A Person in Such a Hurry Seldom Gets Good Results
There was once a young man named Matajuro. Like his father, he wanted to be a great swordsman. So he packed his things and went to Mount Futara to find the famous swordsman Banzo.
“You wish to learn swordsmanship under my guidance?” asked Banzo.
“Yes,” said Matajuro. “If I work very hard, how long will it take to become a master?” he asked.
“Oh, I see you cannot fulfill the requirements,” said Banzo, and he rejected Matajuro’s request.
“But . . .” he pleaded, “I’m willing to pass through any hardship if you’ll teach me! If I become your devoted servant, how long will it be?”
“Oh, maybe ten years,” Banzo relented.
“But my father is getting old and soon I must take care of him,” said Matajuro. “If I work more intensively, how long would it take me?”
“In this case, maybe thirty years,” said Banzo.
“What?!? First you say ten years and now thirty years. I will undergo any hardship to master this art in the shortest time!” exclaimed Matajuro impatiently.
“Well,” said Banzo. “In that case you’ll need to remain with me for seventy years. A person in such a hurry seldom gets good results.”
As we come to the end of this book, I share this story—one of the world’s most famous Zen koans—as a gentle reminder that as passionate as you might be for all things health and fitness, and as excited as you might be to take on this life-changing work, your path to mastery will also require strategy, clear-thinking, and lots of patient practice.*
If that sounds like challenging work, it is. Although, as I teach my students, we all—like Matajuro—tend to overestimate how difficult things will be and underestimate how long they’ll take.
Hopefully the curriculum laid out in this book will help you calibrate both.
Even more, I hope it helps you minimize time-wasting, dream-squashing detours on your road to success by constantly drawing you back to what’s most important. To the few things, carefully chosen, that can make all the difference for you and the people you hope to serve.
Becoming the ultimate change maker will require you to think differently about who you are, why you’re here, how you can make a great living, and how you can make a real difference. This begins with asking new questions like:
What’s my purpose, unique ability set, and value system?
What do the people I hope to serve really want?
How can I serve those needs while also respecting mine?
Which skills must I build to turn my passion into something sustainable?
And don’t forget these most crucial ones:
When I die or retire, will I have worked toward something valuable, meaningful, satisfying?
Will all my efforts have made any difference at all?
How will I know?
I grew up in an immigrant family. My parents came to North America from a tiny farming village in central Italy, one in which most of the homes, including theirs, had no electricity or running water. As a child I watched them work tremendously, sometimes backbreakingly, hard while expecting, and receiving, very little in return. It was the same with most of the other families I knew.
This is one of the reasons I continue to be astonished by the rich rewards I’ve received by following the lessons in this book.
This isn’t me trying to seem humble. I am legitimately in awe of the kind of alchemy that can transform a little boy, with a funny accent, growing up in a tiny apartment over a run-down garage into . . . me.
My daily commute is ten steps to my home office. I have a healthy family that I can spend as much time with as I choose to, and I choose to spend a lot. I have interesting friends and deep friendships. I’m paid handsomely to consult with the largest companies in the world. I started, and stay involved with, one of the most respected health and fitness organizations. I’m passionate about what I do. And I believe my work has made, and will continue to make, a difference.
While the work ethic I learned from my family certainly has something to do with this magical life I’m living, I’m also certain that success is about a whole lot more than “embracing the grind.” Because every immigrant I grew up around worked ten times harder than you can possibly imagine. Every morning, noon, and night. Weekends too. And most barely earned a living wage.*
Observing this mismatch between “work ethic” and “success” made me realize that if I wanted to do better, I couldn’t just try harder. I’d have to try different. In the beginning I had no idea what this “different” might look like. Now, nearly three decades later, I’m starting to get it. In fact, I’ve come to believe that, if there were a “formula” for personal and professional success, it might look like this:
Over the course of this last year, in the writing of this book, I’ve tried to outline, with as much clarity as I can muster, the rationale for each element in that formula. Some days the writing came easy. Other days it was challenging. I continued on because I believe these lessons have the power to not only change your life but reshape an entire industry.
Yet learning isn’t the same as doing. Not for your clients. Not for you.
That’s why I’ll once again encourage you to visit, if you haven’t already, www.changemakeracademy.com/downloadable-forms and download the free exercises, activities, questions, and worksheets I’ve provided. They’re there to transform your knowledge into career-changing action. To show today you the path to future you. To bring forth the ultimate change maker you’ve set out to be.
As you work through them, always remember this: It’s not a race. You’re not behind. And there’s nothing to “catch up” to. As Banzo wisely knew, patience, mastery, and success walk hand in hand.
* Probably a lot more than you’re thinking right now.
* Although this was enough reward for many of them. Because, depending on where they came from, their goals were to escape unemployment, abject poverty, persecution, and/or death.