As my entire office is now privy to my workout regime (there’s an email glitch that sends messages to the entire office on occasion and my semi-personal email was sent office-wide (which includes the President)) I figure that the whole world may as well know that I am working with a Personal Trainer (I know…it’s cliche). My original goal was simply to tone-up my body and fix a few problem areas. What I’ve recently discovered, however, is that my Personal Trainer, Mike Good (who is excellent), has some really sage wisdom that can be applied beyond the confines of the gym to life in general and that my mind is getting a pretty decent workout as well.
During my morning jog I was struck by a mental lightening bolt. Mike is always telling me that I need to push myself beyond what is comfortable. In terms of working out, I’ve always struggled with this concept. I’m an excellent runner and I can run forever, I even trained for a marathon once. Running comes easily for me; it’s natural. What makes me cringe though is the free weights section with all the muscle-building machismo guys flexing and strutting their stuff. I feel like I don’t belong there. But, as we both noted, since I have found my comfort zone in cardio my body is not responding or changing the way I want it to. Mid-stride I realized how apropos this piece of knowledge is to my professional life as well. If I can push myself to venture into the free weight world and confront my insecurities, can I do the same at work? And how often do I extend myself beyond what I know best? Am I simply maintaining my work weight when I could be toning-up a bit?
Another thing that occurred to me was that I can push myself with Mike (in terms of using more weight or adding reps) because I trust his expertise and believe that when he says, “you can do it,” that I can actually do it. So I started to think about communities and mentors and how success isn’t achieved without help from the right people; that asking for help can be the most effective thing when venturing into unfamiliar territories.
Probably the most applicable to my life right now, though, is the notion of measuring success. At the gym it seems obvious that success is defined by the number you see on the scale, but for me I’ve actually put on weight (which is very depressing) in spite of my consistent efforts to go beyond my limits. So what’s my ROI? Perhaps the measure of success for me can be compared to the shift in website metrics from total hits to return visits and the depth of each visit. So maybe Mike’s right when he says, “it’s okay to put on weight, it’s you’re BMI that’s most important.” Really all I care about it at the end of the day is whether or not I feel good in a pair of jeans and whether or not the community site in development will help serve the audience and enable them to feel good about their experience (and of course leave them hungry for more).
Which reminds me…since chocolate is my adversary in terms of BMI, do I have dessert-like weaknesses that inhibit my success? Is there such a thing as an overindulgence in rhetoric or an excessively long meeting? Just some food for further thought.
