Have you ever had a moment when truth sweeps over you and it is unmistakable in its message? I was watching a video from Simon Sinek and he made a comment about the whole self-help culture, in that he found it very self-indulgent with books like “What are the 5 steps YOU can follow to becoming a millionaire” or “ What are the 7 steps YOU need to follow to get the career you want”. He asserted that the industry was too focused on “what can I get out of life and for me” as opposed to perhaps “ What are the 5 steps I can take to help someone lose weight” or “ What are the 7 steps I can follow to help the person next to me get the job they want”. Don’t get me wrong, I think personally that the self help movement has done tremendous   good, but perhaps its time for a shift in focus, from “ME” to “WE”.
We can get excited about how well we performed at work, how amazing the project was that we completed, but true fulfillment comes from helping others get what they want or need. We are wired th...

I have been interested in the driver behind human behavior for as long as I can remember. I worked in the night-club industry for many years and got to witness firsthand the rawness of human emotion, the unbridled impulses that often showed the darker side of human nature. Our insecurities, our shame, our anger, and our long held resentments often bubbled to the surface while in this environment.

From there I spent the last 20 years, having over thousands of hours of one on one conversations with people, people who are trying to change the course of their life by taking control over their health. What was interesting was that though weight loss and improved muscle tone were often the discussions during the initial meeting with a client that was just the tip of the iceberg. Often when a client felt that it was safe to share, issues of poor self-image, rejection of self, and shame would surface as the driver for their decision to get “fit”.

Does a darker side of us sit just below the s...

I read a quote a friend of mine had on their profile and it was one from Robert Frost, which goes “ Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired”. I thought about it for a while, trying to determine what it meant to me. I have the habit, you may have guessed by now, not to take things at face value but rather have to chew them for while until I can link it to a bigger picture. When I read this quote I first thought of the cost and the risk of wanting to be desired as Robert Frost had stated, truly, was the risk of rejection too great to want to be “irresistibly desired?

Brene Brown, one of my favorite authors, speaks about those men and woman who live a life “wholeheartedly” and though they experience rejection, pain and shame, they still open their heart to the possibility of love and laughter, which enviably shows up in their life in abundance. Do these men and women experience what Robert Frost had spoken about, being irresistibly desired? What does it mean to be irres...

Every morning before I allow the day to provide my with its plan for me, I mediate and try to run interference on the potential cascading of negative thoughts that often rush in to set the tone for my day. As I get into the day I am generally good, but it is when I am not distracted and alone with my thoughts that often my mind serves me a healthy dose of low self -esteem, fear and frustration. Now if you have met me, or think you know me, you would assume that I have it all together, and for the most part I have a life I am very grateful for, but like many I think, I work hard at being even keeled. I have invested countless hours in reading, research and personal development in an effort to do…what? Quite often our drivers are unconscious to us, meaning that what drives us or motivates us is not always apparent and not what we think. I had hoped with the countless hours of self-improvement, study would have eased my troubled mind, and it has helped me immeasurably in many ways, but I ...

Who I am to be?

The face in mirror, who am I to be
What road do I take
Which voice do I heed

Though I know what I do
I do not know who I am
From what wellspring does my life appear

Is it vanity to think one can change the world
Is it insanity to think I would even dare
More questions than answers I fear

Is it the act of faith I must embrace
A blind path with no guarantees
Is it only with faith my life will unfold

So strange I would accept much less
Just so that I would be so sure
Of how tomorrow tomorrows will be told

But in the quite moments
Between each breath that I take
My spirit whispers to me

Take hold of your faith
Follow your heart
And your dreams do not forsake

I look in the mirror
And the man that I see
Has always been there waiting
To accept his destiny

C. David Gilks Your Fellow Traveler

I have been an avid gym junkie for almost 22 years (with a few detours along the way) and I am proud to say I have been 80% on track for the duration of this journey. During that time I have trained as a martial artist, aerobic instructor, Olympic Weightlifter, bodybuilder, power lifter, speed and agility coach. I studied Chi Gong, Touch for Health, became a chartered herbalist, trained as a bio-kinesologist, and learned how to do acupressure. I was certified through three different personal training organizations, studied further and became a medical exercise specialist and Medical Exercise Program Director for 14 years, owning my own facility, and had some of my ideas studied and published at a local university. I have read over 600 books on personal development, psychology and neural plasticity, studied NLP for five years and have and created three breakthrough programs and technologies “Factor 3 Fitness”, “Cog/Kinetics” and the “ I AM Project”.

I wrote for a local paper as a fitne...

In this fascinating world that offers “plenty of knowledge on every thing” how do you which path to take and whose word to rely on? We have consultants for every thing imaginable, fitness to food, money to marriage, and sex to psychology. Of course there are thousands of others to pick from, these just happen to pop into my head So how do you know who to talk to, who to trust, where to put your money? That has been a probing question for me for many years as I poured through numerous books, courses, publications, and held counsel with various colleagues, therapist, PhDs in various fields of interest, and what I came up with, is, it depends. And what does it depend on? It depends what I am willing to act on and whom I trust. When it comes to those, like myself, who have careers as counselors or consultants in various fields of interest, you will find that we all have a bias to our particular point of view, of course, as that is what you are paying for in part.

But what is more importan...

It was almost 20 years ago when I worked with my first rehab client, a woman who, after a few challenging childbirths, found herself embarrassingly incontinent. Being a young trainer at the time, I thought being incontinent meant you lived further inland ;) In all seriousness, this lady challenged me because truly I had no idea how to help her, but I was intent on trying to figure it out. So I have to let you know that at the same time I was working with her a few other things were also playing out in the background, things that changed the course of my career and forever changed the way I looked at fitness. I was training very heavy at that time and in a ego driven display of stupidity, I pulled a 475 lb deadlift off the ground (shouldn’t have) and injured both of my forearms by creating traction injury. So, I couldn’t grip, hold my coffee, open the fridge or hold onto a weight with any amount of force.

Those of you who have sustained exercise related injuries know how frustrating th...

Gandhi’s famous quote “be the change you wish to see in the world” was a wonderful example of someone deciding to “go first” and becoming a change agent. His act of courage and vision forever changed an entire nation and brought to end the colonial rule in India, simply by deciding to “go first”. Gandhi did not ask around to see if it was a good idea, waiting for group acceptance of his idea to free a nation, he saw an injustice and he knew that he could make small measurable changes in the world he found himself in, so he simply went first. There were many who shared his ideals, but there were not prompted into action until Gandhi began his long journey to set his people free. What would have happened if Gandhi had not been so compelled to act as he did? The annuals of history would have looked very different indeed! The reason for this post is that I have seen in the past little while when I choose to be vulnerable, when I disclose publically that I have the same struggles as all of ...

One of the things I appreciate about having a love for reading is that it gives me understanding of life at a much deeper level than if I had not ever learned the joy of reading. And the other joy I have is to be able to present what I read in such a way that you, the reader of my short excerpts, can perhaps gain a bit of insight into your journey and in some way find freedom from your limiting thoughts and beliefs. A beautiful insight I had today was found in a book called “The Mind-Body Code”, which was a gift from a clinical psychologist friend of mine. If you are not familiar with the concept behind my program, “The I AM Project”, it is in short, a method of removing our limiting beliefs rooted in our past (feelings of unworthiness, shame, betrayal, etc) and replacing them with what is called “exalted emotions” such as “love, acceptance, generosity, abundance”. The process starts with acknowledging the evidence of our challenges, often traumatic past, but also takes the time to als...