Most health and fitness professionals, at least some days, end up feeling like expert witnesses being cross-examined in a courtroom drama. The barrage of questions seems never ending: “How much protein should I eat?” “Why does it hurt when I do this?” “Is it okay if I only get five hours of sleep a night?” “Why all the stupid burpees!?!”
However, as good as we are at answering our clients’ questions, we’re often confounded when trying to answer the following for ourselves:
What’s my purpose?
Why do I do what I do?
What are my unique abilities (and inabilities)?
What are my values?
How do my values govern my life?
Not knowing the answers to these questions isn’t just frustrating or annoying. It can stall your career, drain your enthusiasm, and leave you considering selling insurance instead of helping people eat, move, and live better.
Now, don’t get the wrong idea. One of the health and fitness industry’s strengths is that it’s full of passionate professionals driven by a soul-stirring mission to help others live healthier, longer, and stronger lives. And, in most cases, this passion comes from an enlivening origin story, kinda like the one I shared in the Introduction.
At the same time, I worry that you’ll confuse your origin story—no matter how affecting it was—with your purpose. That’s because an origin story only provides the initial spark to ignite your career. But the fuel for powering a long, successful, rewarding vocation is something else altogether and includes gaining a much deeper understanding of your:
EXPLICIT PURPOSE
(going beyond clichés like “I want to help people”),
UNIQUE ABILITIES
(putting your one-of-a-kind skills in service of your purpose),
INDIVIDUAL VALUES
(creating professional guardrails to ensure a meaningful life).
I use a six-step process to help team members (and coaching clients) clarify each. By following this process, you’ll have a much stronger chance of finding value, meaning, happiness, satisfaction, and—ultimately—success in your career and in your life.
Discovering Your Origin Story
In American comics, an origin story describes the circumstances under which superheroes gain their powers. In this book, I’m using the term in the very same way, to describe the circumstances under which health and fitness professionals gain their superpower—their passion for this work.
In my experience, these are the five most common origin stories. Circle the one that best describes you, or add yours in the space below.
I grew up with physical activity and sport.
I’ve always done health and fitness–related things. I played sports. I connected with friends and family through physical activity or healthy eating. As movement and vitality have been at my core since the beginning, it made sense to continue on with them as a career.
I got mentorship at a pivotal time in my life.
One day, unexpectedly, a health and fitness mentor swooped in and changed, maybe even saved, my life. It was so transformative that I dedicated myself to paying forward that coaching and mentorship to help others who are struggling.
I excelled at a particular goal.
For years I worked hard to achieve a particular health and fitness goal, like getting off my medications, losing a lot of weight, or even competing in an athletic event. And I did it! Becoming an exemplar here, I started coaching others to help them achieve the same goal.
I watched someone suffer.
Someone close to me struggled with a preventable disease. I hated seeing this so I learned how the body works and how exercise, food, sleep, and stress management can help. Then I committed to helping people avoid the same fate I saw unfold in the life of my loved one.
I fixed my own problems.
I hurt myself, got out of shape, struggled with eating and body issues, or otherwise found myself in the weeds of illness, injury, and suffering. The process of healing myself inspired me to help others. Now I invest my time and energy into helping to heal them too.
If none of the origin stories above describes you, write your own.
To do this exercise, and all upcoming ones, please download our printable + fillable worksheets at www.changemakeracademy.com/downloadable-forms.
In the end, all paths to health and fitness are ultimately good paths because you’re here! The benefit of knowing where you’ve come from is that it can help you decide where to go next.
While a strong origin story is awesome, it can sometimes lull health and fitness professionals into false confidence, thinking that they’ve got the whole purpose thing nailed down.
Yeah, yeah, I know all about my purpose. I’m here to help people. What could be more stirring than that?!? So let’s move past purpose and onto the tangible career tips.
Not so fast.
In the Introduction, I shared how an influential mentor changed, maybe even saved, my life. In turn, I wanted to pay his mentorship forward and help other people.
But what does “help other people” really mean? “Helping people” could mean working as a paramedic, or a teacher, or a barista, or a volunteer in a shelter. From that perspective, just saying that you want to help people seems vague and particularly not purposeful.
Real purpose, the kind that Simon Sinek talks about in his book Start with Why, is about finding the cause, belief, or mission that motivates you, and using it as a filter to choose the careers, organizations, communities, and relationships that are most likely to inspire you. I believe that can only be achieved by going deeper, getting specific, and being explicit.
