www.newellstrength.com
www.unlockingyourinnerstrength.com
A preface: we are all weird. Very weird. You must embrace your weirdness, trying to cover it up is
often what keeps people from being fascinating. However, there is a difference between being weird
and being awkward and odd. No one wants to be around the awkward and odd.
Have you ever heard the saying, ‘March to the beat of your own drummer?’ I bet you have and here is
how you can march to your own beat: find something that fascinates you. Fascination will lead to
passion and passion will lead to you going down different paths.
There is a poem by Robert Frost and one of those lines in there says ‘way leads onto way’.
This means a few things in my opinion, one which is about habit, which isn’t relevant here so I will keep
that thought to myself and the other is when you come to a passage way and you continue to go on
because you are endlessly curious and one book, one lecture, leads you on to something else.
When I first became obsessed with strength training, I had no idea that I would become even more
fascinated with the human mind. I got to this point because one book led to the next, which led to
something else, which led to someone else and so on. Way led onto way for me.
I have often been accused of ‘marching to the beat of my own drummer’, almost as if it were a bad
thing. But I don’t try to do it, it just happens because I am so consumed with whatever it is I am
studying. And the passion is so intense that I can’t help but write about it, teach about it and share it
with others.
Other people become ensnarled in my web and often confuse what I do with thinking they want to do
the same thing. I recognize this pattern right away because it seems happen more and more as the
years go on. People confuse being fascinated with a story or something that I do with thinking my field
is the field for them, even though I don’t have a field because my interests are so diverse and
sometimes seemingly un-connected.
Way leads onto way.
These paths that I have gone down in my life have led to me some very interesting characters.
Characters that I either make a point to call on the phone or meet in person. And then, they will
introduce me to someone else and my network grows. I had an athlete tell me at Newell Strength the
other day that ‘You know everyone’. I chuckled.
It only seems that I know everyone. But I got to that point way onto way. Do you know what happens
when you have a bottomless pit of acquaintances? You have a lot, and I mean a lot, of stories that you
can tell.
Often, the fear of judgment keeps you from sharing your interesting ideas. When it comes to sharing
my ideas, I have no fear, because I know that I am studying more than anyone I meet, so I can draw
from a very high level of confidence and fluency (I’ll get to that in a minute). Yes, I fear judgment like
any other human being, but not in this setting.