You didn't get to where you are by doing what you're doing where you are. You got to where you are by what you Did.
-FLO
Something hit me the other night when I was thinking about the fitness industry. Most people are giving advice to people from where they are and forgetting the part of the story about how they got to where they are. Let me explain. For people that know me, you know I am a huge Jay-Z fan, so I will use his story to help me explain what I mean. If you have followed the career of Jay-Z , you have heard his dark stories of selling drugs and being in trouble with the law in his younger days. He has told many dark tales of a street life that he no longer lives. He also tells many stories of enjoying the spoils of wealth like women, cars, homes, parties, etc. He paints many pictures from different angles. To often people only listen to the glamorous part of the story and they forget what it took for him to get to this level. So in order to be at Jay-Z you would have had to be Jay-Z then and this is the point that many people miss. One of the reasons I am such a fan is because he talks about his failures as much as he talks about his success. I feel many people in fitness forget to mention how much failure has come with their success.
I have had many trainers come to me for advice in this industry. They ask what it takes to be successful in fitness. I always tell them the same thing. First you need to define what success is to you and second, it takes a lot of failure. This answer never goes well, ha. However it is the truth. It would be easy for me to tell them everything I do now, but it will honestly do them no good. It will only paint a picture of where I am but it does no good on telling them how to get there. Ever wonder why thousands of trainers come out of peoples mentorships but can never reach the same level of success as the people who are mentoring them, duh. Its because many mentors are talking to you about where they are and not telling you how they got there. I guess no one wants to pay for a mentorship that says, "Fail again and again until you find what works for YOU. ". That just doesn't have the same market appeal as, "Pay me $1,000 and I will show you how to be rich.". I am not saying mentor programs are bad, I have one at FLO and I think many of them do a great job of teaching trainers how to train clients or operate businesses. However, I feel many of them fall short in teaching trainers how to grind their way to the top. In some ways I feel that teaching people to not make the same mistakes you made can be robbing them of the lesson learned from those mistakes.
Think about how you learned everything that you know now. I'm sure we all fell over and over again when we learned how to walk. Part of the learning process is failing at what we are learning. We have to begin to teach that being bad at something is OK, as long as you are willing to practice to get better. I have a lot of college students who intern at the high school I work at. When they all come in the door they are so scared to make mistakes that they just sit in the corner and try to only do things they are good at. School has taught them that being wrong is the worst thing in the world. What they fail to realize is that being bad is part of the process to becoming good. They often get frustraited with me because I don't answer their questions, instead I tell them what text books they can find the answers in and let them discover it for themselves. I'd rather them discover how I learned what I know, rather than tell them what I know. It goes back to the old school story of teaching a man how to fish instead of just giving him a fish.
I feel as an industry we need to do a better job of sharing our struggles as much as we share our success. I think people can relate better when you show them that you are not perfect either. I think its great when people take pictures of some amazingly healthy foods and put them on instagram, but we all know that you don't eat like that ALL the time. Show them the good with the bad. Talk about how you got to where you are and all the road blocks you had to overcome. Tell them the true life behind the scenes story of how you got to where you are and not just show the end result. Teach them to learn to focus on the process and not just the product. Teach them that failing forward is the true road to success in anything they do.
This commercial explains it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zSVu76AX3I&feature=youtube_gdata_player
-FLO
Something hit me the other night when I was thinking about the fitness industry. Most people are giving advice to people from where they are and forgetting the part of the story about how they got to where they are. Let me explain. For people that know me, you know I am a huge Jay-Z fan, so I will use his story to help me explain what I mean. If you have followed the career of Jay-Z , you have heard his dark stories of selling drugs and being in trouble with the law in his younger days. He has told many dark tales of a street life that he no longer lives. He also tells many stories of enjoying the spoils of wealth like women, cars, homes, parties, etc. He paints many pictures from different angles. To often people only listen to the glamorous part of the story and they forget what it took for him to get to this level. So in order to be at Jay-Z you would have had to be Jay-Z then and this is the point that many people miss. One of the reasons I am such a fan is because he talks about his failures as much as he talks about his success. I feel many people in fitness forget to mention how much failure has come with their success.
I have had many trainers come to me for advice in this industry. They ask what it takes to be successful in fitness. I always tell them the same thing. First you need to define what success is to you and second, it takes a lot of failure. This answer never goes well, ha. However it is the truth. It would be easy for me to tell them everything I do now, but it will honestly do them no good. It will only paint a picture of where I am but it does no good on telling them how to get there. Ever wonder why thousands of trainers come out of peoples mentorships but can never reach the same level of success as the people who are mentoring them, duh. Its because many mentors are talking to you about where they are and not telling you how they got there. I guess no one wants to pay for a mentorship that says, "Fail again and again until you find what works for YOU. ". That just doesn't have the same market appeal as, "Pay me $1,000 and I will show you how to be rich.". I am not saying mentor programs are bad, I have one at FLO and I think many of them do a great job of teaching trainers how to train clients or operate businesses. However, I feel many of them fall short in teaching trainers how to grind their way to the top. In some ways I feel that teaching people to not make the same mistakes you made can be robbing them of the lesson learned from those mistakes.
Think about how you learned everything that you know now. I'm sure we all fell over and over again when we learned how to walk. Part of the learning process is failing at what we are learning. We have to begin to teach that being bad at something is OK, as long as you are willing to practice to get better. I have a lot of college students who intern at the high school I work at. When they all come in the door they are so scared to make mistakes that they just sit in the corner and try to only do things they are good at. School has taught them that being wrong is the worst thing in the world. What they fail to realize is that being bad is part of the process to becoming good. They often get frustraited with me because I don't answer their questions, instead I tell them what text books they can find the answers in and let them discover it for themselves. I'd rather them discover how I learned what I know, rather than tell them what I know. It goes back to the old school story of teaching a man how to fish instead of just giving him a fish.
I feel as an industry we need to do a better job of sharing our struggles as much as we share our success. I think people can relate better when you show them that you are not perfect either. I think its great when people take pictures of some amazingly healthy foods and put them on instagram, but we all know that you don't eat like that ALL the time. Show them the good with the bad. Talk about how you got to where you are and all the road blocks you had to overcome. Tell them the true life behind the scenes story of how you got to where you are and not just show the end result. Teach them to learn to focus on the process and not just the product. Teach them that failing forward is the true road to success in anything they do.
This commercial explains it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zSVu76AX3I&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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