Achieve your Personal Victory

There is a saying, boys talk shoulder to shoulder, and girls talk face to face.  Test these stereotypes for yourself.   Go to Starbucks with your daughter, sit at a table, face to face, and try to pull as much info from their little brain as possible.  Now, go for a drive with your son, and while looking at the road, and him looking the other way, shoulder to shoulder so to speak, do the same loving interrogation.  Now try the opposite.  Depending on the girl, you may still get the same rambling, but for the boys….It works!!! 

That’s the preamble for this week’s blog.

I was driving my son home from Grandma’s house the other day, and he was in a chatty mood, so I did my routine “Ya”, and “Aha’s” as he yammered about T.V. shows and asked me who I think is a better singer, Cody Simpson or Justin Beiber.  He already doesn’t like Bieber too much, but that’s another story.  Anyways, he then drops a bomb of knowledge…

“Whatever they do, daddy, I gotta be a real boy.”

Attention peaked… “What does that mean?”

“Like, the boys at school, they like hockey” he says,  “I don’t like hockey, I like breakdancing, so I am not going to play hockey because everyone does, I am gonna be a real boy and do what I wanna do.”

HOW FLIPPIN’ DEEP IS THAT!!!  If I humbly say so myself.  I want him to be a real boy.  Real boys become real men one day.

When I was sitting on the bench as the University of Waterloo for their football team, my then despised, but wise coach used to say to us, “Men, you gotta be your own man”.  What he meant was, be known for something, don’t just follow the crowd, don’t just be like the crowd, rather, stand out from the crowd because of the stuff you are good at.  He was talking about football and life beyond football.

What I learned at 19, my son has figured out at 9.  He is a real boy. 

Whether it was a T.V. show, movie, celebrity, Mom or Jesus that showed him that, THANK YOU!!!!!.  Now, my job as a dad is simply to cultivate this. 

Parents, let us bolster our kids in their emerging convictions by affirming them in what they are good at.  Let them be real boys.  Let them be their own their own man.  Real boys turn into real men.

Canada’s Wonderland is a great theme park in the Greater Toronto Area.  Until August of this year, my sons, Aaron (8) and Nathan (5) had no idea what this place was about.  They had seen it the few times we drove by, but other than that, out of sight, out of mind.  Why spend $150 on admission for four people before you have to, right?  Right.

Anyways, on to the story at hand.  My Aaron is a budding thrill seeker.  He is timid at first, but once he gets going, he is fearless.  Enter the rollercoaster dilemma.  Do we gently push him to go on rides because we know he will like them? What if this parental pressure scars him for life?  He’ll never trust mommy and daddy again!  (He already has the capacity to write us off like that in some contexts)

We pushed him.  He loved it.  The look of sheer excitement was priceless.  Glee filled his face as he anticipated the next decent.  Screams like a little girl being mugged filled my ears and tattooed my brain eternally.  That little body was overflowing with adrenaline and like a drug addict, was already looking for his next fix before the safety bar unhooked him from the very seat he was dreading entering 90 seconds earlier.

As we were getting ready for launch on his second roller coaster, and first “big person” roller coaster of the day, he turned to me and said something that made me laugh hysterically.

Aaron: “Daddy?”

Me: “Yes, Aaron?”

Aaron: “If we die, you were a great dad.”

Me: “Well thanks, Aaron, you were a great Aaron.” (I had nothing.)

And we were off.  90 seconds of ear bleeding screams and laughter later, we lived. 

Aaron’s heartfelt, fear driven loving comment reminded me of a personal motto I have tried to live by.  It is, “Live your life in a way that people will say great things about you while you are still living.  Then they won’t have to lie about you at your funeral during the eulogy.” 

At least I know that if I died on the roller coaster yesterday, Aaron would be telling the truth at the funeral (assuming he didn’t go down with me!)

Such a morbid thought I know.  But it was funny at the moment.