For example, in my career, I always wanted “helping people” at the core of my work. But to discover my real purpose, I had to go beyond that cliché and ask specific questions like:
WHO
do I want to help?
WHY
do I want to help them?
WHAT KIND OF HELP
do I want to provide?
HOW WILL I KNOW
if I’ve really helped them?
While I started my career as a one-on-one trainer and lifestyle coach, I eventually realized—through questions like this—that I wasn’t particularly passionate about helping this group in this way. I saw others who showed up to one-on-one work motivated, inspired, and excited, but I didn’t feel the same. For whatever reason, it just wasn’t my purpose.
After years of early-morning and late-night coaching sessions, repeating mantras and affirmations designed to make me feel more positive and inspired, and trying everything I could to become the kind of person who enjoys one-on-one work, I knew I had to make a change.
Interestingly, that change came when I finally shared my struggles with other coaches and trainers. By opening up and making myself vulnerable—confessing that I wasn’t living the perfect life; that despite having an extremely successful coaching practice, I was, in fact, struggling—they opened up to me too. And when I saw their struggles with coaching, their careers, and their businesses, I realized I wanted to do something about that. Helping them became all I could think about.
Plus, I realized that I wanted to help the whole industry grow and mature. I saw that it was missing insight, clarity, curriculum, and many of the tools available to other industries. I knew I could bring some of those things here.
These realizations eventually coalesced into a clear purpose statement that I’ve had for more than a decade now:
When I die, or retire, I’d like to know that my work made a tangible difference in helping health and fitness change makers:
1 see their clients differently,
2 see themselves differently,
3 see their work differently.
In the end, I don’t need explicit credit for any of the work I do in this area. It’ll be enough to know that I was part of the maturation of the industry.
Having this purpose top of mind—it’s posted in my office so I can see it while I’m working—keeps me focused and inspired through the daily grind of meetings, through differences of opinion with teammates, through routine to-dos, and through small annoyances. Even rereading it now, I feel a little shot of adrenaline and a strong desire to do something more, today, to help achieve the goal.
Of course, that’s just my purpose; everyone’s is different. Take my colleague Jon. A while back, he visited a martial arts studio that advertised it would invest in anyone who was willing to put in the work, attend training, and learn their techniques. But he quickly noticed this wasn’t true: LGBTQ members were treated with outright hostility. Jon’s purpose came to life. A tireless advocate for inclusiveness, Jon built a fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle coaching business that focused on creating a safe and welcoming environment especially for queer and trans clients. His purpose—much more specific than “help people get healthy”—is clear and gives him roots, not just as a professional, but also as a person. (It also turned into a successful business.)
Another colleague, A’Tondra, was running a coaching business when 2017’s Hurricane Harvey hit her community. As she watched the devastation, she commented: “Nutrition is the last thing you want to talk about when you’re standing on the roof of your house.” When she saw her community rally, she also saw an opportunity to help people build strength for themselves and those around them. So she pivoted her practice and started working with very small and personal groups in hurricane-affected areas. Those who could pay, did. Those who couldn’t pay received support anyway, partially funded by those who could. Helping remained at the center of A’Tondra’s purpose. But, as she drilled deeper, she got clear about who she really wanted to help, why she wanted to help, and how she wanted to help them. What’s more, in her first year of coaching this way, she tripled her income.
Who knows why we’re really attracted to one person over another, one hobby over another, one career over another? Digging down deep enough, the answer may be “just because.” And that’s fine. Because when we land there, we’ve dug deep enough.
My friend James is a great example of this. By day, he’s a PhD researcher at a prestigious university. On evenings and weekends, he swaps out his lab coat for a leopard-print singlet, attaches one of those old-timey handlebar mustaches to his upper lip, and gets on stage to bend iron bars, rip telephone books in half, and lift adult women overhead, one in each hand, in strongman exhibitions.
Why is this what he spends his free time on? He’s shared a few interesting answers with me. But I suspect the real answer is: “Because it’s awesome. I don’t know why I think it’s awesome. I just do.” Discovering your “awesome,” in a judgment-free and totally accepting way, is another way of identifying your purpose.
