By: Jeremy Koerber
I struggle with balance. It isn’t something I am ashamed of because as I have written about for years, it is impossible to achieve total wellness. It isn’t like I am the type of personal trainer or wellness coach who stands over you smoking a cigarette while you do push-ups but I am human. The best we can hope for is to train our minds to both become aware of our wellness (and when it is getting out of whack) and to do the things in our lives that will help us stay balanced.
My biggest flaw is also what makes me good at what I do. I care deeply about the people I work with. This causes me to say “yes” when I should be taking that day off to re-charge, answering that text at 10pm or posting on social media when I should be focusing on family. I also get cases of the “what if’s” a little more frequently than I care to admit. Case in point, I was driving down the road this past
weekend and happened to go past our old condo; the one we lived in when we got married. At the time we couldn’t wait to get out and into the house we are living in now. It was exciting and new and something we probably should have held off on because we had a very low mortgage. That and they mowed the yard for us.
My mind tends to gravitate to the financial side of the wellness spectrum so in this moment I started pondering the possibilities of life had we stayed in that condo. Would we have it paid off by now and be debt free? Could I have saved and invested more putting us on a more solid path to retirement. Would that decision have an implication on the jobs my wife and I hold today?
Remember that wellness isn’t just about how many push-ups you can do or how many servings of fruit and vegetables you eat. It is multifaceted and covers many areas; Areas that a lot of people don’t know about or don’t take the time to work on.
I struggle with balance. It isn’t something I am ashamed of because as I have written about for years, it is impossible to achieve total wellness. It isn’t like I am the type of personal trainer or wellness coach who stands over you smoking a cigarette while you do push-ups but I am human. The best we can hope for is to train our minds to both become aware of our wellness (and when it is getting out of whack) and to do the things in our lives that will help us stay balanced.
My biggest flaw is also what makes me good at what I do. I care deeply about the people I work with. This causes me to say “yes” when I should be taking that day off to re-charge, answering that text at 10pm or posting on social media when I should be focusing on family. I also get cases of the “what if’s” a little more frequently than I care to admit. Case in point, I was driving down the road this past
weekend and happened to go past our old condo; the one we lived in when we got married. At the time we couldn’t wait to get out and into the house we are living in now. It was exciting and new and something we probably should have held off on because we had a very low mortgage. That and they mowed the yard for us.
My mind tends to gravitate to the financial side of the wellness spectrum so in this moment I started pondering the possibilities of life had we stayed in that condo. Would we have it paid off by now and be debt free? Could I have saved and invested more putting us on a more solid path to retirement. Would that decision have an implication on the jobs my wife and I hold today?
Remember that wellness isn’t just about how many push-ups you can do or how many servings of fruit and vegetables you eat. It is multifaceted and covers many areas; Areas that a lot of people don’t know about or don’t take the time to work on.
Regarding the aforementioned financial freak out, the decision to sell the condo and buy a home is a done deal and has been for over a decade. No sense crying over spilled milk right? I also am the kind of person who believes we are in the place we need to be for a reason. Nothing happens by chance. If we had stayed in that condo we would not have met the people we now call friends that have impacted our children’s lives, our personal relationships and our businesses. Our stock portfolio might be slightly bigger but I would have missed out on so much more.
Just yesterday I was training a fairly new client. A client who has tried every diet, potion, gimmick and book to lose weight over the past 66 years she has walked the earth. 10 weeks ago I got the chance to work with her. As we have mentioned before, our style of personal training isn’t just to design weight loss programs and count reps. We want to help our clients find overall balance. This client has some
personal struggles with family. Struggles that undoubtedly have contributed to her weight gain over the years. She is also a Godly woman who knows her stuff when it comes to the spiritual side of wellness. Jesus is spoken about a lot in our sessions and the ability to link her faith to her fitness is something that has motivated her to keep going. She’s a deep thinker.
