I could never be a politician.
I believe everyone has a superpower and being political is not mine.
If I had to pick a superpower for me, it’d be troubleshooting. I noticed early on when I was an 19 year-old Electronic Technician in the USAF. that I could never accept that there was a problem I couldn’t solve. My brain just doesn’t let go until things are back working again.
As a Design Engineer for 27 years, I used Fishbone diagrams for solving more complicated problems. Here’s one Barb and I created for addressing the COVID crisis.
I apply my troubleshooting skills to Personal Training. A good personal trainer will interview a client and gather all the data to discover what is needed. They may not make a Fishbone, but essentially we are all doing the same thing.
It’s my nature to always look for the BIG problem – the point of contention or the thing that’s holding the person back from where they want to be. I often find that a client knows a lot about exercise and nutrition, but they have one or two blind spots.
In one example a few years ago, a woman was struggling to keep her weight down. She was extremely weak in upper body strength so I told her to focus more on building muscle, which would raise her metabolism and allow her to eat more. Target acquired. Boom.
(She chose instead to continue to starve herself and do more cardio. And that’s OK. I see my job as finding the water for the horse. Their choice on whether to drink.)
Had another woman that wanted to lose weight. She was very strong and generally very fit, but couldn’t stay away from the sweets. Target acquired. Boom.
I suggested to another woman that because she was inherently strong and her body type supported her adding a lot of muscle that strength training would help her maintain a healthy weight. She told me that she didn’t like building muscle because it made her blouses too tight in the shoulders. O…K… Boom.
For me, it’s about identifying the problem.
I confess that considering someone’s “feelings” on the matter of fitness is not a variable I can handle. That’s where Barb comes in – and I walk out. I acknowledge that there may be more to the problem than I see and having someone to talk to may actually be part of the solution. I’m just not good at that. That’s Barb’s superpower.
Telling people what they want to hear is also not part of my programming. That’s why I could never be a politician. It’s hard enough to focus on the problem and solve it. I’m not going to put any energy into thinking about what people want to hear.
This year, I am noticing more than ever how politicians tell us what we want to hear and are not telling us what we need to know. There’s a reason for it, of course: they want to get re-elected. Saying things that are unpopular will not help their cause, but there’s a point where it appears downright deceptive.
For instance, it is not popular for politicians to recommend that Americans need to get healthy. So many of us are not and we simply don’t want to be reminded that we should exercise more and eat right.
But “Here’s the deal”: so many chronic diseases can be avoided if we take care of ourselves. In An Important Time to Be Healthy, I explore all the reasons why it is more important than ever to be healthy.
From our politicians all we hear is wear a mask, wash your hands, and keep your distance. They need to add GET HEALTHY to this list.
But from the Fishbone above, it’s pretty clear that one of the big problems and and the reason the death rate in the U.S. is so high is because we’re unhealthy and obese.
So with 40% of us being obese, why don’t we hear more about this? Why isn’t there a bigger focus on getting Americans healthy?
It’s because we don’t want to hear it. The message is unpopular so the politicians ignore it.
But we need to hear it. It’s a big part of why so many people are dying.
So let’s do this together.
Boom.
Ron