I’m so excited about the LOFT. This is the new group with Storm Force Fitness called the Life Of Free Thinking.
As you may have noticed, I am getting deeper and deeper into how the mind works and what it takes to be different.
What is required to not become part of the rat race which serves no-one in long-run yet is such an enticing prospect for 99% of people?
How does this way of thinking affect your health, fitness and lifestyle?
All of that will unfold over the coming months and years and there is SOOOO much I and you need to learn about it if we’re going to discover what it takes to be happy and achieve all the things we want.
Recently my journey brought me to study on Tribal Leadership. The objective for me is to discover how to lead those who have been magnetised towards Storm Force Fitness.
We are already at a stage where I alone cannot physically teach all of those who want training.
I have also realised that actually they don’t want training at all. They think they do but actually the river runs much deeper.
So I’ve been searching for teaching to help me build the ‘tribe’ that is the GFC and Storm Force as a whole.
I’ve just finished a great book ‘Tribal Leadership’ which, when summarised, is the perfect place to start for all of us – finding out where we are now as a base for knowing what the next stage is!
Essentially, the authors suggest there are five stages people either stay at or progress through in life and they really do hit home.
I personally can strongly identify with times in my life when I have been at Stages 2-5. I don’t think I’ve ever dropped into Stage 1 fortunately but I’m sure there have been moments when I haven’t been far off.
So the beginning for this Life Of Free Thinking is for you to identify where you sit right now.
From there, we will look at what needs to be done to move up the levels.
You will also start to see the thought process behind what is going to happen at Storm Force Fitness in the coming months and years.
Stage 1
This is the stage at which a person feels alone, outcast and alienated and if asked will tell you something along the lines of ‘Life is s**t’.
There is no doubt in their mind that all time spent on this planet is a time of misery and unhappiness.
They believe that for EVERYONE life is just one long, drawn out experience of despair!
Example: Gang lands. People in this mindset huddle together – not in meaningful groups, but in gangs hell-bent on taking out their frustrations on others. They may appear as a group but at any time would be happy to act against others in the group.
Stage 2
I believe most people you will come across live in Stage 2 or at least drop into it regularly.
These people are similar to Stage 1 except that they perceive that everyone around them in fact has a good life and that they are just permanently dealt a bad hand by the gods.
“My life sucks”
These people don’t have or at least don’t PERCEIVE themselves to have many meaningful relationships. If they do perceive some meaningful relationships, they tend to forget these and focus on all the negative stuff they can possibly find in their lives so they can have a good moan at anyone willing to put up with their whining!
Such people will often use phrases like…
“You’re so lucky” (to people who work hard – this really p*sses me off by the way!)
“It’s always so….”
“Why is always cold/raining etc (when it’s rained twice in a month!)”
“I never win anything”
You will often find people like this are drawn to each other to compare ‘war wounds’, complain about life, gossip nastily about others, and…
POST NEGATIVE STUFF ALL THE TIME ON FACEBOOK!
Stage 3
This stage is the point at which happiness starts to poke it’s head up, teasing you that actually there is some fun to be had out of life!
These people have lots of relationships and connections but they are largely ‘me and you’ relationships. Two people playing table tennis with information and dialogue.
I cycled across the USA in 2010 and the roads in Kansas would be Stage 3 if they were people. They get you from A to B in a straight line. Sometimes 100 miles in a straight line with no other connections to be seen!
Stage 3 is seen characterised by the idea that “I am great” and attempts to not just keep up with the Jones’s but to be better than them.
Everything is an attempt to be better than the other Stage 3 people.
This is EVERYWHERE, particularly in professional environments where lawyers, investment managers, doctors and prima donna sports stars spend their lives comparing their personal achievements to everyone else.
Imagine four young, well qualified investment managers on the golf course on a Saturday morning joking about who’s fund has experienced the most growth over the last quarter.
“Well yours may have grown by 7.5% but mine has outperformed the industry average by 5% consistently for 12 months in a row so beat that!”
This is Stage 3 bullshit. It’s all about me.
Now until around 12 months ago, that’s exactly where I was.
“I’m a great personal trainer, I’ve got these results, I’m going to build some fitness camps where it’s all about me”
I felt like a cowboy at times, riding across the wide open plains of…Guernsey…putting out individual fires one at a time and having to jump between people when they needed me.
