Self Improvement and Motivation – Are You Angry Enough?

I spent 3 years as a personal trainer safeguarding my client’s emotions, so imagine my surprise when someone told me the other day that she would have fired her trainer if he didn’t upset her during every single training session.

Huh?!?

Once she explained what she meant however, I got the point in a big way, and felt it was definitely a lesson worth sharing with my readers.  

Basically, she said that she didn’t believe in personal trainers for a long time because she thought (rightfully so) that most people just used them as high-paid babysitters who would stand there to make sure that their clients worked out a few times per week.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that people do exactly that, and in fact, it is one of the reasons why I got out of personal training and started writing about personal development instead. I wanted to teach people to deal with the “why’s” associated with not attaining their goals rather than just teach them how to treat the symptoms, e.g. – being overweight, broke, etc.

The lesson that this young lady shared with me was that she changed her tune whenever she got an injury and needed to hire a personal trainer in order to help her rehabilitate that injury.

Now, you could do a search on Google right now and find out for free how to rehabilitate an injury, but the problem is that even if you were armed with the information, would you push yourself so hard that you actually got angry with yourself about how hard you were being forced to work?

Think about it:

• Have you ever worked with a mentor who held you so accountable to the tasks related to your goal attainment that you would get very annoyed at him or her for constantly making you do things that you otherwise wouldn’t have done?
• Have you ever been in a group exercise class when you seriously felt like punching the instructor in the face because you were physically exhausted, but they kept the class going long after you would have quit on your own?
• Have you ever wanted to smack your spouse when they gave you a timely reminder about the fact that you were not keeping a promise that you made to yourself about your weight, your finances, or your career?

Almost everyone has a similar story about some point in their life whenever they got very angry, upset, or frustrated with a parent, a mentor, a spouse, a boss, a friend, or some other well-meaning individual who was guilty of nothing more than forcing us to do what we already said we were going to do!

Why are we angry at them for pushing us so hard? It is most likely because we know in our heart of hearts that – left to our own will power – there is no way we would have been as consistent or worked as hard as we did due to that person’s influence.

We are not really angry with them; we are angry with ourselves. However, whether you want to place the blame for that anger on yourself, or on other people in your life, the bottom line is the same:

If you aren’t pushing yourself so hard to attain your goals that you collapse across the finish line at the end of every day, exhausted but exhilarated by your accomplishments, then you should seriously ask yourself if you are working hard enough to attain those goals.

If you are strolling along on your path to goal attainment like you are on a walk through the park without a care in the world, then don’t be surprised when your goals come trickling into your life at that same snail’s pace!

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