Week 5 - Your Workout is a Metaphor for Life

Hello Readers! Before I get into the meat of my topic today, I would like to share with you three pictures.

The first picture is me (circa 1981) taken in high school. I had the prototypical 80's look - big glasses and big hair. The photographer actually told me I looked like I was in an ornery mood. You would not want to know what was going on inside that big head of hair. Teenage angst? Maybe. Or it could be gas.

The second picture is me, when I joined TD Bank. It was 11 years ago this week that I was hired by the Wealth Management division of TD Bank. This was the photo on my security badge. Two things to note about me: 1) I had an eerie resemblance to Harry Potter with the prominent glasses. Yup, I actually wore them. 2) I carried extra weight on my face, forcing a double chin effect.









In my third picture, an almost miraculous change. I finally dropped the oversized shades, most of my hair is still there, and the double chin is no longer there and my face became tighter. Any tighter and people would think I was taking botox injections.

The point of all of this is to stress two points: 1) If Harry Potter had committed a murder 11 years ago and became a fugitive, you would not have been able to find him today, and 2) You can definitely realize life changing benefits when you commit to a regularly scheduled fitness program of exercise and eating right (most of the time!).

There are many lessons that you can learn from your extra-curricular pursuits that you can apply to the more structured areas of your life (say, your career and your family life).

For example:

1. The pickup hockey game can be a metaphor for life


2. The youth leadership program can be a metaphor for life


3. Overcoming a health problem can be a metaphor for life


4. And ... a weight loss and fitness program can also become a metaphor for life.

This is what my trainer alluded to when we were talking this week. In this space, I want to draw that connection between lessons I learned while engaged in a weight loss and fitness program and how they relate to my personal and working life. There are several virtues that I'm enhancing that are transferable to my next career, whatever that will be. These are qualities that make you a winner in the eyes of your peers.

Let's examine them:

Persistence - When I set a health-related goal for myself (lose 30 lbs) and then developed an carry out a plan to achieve it (i.e. lose weight or planning to see my abs pop out), I'm doing all that I can without giving up on my plans. With the goal that I firmly set in your mind, I also have an image of a vibrant, healthy person in my mind. I want to be that person and I'll do all I can to be that person. I'm not going to give up at any cost, because that goal is meaningful to me.

Those same virtues can be exercised in the context of my working life. I want to carve out a career change and I'll do all that I can using the same principles that I bring to my time in gym after work.

Consistency - My efforts toward my weight loss must be scheduled. It is not much good if I say I will workout 3 times this week and I only make it to the gym one day during the week. It is more effective to make a date with the gym by scheduling in my calendar, not by verbally etching the dates in my head. I work with a trainer 3 evenings a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Friday evenings). I'm not a morning person. How many bloggers do you know are really morning people? If for some reason one of the dates falls through then I reschedule on another day and place it in my calendar.

When I talk about consistency, not only am I talking about similar schedules week to week, I'm also referring to consistent effort during the time I'm at the gym on a given night. As my trainer said, there are nights when I may not feel as good for some reason or another, but my effort must be the best that I can possibly give, given the circumstances.

Again, I can take the same lesssons here and apply them to my working life. If I'm to be successful in my working life, I must bring a consistent approach to work everyday to get results. My mission is to make a career change, but I must perform with consistency now with what I do today.

Communicating effectively - If my fitness goals are to progress as smoothly as planned, I must communicate effectively with my trainer. This means simply telling him where I feel pain or muscle strain after an exercise, or even if I don't feel strain. It also means telling him what I think works or what doesn't work. If I'm feeling a burn after leg extensions due to a build up of lactic acid, he needs to know this so that he can help me in developing an effective exercise plan. Reaching my fitness goals requires more than just following what he tells me to do. I must also communicate effectively with him so that he knows that the workout is, in fact, working.

Again, moving to the workplace, if I'm to be successful, I must exercise open and sometimes candid communication with managers. Open communication is effective, because it eliminates the fear of saying something that may ultimately open the doors and clear a misunderstanding.

Inspiring others - You may not believe it, but I intentionally go to the gym with one of my intentions being to inspire others around me. I feel that my mission is to be a guiding light to others who live a physical disability and God has given me the gifts to make this a reality. I bring a strong work ethic to my workouts and I believe the others see that.

Moving that ability to inspire others to the workplace can have the same effects. When I demonstrate to others my effective communication skills, I'm also demonstrating my leadership potential to the organization. My goal is to untap that potential and make more use of it to inspire others to personal greatness.

Overcoming obstacles - I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude and accomplishment when I master an exercise movement that was once considered almost impossible. Squats are a very good exercise because they effectively strengthen the muscles in your core. Before I started working with my trainer, I could barely bend my legs while standing ... then I put my hands on the back of a bench and then bent down ... then I began supporting my squats by hanging on to a pole and then squating until my gym shorts barely touched the seat ... now I'm squating with only one hand hanging on to the pole. So you can see that a move that I once considered almost impossible is now POSSIBLE given the right approach!!

Obstacles in the workplace can also be conquered with the same approach. They can't be resolved right away in some cases, but with a thoughtful plan in place, most obstacles can be eradicated over a period of time. I sit on the Employment Equity Council committee at my workplace, TD Bank. For years, companies like mine have struggled with accommodating the needs of their employees who live with physical disabilities. For example some of the staff need to have their workstations redesigned to help them manage their space in the office more effectively. Also, some staff who are sight impaired need to work with computers that allow them to view their work properly. Fortunately, these barriers are being torn down, but it doesn't happen overnight. The obstacles toward achieving an all-inclusive workplace are slowly being overcome, but it requires persistence, consistent effort, effective communication, inspiration (and some perspiration!!) to make it a reality.

I firmly believe that often the best and the most talented workers to be applied to a given project are those on the outside looking in. They are considered undiscovered talent only because they either can't make it through the front door of the office because of building structural barriers or because we fail miserably at understanding their needs and demonstrating compassion in realizing that they have a lot of expertise to share. Let us all work together to ensure that we are all given the same level of playing field to make use of our talents no matter the obstacles.

God bless all of you.