YOU’RE GOING TO BE LAST!
To all my upcoming personal trainers out there.
There are going to be times when you’re going to be last, and it’s going to disrupt you.
It’s gonna make you feel some type of way, and you don’t wanna feel like that.
I’m going to tell you how I get over that.
I’m going to tell you how I deal with that.
I’m going to tell you how to look at it in a positive way.
WHY IS SHE WORKING OUT?
It’s early Monday morning, June 2019 and I’m working out with one of my clients, LENORA.
She’s been with me for about six months at this point.
We have a great relationship.
We talk about struggles in life, her family life, and her personal goals
We chat about why she’s working out
She wants to be strong for her family.
The workout is going well.
I gotta fresh cup of coffee in my system.
I also have the smell of peppermint oil in the air from my diffuser that’s sitting on my window.
Everything is going great.
The session ends, she signs off to verify that our session is complete, and we give each other our respective salutations upon departure—
“I’ll see you next week, at our regularly scheduled time”…
WHERE IS SHE??
The following Monday comes around but
Leonora doesn’t show up to our session.
I begin to question, “Where is she’s at?”
Earlier that year, I began to enforce a personal boundary:
When clients miss sessions, I do not follow up with them for at least 48 hours.
My thinking is to give them space, because I never want to hound anybody.
This was a recently developed strategy—a personal acquisition of new information—
that I do not know everything.
I’m the last to know.
And that realization is coming from prior experience with other clients.
HEY, WHAT’S GOING ON?
How I came to that conclusion is this:
“Life be life-ing” with people… just as well as with me.
I’m more focused on making sure my lights remain on, and that I don’t have a pink slip coming in my mailbox saying they’re going to be shut off.
So my focus is a little different—because this is a business.
I am providing a service but Leonora never text or calls back after reaching out to her, 48 hours later.
I had to watch myself—not to pound, not to bash, and most importantly, not to harass her by constantly texting,
“Hey, what’s going on? What’s wrong? I hope everything’s okay.”
Even after reaching out, I never heard back from Lenora.
WHAT DID I DO WRONG?
Not only am I hurt—I’m disappointed, because there is an attachment to any relationship I engage in.
Now I’m left thinking, “What did I do wrong?”
I’m wondering,“If it was me… what did I do?”
Everything was so good—or at least I thought.
How could she just stop working out without communicating?
We communicated all the time.
It was just an abrupt stop.
So obviously…
I’m the last to know.
I was counting on that re-up package.
I have bills too!
Lenora had personal fitness goals that we were working toward—and all that just stopped.
I’m looking at my text messages, looking thru my email inbox…
still nothing from Leonora.
I HOPE SHE’S ALIVE
The worst-case scenario is playing out in my head.
“I hope she’s still alive. I hope everything’s all right.”
Now it’s Saturday
I’m scrolling through social media
It’s confirmed…Here she is….. Alive. She’s well.
I see her recent posts from hours and days ago.
Now I’m left with more questions.
The only one I want answered is, “What did I do wrong?”
I thought everything was going right.
I thought we were good.
Until we weren’t….from her POV.
SHOULD I MOVE ON?
How did I get over that?
How did I leave that situation and move on?
This can come off cold-hearted, but I just had to move on.
Focusing on the “whys” of why she didn’t respond, or why she stopped responding and stopped showing up… is something I had to let go.
I had to let it go only after asking, sending text messages, sending an emails—but no more than three.
That’s how I got over that.
When bills begin to pile up…
When children become more active in school and now you have to divvy up your time on taking care of yourself…
That’s what a lot of my clients go through.
There will be times when my clients aren’t able to articulate,
“I’m overwhelmed.”
This is something we are all going through right now in this current day and age—being overwhelmed.
AM I EMOTIONALLY OVERWHELMED?
When I’m overwhelmed with the woes of life, of being an adult, and just trying to figure everything out…
The first thing I do is sacrifice.
I sacrifice myself—my health, my regimen, my routine.
I know I can let my emotions take over.
That’s something I’m currently working on.
When the emotion of being overwhelmed becomes too much…
I can sulk in just that mindset of:
“I don’t want to do this.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
There’ve been plenty of days when I felt just like that. but all I needed to do was work out to feel better…
Even though I didn’t feel like working out, the only way for me to feel better was to work out.
CONNECT MORE
Knowing this—because I go through it—
I had to then empathize with my client as a possibility,
That this is the reason—or one of the reasons—they stopped showing up.
Now, this doesn’t let me off the hook.
There’s still the possibility that I could’ve done something wrong.
I don’t know—because it wasn’t communicated.
I tried to reach out.
I did reach out.
No response.
And no response is a response within itself.
So therefore, because I didn’t hear her response…
Why is it that I want to commit to the negative possibility?
This is the real reason why you have to let things go.
I have to let things go because, I fester on them.
I think the worst-case scenario but I’m learning how to think about the best-case scenario in these situations.
IT’S HURTFUL
In that situation, I thought about the best-case scenario:
Maybe it’s not me.
Even though it is hurtful.
I have to entertain both sides of the coin, right?
I’ve already done the introspective look of if I did something wrong.
Now I have to look at Lenora as if she’s going through something, so I focus on EMPATHY.
I empathize with the possibility of Lenora feeling like how I feel some days
“I don’t feel like working out, because I’m overwhelmed.”
Your clients will get overwhelmed.
They’re going through life—just like you.
To keep your head on straight and not let situations like these get you down,
Or feel like it’s the end of the world—
IT CAN BE TOO MUCH
This is the personal training life.
The keyword is LIFE
Life is going on.
It can be too much at times and at those times, your client—my clients—have dealt with it in a way where I’m the last person to know about it.
Because I’m the last person to know…
My whole schedule is thrown off.
My finances are thrown off.
Now I’m thrown off from a relationship standpoint—
Me and this person, I thought, built a relationship.
A good relationship.
Two things can be true at one time:
We could have a great relationship and they can also say, “Everything on my plate is too much. I need to take a step back.”
Empathy.
Empathize.
Don’t criticize.
Evaluate so you can move on to the next.
LIFE HAPPENS
Move on to the next client that you currently have.
Put more good time in there.
Learn from possible mistakes you could have made or may have made—or may have not.
Also know—That life happens.
Life can be tough and life can be overwhelming.
Not only to you, but to your client.
So the next time you see a post with these motivational quotes—
That I can be a little bit too rough around the edges for the general audience—
In regards to:
“You gotta stop making excuses.”
“You just gotta show up to the gym.”
“Stop sulking and being sad and just work out…”
While I get that…
And that can work for me,
that can work for you, and that can work for others—
At times, that approach may not be for everybody so don’t think your clients are just lazy or scared.
They could just be, overwhelmed.
You—as their personal trainer—need to be able to empathize with your client because when life happens to you—
Who’s going to empathize with you?
christiansweightsuccess.net (Article Sourced Website)
#Ghosted #Client #Learned #Move