Defining Your Purpose
How can you find your purpose? Hear your call? Hone in on both by answering the following questions, either here or in your own notebook or journal. Alternatively, you can download this as a fillable form at www.changemakeracademy.com/downloadable-forms.
QUESTION 1
Why do you want to work in health and fitness in the first place?
Is it your passion? Has it changed your life? Is helping others primary for you? Are you the go-to health and fitness person for your friends and family? What’s your origin story?
QUESTION 2
Do you want to work with clients/patients?
Both yes and no are acceptable answers. You can work in health and fitness and never see a client or patient one-on-one. (More on this later.)
If yes, what type of clients do you want to work with?
Men? Women? Athletes? Children? Elderly? Only the motivated? Only people who’ve failed before? Everyone? No one? (Do you even like working with clients at all?)
If no, what do you gravitate toward instead?
Maybe you’d prefer to organize things or work behind the scenes in a health and fitness business? Maybe you’d like to write, or speak, or podcast, or teach? Run the front desk of a facility? Do the finances? Manage mission-critical projects?
QUESTION 3
Do you really want to help other people?
Does serving, teaching, or taking care of others inspire you? Do you truly want to help people? Or are you driven by something else? Is it external validation and status? (If so, that’s okay. You might just want to consider not coaching.)
QUESTION 4
Do you want to own or run a business?
If so, do you want to have a small studio or practice? A big facility? Or would you rather work for someone else, such as a well-established health, fitness, or wellness center where you can focus on what you do best and trust your team to do the rest?
QUESTION 5
What relationship do you want with your income?
Are you comfortable with shorter-term contracts? Do you prefer the greater risk and (potential) reward of entrepreneurship? Or do you prefer a consistent, steady wage? Are you shooting for an affluent lifestyle? Or just “enough to live well”? Is money even a factor?
QUESTION 6
What relationship do you want with your work?
Are you looking for flexibility or structure? Full-time or part-time? Do you have children or other responsibilities that you juggle? Do you prefer other people to organize your work, or do you like to direct your own tasks? How much does your work define you as a person?
QUESTION 7
What other skills, talents, and aptitudes do you have?
You probably have lots of non-fitness-related things you can do, or things you enjoy. Maybe you’re good with numbers. Or you have a knack for design and creating beautiful, welcoming spaces. Or you love working with animals. Take a complete inventory, even if your skills, talents, and aptitudes don’t necessarily seem relevant right now.
That’s a lot to chew on. And not every question here will feel relevant at first. However, spend time with each of them anyway. You never know which question will lead to a new insight.
In the end, while ideas like “find your WHY” and “follow your passion” and “discover your purpose” dominate career conversations nowadays, they can be meaningless unless you go beyond the buzzwords and consider deeper questions like those above. And this one:
When you die or retire, how will you know whether you’ve followed your purpose?
For my part, I believe you’ll know you’ve followed your purpose if your work has been meaningful (to you), if it’s made a difference (measured by your own metrics of meaning), if it’s utilized your strengths, and if it’s brought you enjoyment and satisfaction.
If you think of your purpose as WHY you’re doing what you do, you can think of your unique abilities as HOW to best live out that purpose, using your one-of-a-kind skills and talents.
While my purpose kept me committed and motivated, there were still some days that ended with me feeling restless and annoyed, like there was a strange, hard-to-reach itch that I just couldn’t scratch. This affected not only me but my family. On nights I finished work feeling satisfied, I was a better parent and partner, full of joy, enthusiasm, and playfulness. But when I finished feeling “itchy,” I was distracted, short-tempered, and preoccupied.
I remember one day as “the day that broke the camel’s back.” It was completely dominated by video conferences—one management meeting after another until the day was over. Despite hours of work, I felt like I’d accomplished nothing. It was infuriating. As my workday ended, I paced my office like a caged lion. It took me hours to get over the fact that I was not doing the work that mattered to me. Even worse, during those after-work hours, I realized I wasn’t the kind of parent or partner I wanted to be.
This was happening far more often than I wanted it to. I wasn’t sure what, but something needed to change. Somewhat serendipitously, PN’s co-founder Phil was in a leadership course that week learning more about the unique abilities concept, and he taught it to me.
Popularized by Dan Sullivan, one of the world’s most influential entrepreneurship coaches, and described in the Unique Ability 2.0 book by Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller, unique abilities are described by:
SUPERIOR SKILL.
