and attitude. I have many people, especially women that come up to me and ask me “How do I get rid of this?” They expect one sentence from me that will rid that stubborn fat from….insert area….. I get frustrated when they ask me, because I know exactly how to get rid of that stubborn fat but I have no way of saying it in one sentence. It is like asking someone how they can construct the theory of everything in one sentence. Not going to happen. First you have to change your perspective on immediate satisfaction and then once you are aware it will take time, then I will guide you. After getting immediate results out of their mind by way of suave talking, I enjoy the training way more and the trainee does as well.
I would like to comment on a few of my star clients. I call them star clients because they come to me with an open mind and with my guidance they have reached their goals and I have reaped so much happiness from having them attain those goals, be it physically, mentally or emotionally. I will first speak of Donald, and I have permission to use his name as he says “I’m your biggest fan of your blog!” He is a 63 year old man that is not your ordinary senior citizen. He has been strutting around the gym 4-5 days a week cycling or lifting for years. At first glance, you might think he is in his mid 40’s as he is lean, peppy and full of life. I sure was fooled. Even though Donald was in great shape before he commenced training with me, he still had areas he needed to work on those being poor posture, poor range of motion (lack of stretching), poor habits and poor self-esteem. We have worked through those challenges and I am happy to say that each time Donald achieves something new, it might not be totally physical but it has meaning and worth to him, which in turn has meaning, and worth to me. Just being able to help him express his emotions through exercise and exertion makes my day much more enjoyable. I can have the worst day and Donald can have the same, but by helping him achieve another goal my day can be changed around instantaneously. It is amazing. Donald also has taught me many things about myself and inspired me as well with his determination of physical health at his age, not common.
My other two clients that I would like to talk about are sisters and for the sake of confidentiality I will keep their names to myself. Again these two ladies came to me with goals to achieve and I helped them achieve those goals. The neat thing is, I don’t like saying this, but I think I got a lot of inspiration from them and learned much more from them then I could ever teach them about training and again got that intrinsic reward after they achieved their goals. They taught me life lessons, financial lessons, relationship lessons, everything you could imagine. I inspired them and they inspired me, it is such a beautiful thing when you help people.
Furthermore, I tutor and volunteer as much as I can because I help these people achieve goals that are so important to them. When I tutor a student English or volunteer tutoring it is amazing to see the delight and happiness that they express when they figure out they are able to correctly use an idiomatic expression or some tedious grammatical exception.
Going to Japan was the same thing. We went and played with orphans. Simple as it might sound, we actually became friends with these kids and showed them a different side of the world. Because they are marginalized in society, they won’t have opportunities like this in their future. That is a sad thing, so we gave them the care and affection that they needed and gave them that cultural experience that they are doubtful to have. The happiness they expressed and the intrinsic bubble of emotions that happened in me in seeing this was truly beautiful.
I feel that when I inspire someone to see something differently, teach them something new or put a smile on their face I feel that I am spreading my goodness across the world. It feels like I’m adding another block to one of the amazing pyramids that will stand as long as humans live on the earth. Now I just have to figure out how I can have inspire more people to live by the ideology that one person helped is equal to the whole world helped.