Then I realised…
a) I was being an arrogant tw*t.
b) There is only so much time in a week so if I was to keep increasing my personal wealth and help more people, I had to keep working more and more, eventually resenting the very job I had come to love.
c) There are other people out there who can help me grow personally thus helping me help more people and extend the reach I have to many, many more people. Helping someone in a give and take relationship is great, but again it has its limits.
d) Mini-tribes were beginning to form between people who I had a relationship with at the camps.
The best example of this being the guys who pulled together from the Guernsey Fitness Camp to form a group to climb Kilimanjaro.
Helping someone in a give and take relationship is great, but again it has its limits.
I realised that other people could strengthen that relationship and make it much more productive for all involved if I enabled a network of relationships to be plugged into the same hub.
And hence the birth of the ever growing Storm Force Fitness tribe.
A Stage 3 approach to life is severely limited and whilst it can make you very successful, you will always have this sense that something is missing.
Stage 4
I took time out to look very closely at what values I wanted the SFF tribe to be based on and guided by.
The next stage was to go and find others who shared these values both to become members of the Guernsey Fitness Camp and to help me lead the tribe!
Enter Russ, Lou, Clive, Aivis and Anna to the team!
Apart from Lou, all of the staff were first members of the camp (or still are!) so I knew they shared the values of the company. Lou was recommended to me by Russ who understood what we needed to grow as a team so I was happy to go with his recommendations – and I have been delighted at the results!
Decisions become much easier for you at Stage 4 because you’re guided by a set of values or principles. When you don’t know what to do, you can just look at your list of values, and the answer usually becomes clear very quickly.
People often ask how I get so much done.
The answer lies in the Stage 4 attitude of leveraging my team and deciding what to do based on whether it fits with the core values we have as a team. Complex decisions then become a matter of yes or no!
You’ll know if you’re in Stage 4 because your life is more of a spiders web of a network rather than lots of 121 relationships and you have a sense of being part of a TEAM that you refer to as great – rather than simply thinking all the time about how well YOU are doing.
You have pride in being part of big tribes and mini-tribes all over the place such as….
- The Guernsey Fitness Camp
- Your cycling group that goes out on Sunday morning come rain or shine
- Your religion
If you can’t see many relationships in your life that involve 3 or more people, then you’re not a firm Stage 4 yet.
People in Stage 4 also look at how they can connect others and will find themselves often saying things like “You should speak to my friend xxxxx, you’d work/play well together!”
You’ll also find yourself sniffing out challenges set by other people and saying “Yeah I’m up for that!”
Stage 5
I spend periods of time here, but not enough as I’d like, and I don’t feel nearly enough of the SFF tribe do yet which is what we’re working on!
Realistically, it’s hard to be in Stage 5 all the time, but the journeys that take you there should become more and more frequent!
At Stage 5, you’ll find yourself saying, “Life’s awesome” on a daily basis.
To be at Stage 5 you need to get involved in life-changing, history-making projects which get you so focussed that you almost forget everything else that’s going on.
Note though that this differs from short, intense bursts of pleasure which distract you from everything else in your life that you hate.
Hedonistic people often mistake these bursts for happiness and it’s not very sustainable and won’t make much difference to your life in the long-run.
In fact one day, these people often suddenly stop and go “What the hell have I been doing?!”
So Stage 5 should always be the aim, just don’t expect it to be a permanent hang-out!
It’s the Stage at which you feel part of something much, much bigger than getting paid, feeling successful or even serving customers!
Stage 5 is where you start dedicating your life to a cause.
Where Are You?
So the question is where are you right now?
You may find you are firmly rooted in one stage but more likely you bounce between different stages.
We’ll look at what to do about it soon and how you can move up a stage.
For now, if you find yourself swinging between say Stage 2 and 3, identify whether there are situations or people who drag you back to Stage 2 making you think “I hate my life”.
Your boss can do this.
Your negative friends can do this.
Spending less time with these people can VERY quickly make you happy and take you to Stage 3 which is a great place to be.
But Stage 4 and Stage 5 are MUCH more rewarding!
Stay tuned….
————-> Read The Book – Tribal Leadership