You produce outstanding results with your unique ability. It’s so natural you can’t help but do this extraordinarily well. Others notice this skill, rely on it, and value it.
PASSION.
You love to do this, and probably did it in some form long before you got paid for it. (In fact, many people continue to give their unique ability away for free because they don’t recognize how special it is.)
ENERGY.
Using your unique ability gives you a boost of energy. The people around you get energy from you, too, because it’s fun and exciting to be around someone who’s passionate and talented at what they’re doing. Likewise, when you surround yourself with other people living their unique abilities, your days are filled with positivity, dynamism, and creativity.
NEVER-ENDING IMPROVEMENT.
You’re already exceptional at this, yet you could do it for the rest of your life and always find new ways to get better and better.*
I’ve come to think of unique abilities as the things that:
1 you are, or have the potential to be, world-class at;
2 you really enjoy doing;
3 you can make a big difference with, if you use them.
Of course, once I learned about unique abilities, and went through the process to discover mine, it became clear why some workdays ended with me feeling great while others ended with me feeling unsatisfied. Turns out, the “feeling great” days were spent mostly within my unique abilities, using my superpowers. And the “unsatisfied days” were spent outside of them, with kryptonite strapped to my chest.
What’s more, when I started analyzing my work to figure out how much time I spent in my unique abilities, and how much time I spent outside of them, I realized I was out of balance. While I knew it was unreasonable to expect to spend 100 percent of my time within my unique abilities, it became clear I was spending far more time outside of them than within. And this was hurting me, my family, and even our organization. So I took steps to shift the balance.
Going through this was such a breakthrough that Phil and I ended up using the unique ability process across our organization. Who wouldn’t want to spend most of their day doing the things they enjoy, they’re world class at, and they can make a difference with? What company wouldn’t want the same: a team full of satisfied individuals doing world-class work that makes a difference for the organization?
We accomplished this by following the process I outline in the activity that follows.
Uncovering Your Unique Abilities
If you’re ready to discover your unique abilities, here’s what to do.
STEP 1
Contact five to ten colleagues, friends, and other people you’re close to.
These should be people who really get you, who know what makes you shine, who count on you. Ideally, they should come from a cross-section of your life (not all friends or all family or all coworkers, for instance; you want a diversity of opinions, which will actually help reinforce common themes). Ask them if they’d be willing to take a few minutes and create a list with a dozen or so things that come to mind when they think about you. If they’re up for it, email them the following questions:
1 What are the talents or abilities or characteristics that describe me?
2 What makes me tick?
3 What do you count on me for?
4 How would you describe my way of doing things?
5 Is there anything that impresses you about who I am?
Make clear that these characteristics don’t need to reflect your hobbies, interests, or even work history. Rather, these are the things they’ve relied on you for or have appreciated about you.
STEP 2
Come up with your own answers.
Independently, make your own list, ideally before you get responses back. Answer the same questions you emailed your trusted list, as well as some others.
1 What are the talents or abilities or characteristics that describe me?
2 What makes me tick?
3 What do people count on me for?
4 What is “my way” of doing things?
5 What makes other people impressed with who I am?
6 What are the things I’m most passionate about?
7 What’s important to me?
8 What have been my greatest accomplishments so far?
9 What are my goals—personal, family, career, life?
10 Who do I admire? Why? What can I learn from them?
STEP 3
Identify common themes.
Once everyone’s responded, gather the replies. Identify common words, phrases, or themes. Make a list of ten or so that come up most often. Next to each item, write down why you think the person said it about you; specifically write the things you do that might make them say what they said.
STEP 4
Create your unique ability statements.
Take the ten most common themes from Step 3 and turn each into a unique ability statement.
If you’d like an example of what this could look like, check out the box on the next page. It’s a one-pager of my own unique ability statements, which I keep posted in my office to remind me of what I should be spending time on.
Keep in mind that this isn’t a five-minute compilation. Take your time with it—spend a few hours over several days to get the wording just right—because it’s important. Think of it as an official document that clearly expresses your superpowers, just like how you’d cite your work experience in a resume. You’ll review this list often to make sure you’re staying in balance.
* As one of my well-respected and very experienced colleagues said when reviewing this section: “It took me decades to figure out what my superpower was and it was what people were telling me I was good at for twenty years. I finally listened.”