In between exercises we talk. We talk about nutrition, fat loss and recovery; all good personal trainer chit chat. We also talk about her struggles, her faith, her household “to do” list and what plans she has for the weekend. This is important stuff because these topics are what make up this client’s personal wellness; not an exercise or meal plan. And if she is going to find success on the scale, it will come
through developing more balance in her life.
She was having an especially tough time in this session. Not physically, but emotionally. The time has come for her to let go of a situation that she can no longer control and it is consuming her. I know how she feels because I do the exact same things in my life. As she spoke she talked about how intellectually she knew she had to trust in God and have faith that what will happen is not in her control. My lone interjection was the same philosophy I mentioned earlier: “We are in the position we are in at this very moment because we are supposed to be.” Or maybe a better phrase might be “We are in this moment right now because He needs us to be.”
As she was performing her hip lift I simply asked “Have you ever considered the concept that maybe you are here to help me?” She stopped mid-rep and just looked at me. I doubt paying clients have never pondered the implication of being a spiritual guide to their trainers. It should be the other way around right? Angels come in many sizes and shapes and the road one takes to find balance in their wellness is a two way street.
This client is 10 weeks into her program. I don’t know how much weight she has lost but I do know she has never lasted longer than four weeks with anything she has tried before. Her waistline is smaller and she bounced in last week to let me know she was able to zip up a skirt that hasn’t been zipped in many years. That makes me happy.
Just yesterday I was training a fairly new client. A client who has tried every diet, potion, gimmick and book to lose weight over the past 66 years she has walked the earth. 10 weeks ago I got the chance to work with her. As we have mentioned before, our style of personal training isn’t just to design weight loss programs and count reps. We want to help our clients find overall balance. This client has some
personal struggles with family. Struggles that undoubtedly have contributed to her weight gain over the years. She is also a Godly woman who knows her stuff when it comes to the spiritual side of wellness. Jesus is spoken about a lot in our sessions and the ability to link her faith to her fitness is something that has motivated her to keep going. She’s a deep thinker.
In between exercises we talk. We talk about nutrition, fat loss and recovery; all good personal trainer chit chat. We also talk about her struggles, her faith, her household “to do” list and what plans she has for the weekend. This is important stuff because these topics are what make up this client’s personal wellness; not an exercise or meal plan. And if she is going to find success on the scale, it will come
through developing more balance in her life.
She was having an especially tough time in this session. Not physically, but emotionally. The time has come for her to let go of a situation that she can no longer control and it is consuming her. I know how she feels because I do the exact same things in my life. As she spoke she talked about how intellectually she knew she had to trust in God and have faith that what will happen is not in her control. My lone interjection was the same philosophy I mentioned earlier: “We are in the position we are in at this very moment because we are supposed to be.” Or maybe a better phrase might be “We are in this moment right now because He needs us to be.”
As she was performing her hip lift I simply asked “Have you ever considered the concept that maybe you are here to help me?” She stopped mid-rep and just looked at me. I doubt paying clients have never pondered the implication of being a spiritual guide to their trainers. It should be the other way around right? Angels come in many sizes and shapes and the road one takes to find balance in their wellness is a two way street.
This client is 10 weeks into her program. I don’t know how much weight she has lost but I do know she has never lasted longer than four weeks with anything she has tried before. Her waistline is smaller and she bounced in last week to let me know she was able to zip up a skirt that hasn’t been zipped in many years. That makes me happy.
What this client has done for me in these last 10 weeks is to re-think what is important in this life. You need balance in all areas of wellness but when one area gets over inflated; your wellness wheel will be just as imbalanced as if it were flat. You won’t roll very well. I am grateful for the time we get to spend together and the conversations we have. It also begs the question, who is helping who? In the end, I don’t think it matters because at the end of our sessions, we both feel just a little bit better than when they began. That is what finding balance in your wellness is all about.
What do you do to find balance in your life? Please post a comment below.
What do you do to find balance in your life? Please post a comment below.
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