Managing Your Self

What is the reason you became a trainer or healthcare professional? Was it because you didn’t like being told what to do by your bosses in the past? Was it because you wanted more control of your time? Was it because you thought it would be fantastic to have a job doing for others what you loved doing for yourself? Maybe it was all of these things. Regardless of whether it is one or all of them, many trainers soon find themselves:

• Being told what to do by a manager, gym or clinic owner (i.e., a boss).
• Having problems finding personal time or having a hard time finding enough work as a trainer, which requires taking up another job with a boss and once again not having personal time.
• Wishing they had more time to exercise and do what they wanted because they are often faced with trying to figure out how to:
  • Make enough money training people to not have to worry about the second job they often don’t enjoy
  • Get out of the gym they work in so they can keep more of the money they feel is rightfully theirs
  • Effectively market themselves once they’ve left the security of the big gym that was taking too much of their money!

The gist of this is that trainers are either over worked and under paid or under worked and under paid people trying to juggle education, job, family, friends and self. Usually, they are living the same kind of life they were trying to get away from before becoming a trainer! In this article, I will introduce you to tried and tested methods for creating what YOU want.

The Role of a Trainer is Leadership

The world is kind of funny when you get up close to it and really look at what goes on every day. Most trainers can’t train themselves, most managers can’t manage themselves, most educators don’t practice what they teach, most preachers don’t practice what they preach and most politicians don’t do what they promise! The real fact of the matter is that we typically attract into our lives what we are, and we see in others what we need to correct ourselves. This is one of the Laws of Attraction. Being a trainer is a grand opportunity to be what you wish others to enjoy. By definition, a trainer is a leader, and leaders are expected to lead. Each moment you are with your client, you are in a state of being, and your being is typically their becoming. You are leading, training and teaching them how to (or how not to) live.

We are roughly about 2.8% genetically different than our nearest biological relatives: the chimpanzee. Chimps, in the fashion of most all monkeys, learn best by watching. This is the origin of the saying “monkey see, monkey do.” Not surprisingly, human beings are predominantly visual learners. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. When people in the gym finally decides to hire a trainer, they typically choose the trainer they do because they like what they see. Many trainers think it is because they are the most qualified, but as I’ll discuss later, that’s not usually the case. The fact of the matter is, the letters after your name on your business card may as well spell “LOOK AT ME” since it is no more likely that they understand your professional signifiers than you would those of an accountant or film editor. That said, let’s visit the two Laws of Attraction.

Law #1: Like Attracts Like

• If you look the way they would like, you will attract them.
• If your demeanor is likable to them, you will attract them.
• If your other clients start with you looking like they do and end up looking like they want to look within a few months, you will attract them.

Law #2: Opposites Attract

• If you have an abundance of energy and they don’t, you will attract them.
• If you are disciplined and they regularly see you exercising, and they have a hard time with discipline but know they need some, you will attract them.
• If you manage your diet and body shape effectively and they have a hard time with food and their body shapes, you will attract them.
• If you are compassionate with your clients and they lack compassion in their lives, you will attract them.
• If you listen to your clients and actually hear them, the prospective client will hear about you from others, and because they feel as though they need to be heard, you will attract them.
• If you are female and the prospective client is male, you are more likely to attract them. If you are male and the prospective client is female, you are more likely to attract them.

These laws of action affect all of your clients, so you can now see how people make their decisions about their trainers. It has little to do with the letters after your name.

The First Example You Must Set is for Your Self 

No, that’s not a typo - I mean “your self.” Not clear yet? Let me help you. Hold up your hand and look at it. Now, tell me whose hand it is. “My hand” is the standard answer. Well then, who is the my looking at your hand? “My” is a possessive, indicating you are not your body but are a spiritual being expressing itself and experiencing consciousness in and through the body you were given and have since recreated over and over again. If you don’t get a sense of your self from the previous exercise, try sitting in a chair and closing your eyes. Now, relax and move outside your body and look at yourself carefully by moving around your body in the chair. See your body sitting in the chair. You will be viewing your body from the self. It is this self that you must first please above and beyond your parents, family members, friends or society. Whenever your efforts are for others and not for your self, you are losing your self to the desires of others; therefore, you are living a life that is not yours. Typically, such behavior leads to fatigue, depression, anxiety and progressive loss of self worth. Whenever we feel we are living a lie or living to someone else’s tune, we feel like we are losing our self. There is little, if any, motivation to be the best at that false life. When you honor your self, love your self and live true to your self, you are always attuned with your higher purpose. Attunement with your self releases an inexhaustible energy supply. For the first time, you will begin to understand how great people like Jack Lalanne, Rudolph Steiner, Gandhi and others were able to do so much for themselves and for humanity!

