The Balancing Act
By Kelli Calabrese
Balancing our act is something I believe everyone struggles with. It’s always a work in progress and a delicate on at that. Things may seem balanced in one moment and then there is an unexpected event like a law suit, loss of employment, a flood in your home, missed opportunity, closing of a business or even squirrels in your attic! Maybe they all happen at once – it’s possible! I know first hand, because that’s what I was facing by Jan 5th of 2009. What a way to start then year.
Without getting into too much detail, someone who bought a piece of property from us years ago said we did not disclose something to them about the property and they are suing us for fraud. My husband who is in the mortgage business has been unemployed since July of 08, a commode over flowed in my son’s bathroom flooding 6 rooms in the house causing approximately 40K in damages. Three of my income streams from 2008 are dried up in 2009. I closed one of my boot camps due to a poor choice in location and finally a hail storm last spring caused rotting in our soffits allowing squirrels to enter and make a home in our attic this past Christmas.
Now you might be overwhelmed by those circumstances. It can certainly consume you if you let it. You might say those events in combination might cripple someone emotionally and financially. The point is that you want to be in the best possible shape physically, personally, professionally, spiritually, emotionally and financially so that if one or a series of unexpected events occur, you are not derailed or worse.
Each Sunday my husband goes to feed homeless men, women and sadly even children, at a church in downtown Dallas. Many of them were professionals with a roof over their head in suburbia just a year earlier. Many have college educations. One was a Dallas police officer; another was in banking, another in the automotive industry. Sometimes it can take one event like being laid off to create a downward spiral and throw that delicate balance swirling quickly to the lowest point in someone’s life. Sometimes it’s temporary, sometimes it’s fatal.
This article is not meant to bring you down. In fact the opposite is true. If you spend each moment of each day focused on your passion, working diligently to be your personal best, being responsible, building up your confidence, sharing your passion in serving others, creating solid relationships, having faith and keeping the right attitude, you will not only survive, you will thrive in the event of life altering circumstances.
So how does this apply to personal training, the field which has brought me great abundance? We’ll, if you know me, you know I have not watched TV in about a decade. I don’t let the news or anyone else predict or dictate my thoughts or actions. I wake up every morning and declare out loud that something great will happen. I promise to serve my clients delivering more than they expect. I vow to spend at least 4 hours a day during the week completely engaged with my kids. I deliberately and diligently work each week day as to give myself a raise and I continue to conduct myself throughout the day until I have fulfilled my needs for fitness, emotional connection with my husband and so on .
I say this not to impress you, but to tell you it’s possible to have an incredible career as a personal trainer and have a balanced life. People will come up to me at conferences as some one did last weekend at a Kettlebell certification in Dallas and say “I want to do what you do”. I am never quite sure what they mean by that, but anyone can have a fulfilling career as fitness professional. They can wake up at 4:40 in the morning to lead 60 women in a boot camp class, get 2 kids off to school by 7:20, workout and be at their desk by 9:00 and work non stop until 3:20 when the kids come home from school to be a fully engaged parent. Then when the kids fall asleep, spend time reading, researching, creating, praying and growing closer to my husband 15 years into our marriage.
Anyone can achieve a high level of prosperity as a personal trainer and I know trainers who do much more than I. Most trainers however choose to do less, much less and then are cynical and envious towards those who are successful. This column is called The Balancing Act. I write it to make you think. To think about where you are and where you want to be. To ask your self some probing questions about the balance in our short time on earth.
Since we spend a good chunk of time during the week engaged in our professional responsibilities, it’s important that our work time be as stress less as possible since that will carry over into our relationships, health and every other area of your life. If a career in personal training has you stressed, identify the major stressor and solve it or eliminate it. If your professional life is stressful, maintaining balance in other areas’ will be near impossible. If you think about all of the different fields people have left behind to become a fitness professional, they typically did so to help others and do something they enjoy, with less stress than they had in their previous job. Some how along the way the responsibilities of getting clients, keeping clients, getting clients to pay, watching competitors, marketing, the cost of doing business, unexpected events and so on take us from a career we were passionate about to a daily grind of stress.
Personal training can be one of the most stress free enjoyable and lucrative careers and it has the greatest growth potential. It is not meant to consume your schedule, deplete your savings, put you at risk, contribute to physical illness or cause you to lose any sleep. Let personal training be the one thing in your life that is stress less. If you are good at what you do and you genuinely want to advise people by over delivering on your offerings, you will never have to worry about where you next client or dollar is coming from. We make personal training out to be more stressful than it has to be.
These are some of the questions I will leave you with to begin making any necessary shifts to your perspective and the balance you achieve daily. What seeds are you sowing every day in each area of your wellness wheel (professionally, personally, financially, socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically)? Throughout the course of the week, are you dedicating time to developing each area? Which area do you spend the least amount of time? How can you make your professional time more enjoyable and less stressful (without blaming others)? What one thing are you committed to working on improving right now?
Thankfully I personally have many more things to be appreciative of than I do to complain about, squirrels and all! We are not made to worry. Go from believing to expecting and then follow through with massive action. Every morning you wake up with a clean slate and an opportunity to prosper in each area of wellness. Balance awaits.
Kelli Calabrese MS, CSCS - Kelli Calabrese and Phil Kaplan have pioneered a program teaching personal trainers to balance career success and personal prosperity. Kelli is a cast member in the personal development movie The Compass and Co-Author of The Adventure Project. For more information, go to www.KelliCalabrese.com