The Worst Times in My Life

Today's post is a personal share about how I struggled mentally, physically, and emotionally in 3 different decades in my life and how focusing on my health and fitness brought me back from the brink.

I think you’ll identify with at least 1, if not all 3 instances.

Teens

In my early teens, my parents had a messy divorce and me and my 2 brothers were left trying to figure it out mostly alone. We weren’t destitute, but we had some shit to navigate.

During this time - I luckily found the gym. It was the kind of dinge-hole place you should really get a tetanus booster before entering. It cost £1.50 a time to get in or £20 for the whole year.

At 13, I had no money, so I’d either try to sneak in behind a big guy, loiter out front as if I was waiting for a friend before running in when the front desk was unmanned, or just beg the front desk person to let me “pay next time”.

I had absofuckinglutely no idea what I was doing when I was there - but I watched what others did and just copied that. I went there because I didn’t want to go home and because I had A LOT of pent up rage in my blood stream and it was basically go there or fight someone at school.

That gym taught me a productive way to channel my stress into something useful. I’m as strong as I am today because I started going to that gym when I was 13. It gave me purpose, kept me out of trouble (mostly), and set the tone for how to handle future struggles.

Twenties

In my 20’s, I thought I wanted to be a school teacher. Someone once rudely said to me “be a teacher - even you could do that”, and because I had low self esteem and no guidance, I let myself settle for something I knew I’d hate because I thought I’d be shit at everything else.

When I met Jen, she suggested, now knowing me well, that it probably wouldn’t be something I’d enjoy and she helped me find what I would.

I found incredible fulfillment in training, learning about exercise and nutrition, and in supporting others to feel what I had felt in my teens when the gym gave me a way to build myself mentally and physically.

I studied for my medical grade PT exam with pride and dedication each night after work and into the small hours of the night because I loved the independence knowing how to be physically strong/capable gave me.

Thirties

In my 30’s, I founded a gym (after living in the US <12 months) with a my best friend on nothing more than blind enthusiasm and a diary full of happy customers. After 9 months, reality changed for my partner and he wanted out. Our friendship blew up and my sense of self was shattered again like it was in my teens and twenties.

Putting the pieces of the business back together took everything I had, and though it might sound like it would have been easy for me to workout at my own gym, the gym was now all consuming and my entire identity.

Roll the clock forward 4 years to a post COVID world (somehow, my gym survived during the lock downs, restrictions, and general fear of this time) and my 2nd business partner and I saw things very differently.

The pandemic allowed me to see what I valued and what I didn’t, and though I loved what we’d built and who we served, how we ran the company and who we were as individuals didn’t align with my values.

During the tumult of selling off my shares of the company I founded, training was my ONLY escape. I didn’t even use my own gym to workout. I bought day passes to local gyms and a $10 membership to Planet Fitness so that I could fortify myself and process my challenges away from the pressure of my business.

The Iron Never Lies

During each instance, I’ve had mental breaks where I either blackout and/or uncontrollably cry. This is not some macho thing, but crying is not a common coping strategy for me. It’s just not where I go - so to cry during these moments means that they were so highly pressurized that my body just went rogue and turned on the taps.

I’ve had personal reckonings, relationship challenges, and business crossroads over the past 30 years, and being physically strong has helped me handle, process, rebuild, and grow each and every time.

I’m not sure why I’m telling you this now, perhaps it’s because I, like you I’m guessing, run a growing business, have a family, struggle with my past, worry about my future, and have shit to do 24/7, and know I need to productively process it all in a way that not only helps me bring the pressure down now, but builds me up for the next inevitable instance of difficulty that will soon come.

Because it will. It always does. And the only way we can be sure we’ll be strong enough to handle it when it does, is by willingly taking on difficult things like lifting heavy weights, riding hard miles, carrying heavy objects, saying no to easy comforts, tolerating the discomfort of discipline, potentially offending others with our decisions to do or not do something they think we should, the list goes on.

The only way we can be sure we can handle difficult things in the future is to willingly do difficult things now.

Jay

PS.

There is a great article called “Iron and The Soul” by Black Flag front man and punk cult hero Henry Rollins. If what you just read resonated, then so will this.