The Power of One

In this age of social media, we get too wrapped up in gaining thousands of followers. We start with a pure message; then, we stray from it by getting wrapped up in how many likes we get.

As a fitness professional, social media is a massive part of the business. People need to see you, they need to hear from you, and they need to connect with you. What started as an outlet to spread your message became an addiction to attention. Now we get so wrapped up in gaining people's attention that we forget about getting the right message out into the world. We forget that we've done our job if we can affect just one person's life.

When I became a trainer, my goal was to change people’s lives. I wanted to get the WORLD in shape. My starting point was one person, not hundreds, but one client who would invest themselves in my beliefs and decide to allow me to use my fitness methods to change their life.

Admittedly, I veered away from this mindset multiple times in my career and became discouraged with my progress as a trainer because nobody liked my posts and followed me. I thought about quitting because my message wasn’t being heard. Then I began to understand that if you have a message that you know can change the world, why would you stop spreading it just because a thousand people won’t listen?

Imagine that you see 50 people walking towards a cliff, and you start yelling, " stop, you're going fall off the cliff!" If only one person stops, and they realize you saved them, have you succeeded?

Now imagine that the same 50-people heading towards the cliff were all billionaires, and the one that stopped decided to give you 10 million dollars just because he listened to your message, and it saved his life. It’s a wild analogy, but sometimes the wildest thoughts lead to the wildest realities.

During my first year as a group exercise instructor, I urged my boss to allow me to teach my own class. I had taught other formats, but I wanted to introduce my own style of group exercise. After a month of emails and calls pitching my class, I was finally allowed to teach, and my first class had a whopping three people in it. I was a little discouraged, but as I left, one of the members hung around to let me know that the class was the best she had ever taken. That one member kept me motivated, and she spread the word to others, which led to me leading classes of 40+ people.

The physical fitness messages I taught in my first class may have fallen on only a few ears, but it just took one testimony to make my class successful.

This is the power of one. Sometimes you only need to get one message across for it to impact the world. No matter how many times that message fell on deaf ears, keep spreading it.

In sports, one play can cause you to win or lose the game.

In war, one shot can kill a man.

In life, it only takes one fertilized seed for a tree to grow.