BEING THE AUTHENTIC YOU

I became actively involved in weight training and body building at about the age of 16, a skinny kid with a great deal of enthusiasm but not a great deal of knowledge. I was being trained by an enthusiast who saw a great future in me, but who also had a limited knowledge of training techniques and systems. At about the same time a young man from Austria was emerging onto the bodybuilding scene, the same age as me, and a proverbial young giant.

 Arnold himself. The one with the unpronounceable name, Schwarzenegger. Every magazine carried his training programmes, his eating plans, his photographs and his measurements. I had discovered, I thought, my guru, my purpose, my calling. We began.

I pushed, pulled and pumped in every direction.  I supersetted, tri setted, drop setted and extra setted. There was not a muscle overlooked. Every maximus, every minimus, every major, every minor, every ceps bulked, stretched and defined. Four hours of every day was devoted to pumping iron, the rest devoted to eating, drinking and supplementing anything that did not bite back.

And then finally it happened. 

After 18 months living the Schwarzie way I stood before the mirror, not the gigantic, rippling bull mastiff of the magazines, but a skinny, trembling greyhound, so highly strung that I jumped at the sound of my  own  breathing  and  you  could  play  a  violin  symphony  on  my nerves. I said hello to my first nervous breakdown, not something I welcomed or expected. 

 It took a number of months on various drugs before I was back to normal mentally and before I had any desire for any form of physical exercise.  I was overworked, burnt out, messed up and going under.

Not the result I had worked so hard to achieve, so what had gone wrong?

If only I had known it then, this was the first example of what was meant by me being ME. You see I had made the cardinal error of wanting to be somebody else, without giving any thought to what I was created, or capable of, being.

Revelation moment - Arnold was different to me.  His body type, metabolism, mind and emotions were suited to the type of workouts and diet he was promoting.  And, as I learned later, he was, sadly, taking steroids. But for me, it was just too much.  I was different, and if I had only realized it then I may have saved myself years of trouble, anguish, and more nervous disorders.

The sad thing is that I was not that unusual. Many people, especially young people, spend time, money and a great deal of effort literally trying to become someone else. Instead of having role models, mentors and others that we can look up to and learn from we try to BE something we are not.

Whether it be Arnies, Barbies, Kens, Toms, Charlizes or Bill Gates, it’s still the same futile exercise. It makes so much more sense for each of us to put that effort into being the best ‘ME’ we were created to be.

Four decades and much learning later I have become, to some extent, the envy of my, shall we say, much rounder, colleagues.

At last the balance is there. I am me.