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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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,...

It has been said that the primary difference between humans and animals besides a large prefrontal cortex is our “free will”, and we have to ask ourselves, what have we done with it? If we look around at the world we live in today, no matter where you look we can see the misuses of the power of free will, and it seems painfully apparent free will did not come with a set of instructions.
Various holy texts from different parts of the world hold some valuable wisdom that if adopted would most certainly have a profound effect on our world, but the tendency to have a myopic view of our role in the world, we have gone to great lengths to distort even that to our own end. A favorite quote of mine stated “man’s dilemma is that he/she believes their own mental artifacts to be reality (what we think) and the answers we seek are biased on the view point of the questioner”.
How difficult it is to find this thing we call “truth” when there is no singular...

I spent the evening contemplating on the various things, but mainly I tried to understand the mind of man. It has been said that I make things too complicated, and yes, it is true, I do see much complexity in the world, and to be honest, shit’s complicated, but my life long goal since my journey began was to try and simplify the complex. For many years, I have read the words of many brilliant people, found solace in their messages, only to find so much criticism from other brilliant people, pointing out the flaws in the other. One author I admire, again, who drew much criticism, was Dr. David Hawkins. In his book, Power verses Force, he stated eloquently that “mankind’s problems have been and will always continue to be is that he believes his own mental artifacts to be reality and the answer he seeks from the questions he asks are biased on the view point of the questioner”.
Simply said, we believe what we think to our peril and most of what we are looking for...

There has been a surge recently into the exploration our “purpose” or our “why”. Companies and individuals are now using “why” to replace the outdated “mission statement” which now rarely inspires anyone to continual inspired action. So what is so different about using a “why” statement rather than a mission statement. The biggest reason is that the term “mission statement” is like the term “goal setting”, it has been thrown around without much heart, follow through or meaning, so much so it has lost its luster and credibility. The “mission statement” states what we will do for you, it talks in a linear way of goals and values, but it does not connect us the real reasons of “why” we do what we do, so it lacks meaning and outreach.

The idea of seeking our “why” was popularized by speaker and author Simon Sinek, when he created the “Golden Circle”...

People give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of love. Anyone who tries to possess a flower by plucking it from the soil will have to watch its beauty fade. But if you simply look at a flower in a field, you will keep it forever, because the flower is a part of the evening and the sunset and the smell of damp earth and the clouds on the horizon”. I love this sentiment from Paulo Coelho in his book “Brida”. I think in our world we wish to possess things to give us sense of meaning, like possessing affections from others perhaps to validate our existence. But ultimately like the flower we plucked from the ground, it loses its beauty and begins to fade as we removed it from its source. Is it possible to never possess anything but to have everything?

The ancient scholars tell us so repeatedly in spiritual and philosophical text and the meaning is lost in the modern world. We cling to relationships that have died long ago, we hang onto old...