The cold hard reality of one way thinking

A couple of weeks ago I received an email in my inbox that kind of set off an alarm. This “guy” (could be a he/she, the world will never know) emailed me and told me his name was Mr. Thadeus. For one thing having a name like Mr. Thadeus sounds kind of like a Bond villain name (Mr. Thadeus, show them what it is you do) but no the alarm didn’t go off because of an enemy of 007 but because I had seen similar scams in the past. What this guy would do was inquire about booking me for 50 sessions and for some reason its always his daughter or son or some relative coming from outside the country and wanting to learn how to train with kettlebells. They would send a check exceeding the price quote you give them and ask to be refunded the excess and then the check would bounce.

Mr. Thadeus, show them what it is you do.

Now I was venting to my friend and sometimes training partner about this because this really pisses me off. For one thing doing what I do for a living even though I love it is tough. I find myself running down my gas mileage, eating cold chicken in my car between appointments, dealing with cancellations and excuses in a down economy all while trying to earn an honest buck. So this douchebag tries to take my money by scamming me. Luckily my gut told me this guy was full of crap. Unfortunately not everybody can discern that.

As I am telling my friend about all this he was telling me about a guy that was on that show “intervention” who had sent money to scammers in another country over a similar scam. You have probably found out that you somehow had a relative in some African country that died and left you a big inheritance but they need your account number to wire you the funds. Well this guy had fallen for that, and kept paying these people even though his friends and family were telling them not to. He had to remortgage his house and sell a bunch of his valuables because somehow in his head he believed he was going to get a lot of money sent to him.

So in other words he had invested so much into his belief that he would profit from this that he was unable to face the reality that it was all a bunch of crap.

And yet I see the same thing all the time when it comes to people trying to transform themselves. They have been bombarded so much into believing that doing ab exercises will magically shrink the midsection and aerobics/cardio is the best way to lose fat, that confusing the muscle is necessary for change, and that they need to have thousands of dollars in different kinds of supplements to gain muscle that presenting them with the truth is to painful to face. They would rather waste their money and time staying in their comfort zone (because that is what they are used to.) then to buckle down to what really brings results because it might be different then what they took as gospel.

It’s sad really. I believe that people could be a lot better off if they just took a long hard look at what they are doing and assessing if it is really in their best interest to continue to do it.

So let me ask you something. Have you invested so much of your time and energy chasing results without them ever able to appear that it is impossible to bring you back to reality? Be honest now.

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1. the bs excuses Ive heard over the years