The beginning of something bigger than me!

I am super pumped about this website being launched. I have been a trainer first in martial arts (Shotokan Karate) and later in fitness for about 22 years now. During that time I have been baffled again and again why some people succeed with their goals and others don’t.

We all start out the same way usually but some of us along the road seem to be destined to do great things and others are not?

Is that really so? Are some people simply destined to have life pass them by?

I personally don’t think so because after a while I started to realize that some people have something that others seem to have forgotten or pushed away.

They are passionate. It can be many different things. It can be family, training, reading, helping others. The list goes on and on. I learnt that you can only help people when you can ignite that fire in them but for that I had to find my own.

How I found my fire?

Finding my own passion has not been as easy. I always loved training people but it was not until I started working with my own business coach Jamison Hollister a couple of years back that I had to really think about it. Until then my thinking was simply that I wanted to have the best personal training company in Charlotte.

So Jamison, an awesome dude by the way, asked me: “So why do you do it and who are you?” Stumped by this question I did not really have a good answer for him. I stumbled and stuttered an answer together like: I like to help people…..etc. Once I was finished he asked me again: “Why do you do it and who are you?”

We worked for several months just on that. I had to write my eulogy as well as some other pretty deep things. I really reflected. Until this day I keep working on it.

Slowly like out of a lump of clay an idea formed. I started to know the WHY I did it and WHO I am.

THE WHY

As a child I used to stutter pretty badly and even until adulthood I retained a high level of anxiety performance. I would stutter, fail because I was afraid, see psychologists, read self help books, see some more psychologists, hurt myself intentionally in order to feel something else but worry and fear. My years in martial arts for the longest time just helped me build a facade that seemed self confidence to the outside, unless I was in a tournament or a situation where I had to prove my skills. I would fail.

I started to go to the University of Frankfurt for my major Sports Science. I bloomed, despite my fears I had good grades and I pushed through. I never understood until working with my coach what had happened. I had found one of my passions and I completely let go. I started speaking in front of people and actually enjoy it. Me, the person that used to stutter and not get a word out sometimes even as an adult when ordering bread or reading out loud out of a book in high school.

Then I started working as a trainer in a regular gym in Germany working on the floor, and guess what I did not like it! I promised myself I would never work as a fitness trainer. In 2004 I moved to the US with my wife intending to open my own dojo. Instead I started to work as a personal trainer and I was making a difference in people’s lives – I loved it. What I did not love was the still high rate of people who did not accomplish their goals. One day in a meeting with the GM of the gym he asked us: How many people succeed in their goals? The trainer’s answers were sad. 10-20%. I thought my percentage was higher but it still was not even close to 80-100%.

Once I opened my own business I was ridden with fear again. I would drive heave in the bathroom each morning, afraid to fail. I would be afraid to look at bank statements out of fear what I would find. I would lose myself for 40 hours a week in computer gaming to escape or watch TV until I could no longer stay up. Still, I would push on, deep down something was driving me.

After adding my first two employees I knew something had to change. I wanted to get out of a life of fear of failure. That is when I hired my own coach and it has been an awesome but sometimes painful journey. It is worth it.

So why do it? Because I don’t want anyone to struggle the way I did. Life was not really fun and fulfilling, it needed more. This is what drives my up in the morning I want to inspire people to find their own passions because passions have power and give you purpose. I want you to have a deeper sense of fulfillment and by being that inspire other people to dare explore their own passions. I want to touch as many people’s lives as possible. 

The WHO

“I want to live a life full of love, passion, purpose and curiosity!” – Michael Anders