Have Clearly Defined Dreams

All of life is really a dream. If you are living your dreams, you will seldom, if ever, hear yourself uttering the words, “I wish I had” or “I wish I were” or “I wish I could.” Such words are unnecessary to those with clearly defined dreams because they are fully aware that each day, they are creating their dreams. Therefore, each day, they are living more of their dreams than they were yesterday. Thus, life becomes a source of perpetual satisfaction and wonderment over what you will be able to create of your dream and the dreams of your clients tomorrow!

Creation always comes about in three phases:

1. Thoughts – Think it through. Having goals that plot steps to achieving your personal and professional dreams is to create a thought-body. A thought-body is like a film negative, attracting the necessary atoms and molecules with which to create its body (your goals) in tangible reality.
2. Words – Write it down or communicate it to those necessary to bringing fruition. Thoughts are a very high vibration, invisible to all but clairvoyants (clear seers). Thoughts transition into tangible reality through the vibration of words as spoken language and/or through the symbology of written language. When you speak, you lower the vibration of a thought to the point where it can be felt. Simply hum or sing a tune with your hand on your head or chest, and you will feel your thoughts expressed much more tangibly! Objects of greater mass attract other objects more strongly. Newton showed this a long time ago. The stronger vibrations of sound and symbol have more mass than thoughts, so through the act of consciousness and transforming thoughts into words, you go a step further toward creating your dreams tangibly. When you write your goals (staged dreaming), you immediately attract physical material to them in the form of pencil lead or ink. Not many builders work without a blue print!
3. Deeds – Take action to build a body around your creation! Your first deed is often the creation of vibration as sound or speech or by writing your goals down. The Universe pays more and more attention as you put more and more energy into your dreams (thought-bodies). In fact, Walter Russell in his home study course (available at www.dowsers.com) states that, “The Universe moves any idea toward you at exactly the same pace you move toward it.” Doesn’t that sound like a beautiful relationship? 

Carefully structure your goals, making sure they are realistic. Many of the C.H.E.K Practitioners I mentor start by telling me, “I don’t have goals because I never seem to achieve them. That’s depressing, so I just quit writing them down.” This is also a common response from my patients. When I ask them to write their goals down and I analyze them, inevitably I find they have written goals that are unrealistic relative to their time, energy and financial ability at the time. If you want to write effective goals, work with what you have and allow yourself time to do what you can so that you can experience regular reward. After all, it is always better to under promise and over deliver than it is to over promise and under deliver! When writing your goals, always be sure to:

• Delineate personal goals from professional goals, even if they suit common objectives. This way, you can more carefully allot time in your schedule for each objective to be met, increasing your chances of experiencing regular rewards.
• Include time for your personal development. Don’t forget to ask your self how much time you need to:
  • Sleep each night
  • Exercise each day/week
  • Spend time with your loved ones and friends
  • Contribute to your community or social groups
• Include time for your professional development:
  • How much education do you need to achieve your goal(s)?
  • Which educators are living examples of their teachings and are most likely to give you the best return on your financial and time investment, moving you most rapidly toward your goals?
  • What areas do you need the most development in? For example, some areas I work to develop myself with my own goal structure are physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, theoretical, practical and conceptual.

Manage Your Stress Levels 

When you have the courage to pursue your dreams, build a carefully staged goal structure and manage your self, you will experience an immediate reduction in your stress levels and an immediate increase in your energy levels. These are crucial beginning steps to stress management. Interestingly, about 97% of the human population fails to take these steps! If you’ve taken the steps outlined here and you still find yourself suffering from more stress than you feel is healthy or normal, you will need more training to understand the origins of stress. I have a very nicely distilled chapter on stress in my book How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! This book also provides very effective tools for determining the best ratio of animal to vegetable foods for your personal needs, how much water you should drink each day, which exercises will best aid in energy accumulation as well as other methods to assist you in effectively managing your self.

Enjoy the Journey! Don't Wait Until You've "Made It" 

It is very common for me to hear clients/patients and students saying “when I get my raise, promotion, inheritance, etc., I’ll enjoy a nice vacation” or “I’ll take some time to go to school and learn to do what I really want to do,” or “I’ll go on that spiritual retreat.” That isn’t living - that’s waiting to live! The fact is, there is really nothing but the NOW. Yesterday is GONE, and tomorrow may NEVER come! You can imagine one of the victims of Hurricane Katrina telling a friend just before the storm struck, “As soon as I have time, I’ll go visit my mother in California” only to perish in the hurricane. We are not human-tomorrows or human-yesterdays; we are human-beings. That implies being here now, doing now, living now.

Surely we all have many things we wish we were doing, but wishing is not doing. Choose what activities you want to experience while you are here as a human being. These are your dreams. Prioritize them into your goals structure and begin living them immediately, and you will wake up each day with tremendous joy. You will know you are being in your chosen doings, AND THAT’S REALLY LIVING! What an amazing gift you will give humanity if you just do that.