Graduations.  Nathan had the privilege of graduating from Junior kindergarten to senior kindergarten this past Tuesday.  This was a proud moment for him as he, for the first time, understood the meaning of this accomplishment.  He completed JK and now he is officially moving to SK (Big tings! As my Jamaican peeps would say!)  It was 1:30pm and the room was filled with parents that took extended lunch hours and half days just to be there.  It was a big presentation the kids practiced for months.  Every student was dressed in their “Sunday Best”- ties, dress pants and pretty dresses; and there were more cameras than the royal wedding capturing every moment for posterity’s sake.  Nathan, not shy of crowds, loved every moment of celebrating with his classmates and parents.

Aaron, my 8 yr old, recalls that same moment fondly, and my wife is always one to make a BIG deal out of life stages. So we celebrate.   It is my hope the kids get used to graduating from stuff.  As parents, we have discovered it is a pretty good strategy to play up moments like this.  Nathan sees images of people graduating from university, and he says, “Hey, I graduated too!”. 

Let’s get our kids addicted to graduating!  How can that be wrong? The affirmation that comes from accomplishing something will be a reference point for them and a motivator as they get on in years.  Maybe, one day, when the demands are too high, and Aaron or Nathan are ready to stop shy of a goal, they will remember the celebration they will be missing as well, and keep pressing on. 

With the need for education becoming more and more crucial, it’s never too early to get our kids (boys specifically, and even more specifically black boys) motivated towards education.  Our kids will be excited about the things we are excited about, so let’s get excited about learning, achieving and graduating to the next challenge in life.

My wife and I make a wonderful team.  For the sake of this blog, I am going to give you a window into my life this day to set up a discussion I had with my super-perceptive 8 year old son. 

I had a normal day:  05:30 start, 4 clients, two corporate group fitness sessions, and a squash conditioning class (which, on a side bar,  is supposed to have four people in it, but all have paid in full then bailed except one lucky dude who is now getting one-on-one PT for the price of Starbuck’s breakfast.  I still get paid so we’re both happy!).

My wife is a full time student.  I think she is a superstar for this massive and taxing undertaking.  On this particular day, as she tries to be a house wife over her 4 month break, she has made dinner, baked cookies, watered the garden, and is reviewing for her night class.

Only home for 30 minutes, I rush back out to pick up Aaron from school.  After picking him up at the office (because I am the school council chair and I have a check requisition to sign and a principal to connect with) we begin our walk and dialogue about his day.

I start out with a little shout out for mommy, “Dude, you are going to be so happy.  Mommy has worked so hard today: she cooked dinner, baked cookies for you and Nathan, AND she has done her homework for class tonight. She has done A LOT today.” His response…

“So why don’t you do something then?”

“Wh.., what do you mean by that, bud?” I say while resisting the temptation to push this little punk into traffic.

He proceeded to explain everything he sees mommy doing in the morning to get them out the door for school, and the times she brings lunch for him, plus the patient homework help afterschool, PLUS the times I mention the bonuses like cookies afterschool which seldom happen.

I listened to him without challenging him, and learned a lot about his perception of our roles as parents.  He also acknowledged how hard I worked away from the home, but he SEES what mommy does when she is on. 

I am the guy that says “no” to everything.  “No” you cannot have gumballs for breakfast, “No” you cannot stay up till midnight.  And so on.  Mommy is silly, fun and the hard working do-it-all. Nice.

I guess there is no real point to this blog but to encourage you to know, you cannot please all the people all the time.  God knows your efforts and even though I believe affirmation is the currency of manhood, sometimes you ain’t gonna get any.

Just keep going straight.  Make that cheque, keep the lights on, serve your community, love your kids, and don’t push them into traffic when they stomp on your efforts to hold life together.

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I love playing sports with my boys.  At the ages of 8 and 4, it seems like they are the perfect age for competition.  Whether it is basketball on the lil’ tikes net in the basement, or baseball also in the basement with no more breakable stuff around, we play.  We play hard.  Sending them to bed with flush red faces and no energy to make excuses to stay up later is one of my favourite pastimes.

I am still enjoying my parenting class.  With the exception of a few prior engagements I have been a good student attending every class. 

Regardless of what we are talking about: making courageous kids -kids that have endurance, poise, or discipline, I have come to the personal conclusion everything a kid needs to learn about life, they can learn in sports.

