I Have a Dream - Your Future Must Be Bigger than Your Past
By Kelli Calabrese
Its Martin Luther King Jr. day as I sit at my keyboard to write this month’s Platform newsletter article. Even if you don’t know much about MLK and his accomplishments, everyone is familiar with his famous declaration, “I have a dream!” The title “I have a dream” was part of a seventeen minute world famous public speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. He passionately called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. Baptist minister MLK Jr had a vision and by speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired and he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations for decades to follow.
Looking at our industry you could say Joe Weider had a dream, as did Jack LaLane. Over the past 5 months I’ve watched Phil turn his dream for his health club into a reality as he aggressively stepped back in to daily operations and exceeded all sales, results, service and profitability expectations. It started with a dream of what was possible. I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating. The top three characteristics of the most successful people are first that they are highly passionate, second they are futuristic and third they are risk takers.
Let’s break this down. Personal trainers are among the most passionate people I know. I’ve never met another group more enthusiastic about helping people achieve positive results. Rarely is passion an issue for forward progress. Trainers are willing to do anything for their clients even at their own personal and economical expense. The second piece to the success puzzle is where I believe many personal trainers fall miserably short – and it’s not necessarily their fault.
Being futuristic means being creative. It means using our imaginations. It means forgetting what we know, starting with a clean slate and painting a new picture. It means leaving what’s comfortable and in its place formulating and cleaving to a new idea with both feet fully in. For some of us, we have a hard time with that part of the success formula and ultimately never get to the risk taking component.
We become too steeped in our daily reality, the facts of our situation and where our experiences have led us so far. The fact that our imaginations become stifled is not necessarily our entire fault. Our expression, creativity and uniqueness begin to become dismissed when we get institutionalized in school and we are taught to conform. Then we are continually indoctrinated regarding how we should act and think by employers, society and even spouses. Our creative minds become numbed by video games, news written on a 6th grade level, mindless TV and lack of any real creative stimulation. We live in a world of copy and paste where unique thoughts are extraordinary.
Earlier this week my husband’s Aunt passed away and my children had a chance to read an obituary for the first time. I asked them how they would like their epitaph to read and at first they said they thought it was creepy of me to ask, but then they really got into it. It was an exercise in creativity. I could see their eyes going up and to the left accessing the creative part of their brains. My 9 year old daughter and 10 year old son wrote the following epitaphs.
Melina Calabrese lived to a healthy 119 years old. She lived a joy filled life and danced professionally to make people happy. She had a husband, two daughters and a golden retriever. She spent her Sunday’s serving people and animals in need. Melina had a college degree and spent her life helping people to be fit and healthy. She was a fantastic cook, spoke3 languages, traveled to 100 countries and loved having guests over.
Nicholas Calabrese lived to 125 healthy years and he was able to run a 7 minute mile up until the day he died. He was a professional athlete for 15 years with no injuries and coached professional ball for 40 years and then he was a commentator for 20 years. Nicholas had a wife, 2 sons, and 4 golden retrievers (he always has to one up his sister).
Now this seems like a simple and maybe even silly exercise, but it gets your brain thinking, your creative juices flowing and it also gives you a chance to speak prophetically into your life. Have you ever heard anyone say “be careful what you wish for”? Well, there is a good chance it will come true so why not imagine big? Why not blow up the box? Every invention today was once someone’s idea.
I remember being at the IHRSA conference in Reno, NV in 1993. Ultra-endurance cyclist Johnny Goldberg (aka Johnny G of Spin fame) was sitting on a bike in the middle of a 10 x10 booth with his head down with a pile of sweat under him. He sat in the saddle spinning for all 4 days of the expo. I didn’t see him lift his head to speak to one person. He didn’t have a single sign, handout, table, means to collect cards, no scanner and no computer. He was a man with a bike on a mission. He imagined his stationary bike and cycle training could help people get fit. I’m embarrassed to say I walked by him several times thinking to myself, “weirdo”! Two years later at the IHRSA show, we could have easily called it “The Johnny G Expo” as his presence, bikes and program took over the trade show floor. I became Spin certified in 1994; bought dozens of spin bikes over the years and it was one tool I used to transform thousands of bodies.
I don’t believe anyone who has a dream no matter how big, fully grasps or can imagine the unlimited possibilities and potential of it. Consider Henry Ford or Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. What if they didn’t’ allow themselves the freedom to imagine what was possible because nothing had been done to the magnitude of what they created.
I’ll share one more revelation and then I’ll get to my point. This past Christmas we went to NY /NJ to visit family and I couldn’t help but notice how many people were taking about the past. Now maybe I’m being cynical and reminiscing is what families are supposed to do around the Christmas table, but it just seemed to me that everyone’s past was so much bigger than their futures. I continually heard about reliving the glory days of “When I used to work for xyz corporation . . . When I played high school football . . . Before the economy . . . “. Even if you are elderly, you can still have dreams, you can still imagine, you can still contribute, create, give back, serve, invent, build and so on.
So, I’ll ask you to take a few minutes to write your own epitaph and then do it with your family. What will be included as the most significant things you contributed to this industry and to people? Will you be a speaker with standing room only? Maybe you’ll be the most requested fitness industry consultant? Will you have the largest waiting list of clients, write a best seller, create a healthy lifestyle plan used by moms, introduce a new style of training to the military, have the fastest growing franchise, be the most sought after fitness model, host your own TV show, open a yoga studio in Figi, develop a workout video for surfers, or help 1,000 personal trainers become millionaires. The possibilities are limitless – except by your dreams.
If your imagination has you stuck, if you can’t seem to envision possibility, if you continually repeat the same mistakes and find yourself in a worse position, I invite you to take an entire day in your schedule and block it out (Be Better members would call this A Day Your Love) for your imagination to run wild. It may be a while since you have accessed the depths of your creativity. Top producers will tell you that they get more direction, focus and clarity from a day out of the office than a day in the office.
Turn your phone off, grab a new notebook and head to the oasis of your choice. It may be a park, coffee house, somewhere near water, a hotel or borrow a friend’s cabin. Completely separate yourself from your club, studio, home office, clients, family and routine. Start your day with a workout and healthy breakfast and the being by imagining. You’ll naturally start small . . .”I wish I had 10 more clients”. Then you’ll get bigger and bigger ideas. Write them all down. If you are having trouble, ask yourself what your talents are, what you most treasure, how you define success, what your dominant traits are, how people would describe you, what you want to move towards, what you want to move away from, skills you want to hone, hobbies, and objectives. Ideally you should leave your day with the things you desire for yourself and your family, what you want to do to leave a legacy during your lifetime, what you want to eliminate and what you want to increase.
Imagination is a terrible thing to waste. We all have the potential to imagine. Spend a few hours with a kid and you’ll be amazed at their creativity. Using your imagination is even biblical. From the very first chapter of the bible you can find us provoked to imagine Genesis 11:6 “. . . and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Ephesians 3:20 says, “God is able to do exceeding abundantly above and beyond all that we can ask or imagine...”. So if you believe that’s true, doesn’t it make sense to start to hone your imagination skills and begin to expect great things? Now it’s time for your dream. I’d love to hear your dreams on the Google boards.
Oh and since its MLK Jr day I am headed off to the movies with my family. When viewing the choices such as Yogi Bear, Gulliver’s Travels, True Grit, Tron, Tangled and The Green Hornet, it was obvious that our world is screaming for some NEW ideas!
Unlimited possibilities await,
Kelli