I recently told a friend that I value learning before anything else. Before making money. Before fame. And even before helping others.
It would be nice to say that giving to others and helping them is what’s most important to me, but that’s not the truth.
Selfish?
As I’ve said before on this topic: Maybe.
Quite honestly and surprisingly, I don’t care too much about trying to change this value. I believe that self-improvement (through learning and creating things that allow you to grow yourself) is the only way that we can truly improve the world around us.
As we learn better values we think, speak, and act differently, and these values ripple out into the world and change the lives of others.
If you want to improve the lives of others then, just focus on yourself and it will come naturally.
What does it matter if you fill a man’s stomach with healthy and organic food yet fill his mind with the mental trash you’ve been feeding yourself for years?
Update Your Values
Here’s an up to date list of my personal values, in reference to my work in life:
- Learning
- Creating
- Freedom
- Giving
- Fame
- Money
What does this order mean? And how should it reflect in the way I do my work?
I feel that learning should be built into everything that you do. Right now, in the role of a personal trainer, I’m building it into how I create things for my clients. I’m pushing learning onto them by making sure that it’s an integral part of the process.
Understanding these values has led me to believe that learning should be first and foremost when it comes to any workout or program.
This is because we’re working out for a reason: to make life better, or perform better in a specific sport or activity.
Right now, I’m tailoring my personal workouts for the activity of skiing. This is increasing my enjoyment of skiing as well as life in general.
It’s helping me enjoy skiing more because I learn to better understand the physical and mental skills necessary to navigate difficult terrain. This gives me the tools necessary to solve these difficult problems by allowing me to have an idea of what I can do to work through a new terrain problem instead of knowing nothing and falling 20 times: I’ve at least got a shot now, and each shot I take I get better because I can hone in on mastering these skills instead of being ignorant to their existence.
As for life, learning how to focus on these skills of skiing teaches me about what it means to really focus on one thing and give it your all. Skiing then, is practice for fully paying attention to someone in conversation, and transfers into many other areas as well.
And now, for my work, I’m building more of this learning into the programs, workouts, and sessions that I deliver, within my Mobility Club as well as within my private work.
Creating Accelerated Learning Workouts
Here are some other examples of how we can make life better through accelerated learning workouts:
- Posture habits
- Movement habits (picking things up without back pain, or pushing without shoulder pain)
- Skill and form work for any sport or activity (golf, skiing, tennis, hiking)
- Learning how to have a healthier relationship with food
- Stress management
Your values should reflect in the way you carry out your work. This is called unobstructed expression, and unless you have it, something will always be missing.
As your values change, so should your work. And because we’re constantly changing and growing, our understanding of our values are continually being updated. So too, should our work change in response.
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Next, I’ll dive into the process that I have personally used for years, and plan to use while working with my clients as a coach and trainer: How to Create Your Accelerated Learning Workout Program.
In this post, I’ll also include a template at the bottom that you can use to organize your creation. If you’d like help building out your personal program, reach out to me at Austin@mooreaustin.com and I can coach you through the process.
