Losing Weight vs. Losing Your Mind

Although my primary goal in life right now is to help people improve their lives, my actual start along this path was in a much more specific niche – personal training. I’ve always been one of those people who always has a smile on my face, and giving advice to people was something that I did on an almost daily basis without even thinking about it.

Add that to the fact that I have been in and out of the fitness scene since I was a teenager, and through my own thoughts as well as feedback from others, I decided that most of the skills and assets were in place that would allow me to very effectively help people clean up their lives by cleaning up their physical health.

That path did indeed turn out to be one that I walked successfully, and when I finally got out of the personal training industry after more than 3 years, it was due to personal reasons rather than because I wasn’t doing a good job at it. In fact, in my area of Jacksonville, FL, I was one of the few trainers who worked in-home with my clients, which meant that I had a steady stream of customers, all of whom I helped in many ways.

However, as a die-hard family man who also enjoyed an active social life, by maintaining the insane schedule that is common place for personal trainers, my own lifestyle was frequently taking a back seat. For that reason, I gracefully slid out of the path of personal training in order to focus on finding other ways to help people that would allow me to achieve a family/career/social balance.

I have successfully accomplished that goal since I left the personal training industry, but I have also recently become aware of something that has caused me to reconsider how best I can serve others.

Put simply, what I have realized is that no matter how much I can offer people by providing self improvement services and information, a large portion of the population is still primarily concerned with losing weight!

Prior to October of 2006, a look at any of my recent articles or the posts here on this blog will clearly show that my personal belief is that you can have ANYTHING that you want in life by practicing concepts such as self development and the Law of Attraction – including good health and weight loss.

However, it is apparent that not everyone understands that or agrees with it as much as I do, because the market for people who are looking for weight loss and health improvement services is as big as it ever was. This has caused me to consider how best I can serve the public at large, even though so many of them believe that weight loss and other health concerns are the “end all, be all” of their happiness.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I firmly believe in living a healthy lifestyle and in safeguarding your health, so this post is in no way meant to insinuate that I don’t want people to be healthy.

However, I believe that true health starts in the mind, and continues to follow the path of the mind throughout our physical existence on this earth. Although I will not get into the scientific ramifications of that subject right now, there is no doubt that at least some of our health comes from the inside, rather than from how much time we spend at the gym.

So, that being the case, I have come up against a wall. On one side of the wall is my own belief that you can only be truly healthy if your HEAD is also healthy, and on the other side of the wall are millions of other people who think that the answer to health can be found on food labels and through a proper exercise program.

Who is right? Well… both, actually! There is no such thing as well-rounded health by just thinking about it, but there is also no such thing as perfect physical condition by eating and exercising properly, but then allowing your head to be cluttered with negativity or other improper thoughts.

All of this takes us back to the dilemma: If your head AND your body need to be on track in order for you to experience total health over the long-term, but most people do not realize that, how can I (or anyone else) reach those people in order to educate them?

I have found no “simple” answer to this question, but I didn’t really expect to, either. If life’s greatest mysteries were easy to solve, I’m sure as a race we would just come up with harder mysteries!

So, barring any obvious solution, I am going to practice the fine art of falling back on a saying that most people have heard many times before:

“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!”

I am simply going to marry up the skills and the education that I have about self improvement, self development, and the Law of Attraction, with the skills that I have in the arena of health, weight loss, exercise, and general fitness.

I am going to – whenever possible and appropriate – sprinkle in the “physical” side of overall health along with the mental side that I have dedicated most of my recent educational efforts to.

What does this mean for you, faithful reader? Quite simply, that you are going to get the best of both worlds! Although I will still write frequent and well thought-out posts and articles about the mental aspects of self improvement, I will also throw in data on the physical side of things whenever it is appropriate to do so.

I am not going to turn this blog into a physical fitness forum, nor am I going to start belaboring the finer points of low-carb dieting or any other fad concepts. However, when it fits into the general mold of “lifestyle improvement”, I will toss out some of the more valuable nuggets of fitness information that I have learned over the years.

In addition, after realizing the need to bridge the gap between mental health and physical health, I have struck one of the first blows by penning a new eBook entitled ‘Mental Meltdown: Weight Loss Begins in the Mind!’.

And no, I do not know where I come up with the funky titles for my books, articles, and blog posts! 🙂

If you want to check out the eBook, you can do so by visiting the Today is that Day main site, which is linked in the right-hand navigation of this page.

I do not have a clear vision at this point as to what other efforts are going to be needed in order to continue to bridge the gap between the “mental” crowd and the “physical” crowd, but I do believe very much that the bridge DOES need to be built!

I intend to serve as many people as possible by finding a successful way to do so, while still maintaining the integrity of my own mental and physical health, which of course…

…starts in my head!