Like many people in this life. I have had my share of challenges that have caused issues that have followed me from childhood into my adult life. However, the one consistent thing is my heart towards helping others. I am not trying to paint a picture like I have been this outstanding perfect individual all my life because that would not be true. You see, it is out of my up and down experiences. Some of which cause me to hang my head in shame. As well as the ones that almost destroyed me. Couple that with the things that kept me living to see another day. This gave birth to what I now do.
After being bitten by the weightlifting bug and struggling through the ups and downs of trying to get into shape, I connected with a few personal trainers along the way. One when I first met him was shocked, to say the least, that with my size that when he put 50 pounds on the bar for me to bench press that I struggled with being able to perform the task. However, he did not ridicule me in any way but said to me, "don't worry about it; we will get you there."
Over time I improved and started training on my own and met other trainers along the way who helped me to grow. One of them was at Gold's Gym, where one of the trainers there saw me working out, and he said something that stuck with me for a long time. He told me, "you lift well, but I can show you how to train the muscle." It was from there that he began to help me to develop the ability to focus on and isolate whatever muscle I was exercising. Many days I despised him for this new knowledge. Because after each session, my muscles would feel utterly destroyed, and the soreness over the next few days had me asking myself why I was allowing this torture to continue. However, the results I saw kept me at it.
It wasn't long after this that I decided to compete in a bodybuilding show. Bodybuilding was the hardest training that I had ever undertaken — from the exercises, learning to pose correctly, to the eating, and then the cutting diet to prepare to step out on stage. I did not win in my weight class, but I still placed reasonably well, considering it was my first time, and I was at the tail end of the weight class in which I competed. Over time I kept training off and on, and I would get many questions about exercise and eating. So much so that my wife had told me that I should consider becoming a personal trainer. She always said to me that I was natural at it. Along the way, this is what I did. I started it by naming it Diamond in the Rough Fitness because I saw every person like a rough cut diamond that just needed shaping, polishing, and perfecting. It was during this venture that I knew that I needed to gain more knowledge, and it was challenging, to say the least, doing this on my own. So I reached out to my very first trainer Mike White aka Mr. Motion, who had moved on from Pottsy's Gym, where I first him. He had started his own business called Body-N-Motion. He allowed me to come in as a personal trainer, where I gained even more knowledge about the art of personal training.
Fast-forwarding a bit, I slowly realized that I spent as much time helping people with their mindsets and emotions as I did with training their bodies. I began to see that no matter how hard an individual may exercise and push their body. If their mind were not right in how they saw themselves, they would never see the actual transformation that was occurring or, in some cases, the reason why it was not happening.
Over time I went back out on my own, but how I continued to help people to get into shape did not change. Meaning that I still spent as much time dealing with what was going on in the inside. As much as what was happening on the outside. It seemed that I spent more and more time helping each person in dealing with and thinking through whatever it was that they were facing. I found it surprising that how I operated as a minister within the church, would be tied so significantly to what I was doing within personal training.
I began to see that no matter if you are dealing with the physical, emotional, or spiritual well being of and individual, it all starts within the mind and our thinking process. It was from here that I began to rethink the name, which also reshaped my thinking and approach to what I do for others. So Shaped2Live became not only the new name but the very foundation of everything. I began to see that even though there were some lasting effects with the way that I was doing things before, it still seemed to keep people in a temporary or short term mindset, both within the church and personal training. Whereas when an individual begins to see a lifestyle of living, that should lead to their spirit, soul(mind) functioning in a condition that allows them to live out this life to its maximum potential, it becomes more permanent.
All of this, as I have mentioned before, begins with how we think. Because how we think can either bring us down or lift us faster than anything else, within any given moment or situation. So Shaped2Live has grown and developed into something that goes way beyond where it began and now allows me to deal with the entire person. You see, we are SHAPED2LIVE!