POISE: by my definition is about keeping your composure. It’s about losing with dignity and winning with humility.   It’s about moving on when things don’t go your way and not buckling under pressure when things are out of your control.   If there is one hidden gem of a character quality I want my boys to have as they grow into men, it would be POISE.   When asked in class, how we cultivate this in little people, I shared my philosophy on sports.  

I beat my kids in sports.  Unapologically, I never let my 8 year old beat me in an arm wrestle- you gotta earn that.  I sometimes defeat my 4 year old in basketball just to make him cry.  Why?  Because it is training for the real world.  Listen, if I give my wonderful boys “practice” losing when it doesn’t really matter, what will happen when the pressure is on?  They will access this familiar point of disappointment, and remember to say, “good game”.  They might not lose because they are not as afraid of failure as their opponent.  We discuss the disappointment.  I remind them sometimes people will win, they are still good and they are still loved by God, mommy and daddy.  The loss does not make them losers.  The long term benefit: they will have poise because they have been there before, and they know they will live to fight another day if things don’t go their way.  A bad mark on a test will not ruin them.  A rejection from a friend won’t devastate them because they know who they are and they are loved, talented and they might have met someone with the same qualities or more.

Sorry if it sounds unfair, rough even to treat my sons that way, but it’s my home.  Deal with it.

I love watching tennis.  I have an appreciation for the fitness level, the accuracy, the focus of the athletes and the complexity of the game itself.  I have taken a few informal lessons over the years from clients of mine that are pretty good players. They taught me about the correct grip, how to do a forehand and a backhand shot.  It seems to me the more I learned, the more there was to learn.  Angles, speed of the swing. Top spin, backspin, serving…. the list seemed endless.  There are different scenarios when to do certain shots, there are different surfaces to play on.  Of all the information that I gleaned over my short foray into the tennis world, there is one tidbit that intrigued me the most.  I cannot remember the exact numbers, but a tennis pro told me that each degree of angle that I turn my wrist equates to another x number of feet the ball travels.  For example, if I have my wrist turned and set in one position, the swing will result in the ball landing just in front of the service line.  If I turn my wrist an angle of one degree higher, the ball may land by the base line.  Perhaps my grip is too loose on the next return and my wrist angle is two more degrees away from the original shot, the ball sails into the fence, or over the fence.  The one degree of turn results in a significant change in the trajectory of the ball.  Pretty neat stuff, huh? I had forgotten about this piece of information until this Tuesday….

I recently registered my sons in a mid-week programming at a local church.  For my 8 year old, there is a multi sports program. He gets to play soccer, dodgeball, basketball and other sports.  There is an army of highschool volunteers and the program runs beautifully.  My 4 year old has a story time program.  These cute little people can show up in the pj’s ready for bed, listen to stories and do crafts for the 90 minutes.  He came home last week excited to show mommy about a hat he made during his craft class.  Two happy campers, they be!  This leaves daddy happy too, I have 90 minutes to burn all by myself.  What shall I do? Starbucks?  Shopping I couldn’t get to during the weekend?, do another workout?  One of the parents told me about a small group parenting class happening during the time slot of the kids programs.  I questioned its value, and then weighed my options.  As a small business owner, I am always working. I am either training clients, booking clients, working on new initiatives, following up on old administrative duties, or making new connections.  By default, this 90 minute intercession translates to 90 more minutes of work.  No thank you.  Let’s try this class.  It is the only way to keep me away from sitting in Starbucks (AKA the office) working.  I am officially part of a parenting class.  Contrary to my first assumption, the class is not filled with lost parents looking for clues to rescue their wayward teen.  Rather, it is filled with new parents with newborns wanting to get off on the right foot.  There are parents with children under 10years of age who want to be intentional about keeping their kids connected after their darlings stop admiring them in the soon coming teen years of potential angst and imminent challenge.  I was amongst like mined people.  I love my boys and I am determined to help them become men of substance one day.  That journey begins today with the teaching of manners, and honesty, to be their own person, compassionate… don’t get me started.  I sat in the class and listened to the introduction about how this class is going to teach us how to be parents who can raise our Children Right.  Sounds good to me.   This class is going to invite me to look at my upbringing, its strengths and weakness and help me, with the help of my new community, to mould a brand of parenting that will be grace filled and empowering for my little men in the making.  Love it!  So here is the tennis connection.  Parenting is like a tennis swing.  I don’t have to overhaul everything if I am going to be a super parent with all-star kids.  I just have to look at the minutia of my swing – that one degree of angle tilt- and make subtle adjustments.  If I change the angle of my wrist just one degree the ball stays in the court and doesn’t hit the fence.  Making this practical, If I have never said sorry to my kids when I wrong them, and now decide to start saying it at those moments when, being am tired from my day, I treat them with a shortness that is unfair to their exuberance, that angle change is enough to change the trajectory of their lives.  They learn to be people that forgive.   Forgiving people go farther in life than unforgiving people.  This subtle change, like the one degree turn of the racquet, turns out to make a drastic difference. 

