“Seeking happiness outside of yourself, is like a ghost trying to grab solid matter, impossible.”
-Jonce Trajkovski
Monthly Archives: January 2016
The life as a fitness professional is a life full of passion, excitement, and gratification. How can it not be, we help people changing their life style, hence they are getting healthier, happier, and even more successful in all their endeavors. Besides guiding them on their journey through proper physical exercises and accurate nutrition, we also have other roles that we fill in. One of them is being a “psychologist.” I can assure you that we trainers/coaches know more about our clients’ personal life than even their closest family members. So, not only are we helping our clients in the physical aspect of life but also in the mental/emotional. Most of us trainers are doing it out of genuine compassion for the individual, at least that’s what I want to believe. I know very well that some of us are pretending to care or to have empathy and doing it for the money. But that is not the subject of this writing.
As I said before, the life of a fitness professional is very worthwhile, but there is also a part of it that at times can be very frustrating, particularly when the client is unjustifiably not “happy” with the results. Most of us have dealt with situations where it is challenging to stay calm and professional, when being questioned or even doubted by our clients. And to a certain degree it is understandable when our trainees lose patience on their journey to a healthier and better life. Because, we do live in a society where the media and the corresponding sources are lying to the people about the, as I call it, “quick fix.” Hence, we have “evolved” into a society of instant gratification. But the truth of the matter is that there is no such thing, as a quick fix. That is the essence, which we must convey to our clients. Nobody can undo an unhealthy life style of many years in a matter of a ‘short’ duration of time, period. It is unrealistic and not fair to the trainer, who truly puts a lot into the well-being of the client, to expect unworkable results. But I sincerely believe, if a person is genuinely serious about changing his/her life style to become the individual that one has set to be; then we as professionals must overcome our egos and solely think that we are dealing with a human being, who has its own daily frustrations in his/her life, when we are contested by our clients. In my 23 years of training people and “putting up” with them, I’ve never been in a situation where my clients did not understand the concept of “everything worthwhile takes time.” I took it upon me to explain to them how our bodies work and most importantly I would listen to them. I must admit that sometimes it’s not easy, but the thought that this person has chosen me to guide him/her on the journey to a healthier and fuller life makes it worthy to me, over and over again.
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