A few years back, the owner of a personal training center would call me quite frequently. This guy also happened to be a powerlifter. We had some great conversations, and we managed to work through several of his training problems.
I’d estimate we spent close to thirty hours on the phone in one year, and his training took off. With some slight adjustments and his hard work, he earned his first elite total in powerlifting. He called me from the meet to tell me about it. I was very excited for him, but I made sure to remind him that he was the one who did all the work and made the corrections. All I really did was act as a sounding board. I wanted him to take the credit. There was no need for him to thank me for all the hard work that he’d done and the sacrifices that he’d made.
We lost touch after that meet. About a year later, his name came up during a phone conversation with a customer who’d called in with a quick training question. I was shocked by the story he told me.
The caller lived in the same town as the lifter I’d helped and contacted him asking if he could teach the caller how to perform a JM press. The guy agreed, and they made an appointment to meet at his studio. When the caller arrived, he was told that the “session” would cost him $60. After some “negotiation,” the caller didn’t pay, and he was never shown how to perform a JM press.
When I first learned about this, it pissed me off because I’d spent so much time talking to this lifter. I was upset that he wouldn’t spend sixty seconds showing another lifter a single movement. This bothered me for a couple of days, but then something finally dawned on me.
You don’t give gifts in order to receive something in return. You give the gift because the act of giving is a gift in and of itself. After that, things are out of your hands.
I did the right thing by helping this guy, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. If people like him made me stop helping others, what good would it do me? What difference could I make then? What if the guy who’d showed me how to squat didn’t take the time to do so because someone had let him down once? Where would I be now?
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