I told Aaron, I was going to take the parenting class when we got back to the car.  In his 8 year old curiosity, he asked “why?”.   I told him so that I could be a better parent.  Yet again in his 8 year old wit, he said “Oh that’s good, you need to work on some things, like when you…”, he began to list my transgressions, of not letting him watch TV for 4 hours after school, or not letting him have a lollipop, and not taking them out for Wendy’s.  Quick, what did I learn tonight?  How soon I have to apply the kindness I learned moments ago.  I will keep you posted on how my adventures in parenting class continue.  Aaron will tell you if the parent class is working!

      I have this term I hate to hear.  Whether it was in a Counselling setting or in a Personal training setting there is one term that grates me more than any other.    Any guesses?  Its not “I hate you”- I get that a bit, its not “I can’t”- I don’t like that phrase either.  It’s not, “Are we done yet?”- 25 minutes in to a challenging workout… No, the term I disdain is “I used to be…” Arg!  Oh, the pining for what we used to be.  How easy it is to get stuck in what used to be.  Our “glory days”, the days of thinness, muscularity, invincibility, freedom, passion, or whatever is apparently lacking now.   Don’t get me wrong, there is a difference between recognizing the passing of time and fondly reminiscing about days gone by, and simply being stuck.  I cannot be what I used to be – true; but you can be better.  New and improved! Evolved and adapted.  Enhanced!

I am going to segway into a religious thought for a second.  Many religions capture the notion of a conversion moment, but Christianity takes it to the next level with the concept of repentance.  To repent means to turn away from wrong behaviour and turn or in some cases, re-turn to a correct, constructive behaviour.   Passages upon passages speak of exhortations for people to return to what they did when they were in their “glory days” to get once again what they had in that time of fortune.   Aren’t our physical lives much like this spiritual analogy?  When will we repent of our diet-coke drinking, sitting around for 4 hours in front of a TV, ways and return to our ways of activity, and exercise lifestyle.  How many times do I hear, “I used to run track, I used to be in the gym everyday as a teen, I used to eat so clean just to get a six pack!!!”  REPENT!!!!  If you are complaining about back pain, excess weight, fatigue, turn back to what you did before.   To put it in slang: Do what you did to get what you got.   

I don’t usually do the three simple steps thing but here it goes anyways.

1.      Recognize the area you are always complaining (acknowledging) as an area that you wish was the way it used to be… thinner before kids, stronger before I started this travelling job…

2.      Write down what was happening in your life at that time

3.      Write down what activities you were involved in at that time in your life (i.e. i went for a walk after dinner every night, I used to eat salads for dinner, I worked out at 6am)

4.      Talk with a friend about your plan to return to your glory days, ask them what their physical glory day was – compare notes

5.      Make a realistic first step with your buddy. ( i.e. make a pact to change the diet starting TODAY, and call each other to see if you succeeded for week 1)

6.      Ramp it up. Make subsequent steps as you master the previous plan, week by week

7.      Call me when you are in week 3 and I will help you get to the next level!!!!

Okay, it’s seven difficult steps.  Try it any anyways! I would love to hear your feedback on this article, and what your plan is. 

