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Some people may have all the experience in the world, but perspective is anything less than black and white.
I'm sure there have been situations where you may have misinterpreted or miss-communicated language or signals with your clients and that's cool, we're all human, but was it an honest mistake or are you so self obsessed that you're completely oblivious to what's happening in the real world?
In this guest post from one of the most handsome Scorpio's you'll ever meet; personal trainer Matt Jolley takes us on a personal journey that he recently went through and the importance of perspective in the fitness business.
Perspective
Perspective is something we all think we have plenty of, but when it hits the fan, most of us really don’t have as much as we think we do.
What’s the big deal about having perspective in the Fitness Industry? It will make your business better, make you smarter, and give your clients a full on holistically aware Trainer.
Let me share a few examples to see if I can get this point across, because if you want to take your skills as a personal trainer to the next level, you just have to get this right.
I once trained a client in a group when I was first starting out and I was getting them all sorted to their stations in a circuit. I pointed to her and told her which station she was up to. She have me one of those looks that makes you wonder (just for a moment) and then I just got on with it and thought nothing more of it.
Needless to say, there was an issue and after several weeks of no shows, she sent me a message that she wasn’t going to train with me anymore. I didn’t pursue her, let her make her own decision, and about a year later, a friend of hers told me what the issue had been.
She was a victim of domestic abuse, and her partner would point his finger at her to make his many points before the violence started. So for her, my simple action of pointing to a station had awful connotations. Perspective? Yeah, I got it.
I wasn’t to know that what I had done would have such a reaction, but I’ve never forgotten that lesson. Anything you say or do can be taken in so many ways, so be bloody careful.
I recently got back from Papua New Guinea, having completed my second Kokoda Trek.
You wanna talk about perspective? Go to a third world country right on our doorstep, see how the locals live, and you’ll very quickly find out what’s important and what’s bullshit.
I can tell you that the people living in the villages along the Kokoda Trail couldn’t care about not having a 60” TV or updating their car to the latest model.
They don’t worry about how someone looked at them funny at work, or the fact that one of their clients is going to Europe and they won’t be able to rely on that income to pay their mortgage next month. What they worry about is having enough food or money to survive that day.
That client going on a European holiday might have had to save for 20 years to afford it, or might be visiting a dying relative. What affects you about their holiday doesn’t matter to them as much as it matters to you.
Even walking the Trail itself is a lesson in what’s important.
I thought that I’d be able to use this trip to work through some ideas of what I wanted to do to take my own business forward, but when every bit of your concentration is focused on making sure you put your foot in the right place, then you quickly work out what’s important.
When you’re climbing the 9 False Peaks, and every step hurts more than you’ve ever hurt before, you stop worrying about anything other than getting air in, refuelling and re-hydrating. Things get crystallised fairly rapidly when every move counts for your overall survival. Multiply that by having 10 other Trekkers that you are leading and there’s a lesson in perspective.
Ultimately I was able to use the experience to get some stuff sorted, but it took for me to go somewhere where I had no text messaging, email, Internet or Facebook access to stop and really think about what was important to me, what I had to do, what I had to be prepared to give up and what I needed to do to take my business to a new level.
So, if you think you have perspective; take a moment to look at any given situation from another person’s perspective, you may just learn something.
Contact Matt:
Web: EFM Health Clubs Geelong
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Awesome article once again. Thanks Matt!
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