Burnout

I’ve been trying to write this post for a short while, it’s been hard to get the words out for some reason but I think it’s needed from what I am hearing from many fitness professionals.

Ever feel like you’re in a funk? Like yesterday you knew exactly where you were going with your personal training business and today the whole thing feels like a house of cards about to tumble? Have you ever felt so paralyzed with fear about hiring a new trainer or that next big promotion?

Not too many people know this but my 7 Figure business almost collapsed, a couple of times, or whether that’s absolute truth or not that’s sure how I felt at the time. In fact I’ve rarely spoke about it to anyone until now. I guess that’s what a perfectionist does when his confidence is shaken; he waits until it’s restored to really talk about it.

But whether it is disaster or just a funk I think the feelings are the same and I think it’s a natural cycle in your personal training business or any business. We’re all control freaks at heart, we’re methodical, analytical, task and goal oriented, and demand to be at our fighting performance ALL THE TIME!

I hate the word motivate, what we really do is inspire people to change and that in turn inspires us. Motivation is a by-product of inspiration and comes after action is taken not before, this is why we can’t motivate anyone, not even ourselves. We must first be inspired by the vision or idea of the outcome, in other words we have to have a goal. But then of course it’s not that simple either, I mean do you really understand your goal and does your goal fit you personally? What I mean by that is I think as people we all become distracted by what we “think” our goals are “supposed” to be. For instance in our world today financial means is sought after by everyone, it’s a deep root in our culture, wealth brings opportunity, options, material objects and most importantly freedom. But are you really attracted to money and financial success? For me personally at times it feels like it and then more often than not I realize it’s not the money but the freedom and bigger still the sense of ACCOMPLISHMENT.
That right there is the mother of all things, when I doubt everything I try to focus on that simple fact. As a teen growing up I struggled with self-esteem and self-worth and as a result the sense of accomplishment is emotionally very important to me. If I’m in a low it’s, more often than not, because that basic sense or need is not being fulfilled.

I suspect with personal trainers world wide some measure of this holds true for most of us just because our series of behaviors are so similar; but if that isn’t the case for you what do you feel it is? If you can’t answer that with absolute certainty I’d totally suggest you take 20 minutes to sit in a quite place and separate yourself from everything and just think about it. Oddly the two places that this seems to happen the easiest for me is doing cardio and taking a shower (ok maybe you didn’t need to know that.)

My point of all of this is it’s normal to be in a funk, and it’s going to happen again so how are you going to deal with it?

Here’s what I’d suggest…

1)   Take 20 minutes to really consider what inspires you, or what is the one word emotion that describes what inspires you every single time.

2)   Review your historical progress, we’re often frustrated by a lack of growth or change only because we don’t realize how rapidly or how much we’ve already grown.

3)   Set goals but most importantly break them down to small, very comfortable, goals that you can achieve in a day or a week it has to feel not so bad.

4)   Get out of dodge often! Seriously I find if I don’t take a week break from my business every 8-12 weeks my productivity deteriorates to almost nothing, fear and procrastination begin to rule. (I even see this in my trainers and encourage them to take emotional breaks from clients.)

5)   Finally and most importantly, look at your giant “to-do” list and sift through it to find the one thing that really excites you, that you can do or work on right now and won’t take more than today or a couple days to complete. Something that will drive your business forward, put everything else aside and attack it. Re-ignite your inspiration and ultimately motivation with an immediate sense of success and accomplishment (exactly the same as you try to do for your clients.)