Life is full of decisions.  Whether it is choosing what underwear to put on, or what university to go to, we are forever making decisions.  This becomes magnified in the workforce when we have leadership position.  Add to that family responsibilities and it is almost overwhelming the amount of decisions one has to make in the course of the day or week. 

As a man who wears husband, father, entrepreneur, community member hats, there are many decisions I am making all the time.  Even though I am in the fitness industry, I have a few other topics I like to read on and cultivate in my life:  Leadership and Marriage.  I love reading on leadership and on relationships!  I actually read leadership books and look at them through the lenses of a husband “leading” my family.  I constantly ask myself: “What am I doing to encourage my wife in her dreams and ambitions, and what am I doing to raise sons with Godly character?”  I use this information to inform my decision making process.

No clue where I am going with this yet?  The key term today is decide.  In light of what is important  to me in life, what will I decide to do today in each given situation?

To decide, according to Dan Allender, “requires a death, a dying to a thousand options, the putting aside of a legion of possibilities in order to choose just one.  De-cide, Homo-cide, Sui-cide… 

The root word decidere means to cut off. 

So, every time I make a decision, I am not only choosing the best option, I am dying to the other options.  Imagine if everyone who got married thought this way.  The other girlfriend options are DEAD to them.  The other men are CUT off.   No plan B, no exit strategy, the life with the one you’re with is the only option.  The infinite other choices of singleness, other girls, separation, affairs with married men etc have died a quiet death and all that is left is what you have, so deal with it like there is no way out.

Every time someone signs up for personal training with me and decides to get fit, it is the same thing. They are not just choosing to exercise; they are DYING to the options of eating for pleasure, not for fuel, DYING to lazy thoughts and actions.  Their thought should be: “I am burying the tendency to eat late, stay up late, party hard, and move less”. 

I am purposing from this moment forward to not only assess the wisdom of a decision I have just made but also consider the death of the options that I leave in its stead.  Plan B is officially dead.  Bury it now and chase after the success of your decision with reckless abandon.  Love your spouse forgivingly and more passionately, lead your business with the firm resolve you are going the right direction; pursue your optimum health like there is no other way.    Only then you are our way to your own Personal Victory.

Martin Reid is the Owner of Personal Victory, a fitness consulting company in partnership with PhillipEllis.   Can’t wait for the next blog? You can contact him with your questions at martin@personalvictory.ca.

There are so many strategies for losing weight.  People have come up with every tactic from extreme diets to simple lifestyle changes in hopes of making that impact.  This topic sparked an interesting conversation with a client the other day.  I was mentioning some of the things I do or don’t do which, in the long term, make a difference in your net caloric output during the day. 

NEVER pay at the pump when getting gas.  By doing this brief walk to the counter, you are getting those few extra steps in during your week which add up.  Add that to walking the stairs at work, doing an extra set of running up the stairs when doing laundry, and some other things and you’re on your way to a better you!  Dave challenged me at that point and said, “Well, I pay at the pump because I don’t have the will power to resist buying a chocolate bar if I go into the station to pay.”  So much for me being helpful! 

The point is, at the end of the day, the battle is yours to fight.  My strategies for losing weight may not help you. There is a maxim (not that kinda Maxim, stay with me) at says, ”Know Thyself”.  I commend Dave for knowing himself enough to know a list of weight loss tricks you read off the internet is not going to work for him. 

This is the larger issue: We as people spend little time determining where we are.  We don’t know our selves.  We don’t examine ourselves and look at our weaknesses before embarking on bettering ourselves.  The issue of Dave knowing he is weak in the area of food self control bleeds into all areas of life.  Realizing his humanity helps him to re-strategize in ways that will be successful for him. 

So, before trying the next big revolution for self improvement, take a day to examine your life.  Get your bearings, learn your strengths and weaknesses, and then embark on the journey to betterment.  THEN you will achieve your personal victory.

Martin Reid is the Owner of Personal Victory, a fitness consulting company in partnership with PhillipEllis.   Can’t wait for the next blog? You can contact him with your questions at martin@personalvictory.ca.