• Over 40% of new health club members stop using their club regularly after 30 days.1
• Some clubs that offer up to three orientation sessions inclusive with membership admit that many members never make it to the third session.2 They don’t come back!
• 70% of personal trainers leave the profession by the end of their first year on the job!2 They are often frustrated with their inability to get results with people.
• Medical professionals at large are generally no healthier, nor fitter than their patients!

We have come to understand the importance of the core of our physical bodies as the foundation of movement and physical health. Yet, if humanity is to ever truly achieve emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing, we must now become aware of the value of our psychological core. Just as your physical core is composed of your axial skeleton and its constituents, your psychological core is composed of your values. Your core values represent what you are willing to live for and die for.

I suspect many of you are aware of the high dropout rates among those purchasing gym memberships. You may also be aware of the high rates of incomplete injury resolution in orthopedic rehabilitation as well as the poor track record of psychology and psychiatry in dealing with the subjective, yet very real challenges of human life. In this article, I will propose that the challenges medical programs and gyms face with retaining their professionals, and the challenges healthcare practitioners face with clients (both in treatment and retention), stem primarily from a lack of knowledge of core values and lack of congruency between the creed preached and the life lived. Because the gym, the client, the trainer, and the gym owners are all component parts of the “healthcare” industry, it is high-time we all get clear about our core values and how to live them. This is a truly necessary step in creating an alignment of interests with those that need our help most: the general public!   

What do you suspect may be the cause of such poor rates of success among the healers of humanity and those in need of help? If you consider the futility of exercising the extremities of the body without first giving due diligence to the core - the stabilizing platform of the body - you will have already grasped the importance of putting your therapeutic efforts in the right order!

But if we are to genuinely address the needs of our clients, it makes no sense to treat them without understanding and addressing the core of their being – their core values. Core values are those values that:

• Determine how you choose to invest your time, your energy, and your money
• Define your needs relative to your wants, including such components of life as:
  • What, where, and when you will feed yourself
  • What you are willing to spend time studying
  • Who you are willing to work for (whose dreams you will contribute to!)
  • What religious beliefs you will invest your life~force into
  • How much of a consumer relative to a generator of resources you choose to be. These are values that determine whether you are a symbiotic or parasitic organism in relationship to the earth!

In the P~P~S Success Mastery Program, we refer to those values that govern your use of self as “I” values (I = ego = self).Additionally, yourcore values say everything about what you bring to your personal, professional and spiritual relationships with others. P~P~S Practitioners call those values that define how you interact one-on-one with those around you your “WE” values. The impact of how you live clearly determines your creative force as a cell in the larger organisms referred to as society. Confucius taught that the people are always reflected in the government, and in fact that people and government mirror each other (ponder that while watching the news)! P~P~S Practitioners refer to values that impact society and culture as your “ALL” values.

Historically, individuals without intention and awareness training seldom establish their own core values. This is because in most cultures, as children (without ideas of our own) we adopt the core values of our parents and our family. Such adopted core values typically dictate what our religious, social and environmental behaviors will be.

When an individual is congruent with the core values they express through their actions, they exhibit what I refer to as body~mind~soul alignment. Such people seldom suffer illness, and when they do, they recover quickly. This is because being clear about who they are and what they stand for as human beings makes them very aware of what drains them in their I, WE, and ALL relationships. With their core values as their compass, little energy is needed to get them back on track again. Such people are typically clear about their boundaries, their personal, professional and spiritual goals, and are most likely to have a well-defined legacy – an overarching dream for their life.

When we, as exercise and healthcare professionals, become clear on our own I, WE and ALL core values, we become passionate about our chosen direction in life because we are sure it is our life – not mom’s or dad’s, nor simply the life dictated by the church or government. We become truly free; an individual with self-awareness. From the position of self-awareness, we know what we bring to our personal, professional and spiritual relationships. It is only by becoming self-aware that we can ever define what we offer to our clients, for our I values are literally the foundation of our WE values! There’s no escaping this reality.

When the truly defined individual as trainer/therapist/doctor takes on a new client, they offer their own sense of safety, their own sense of peace with self (I) to the client in the professional relationship (WE). Beyond this, the self-aware practitioner offers a heightened ability to understand and act on their clients’ needs. We know that you can more accurately determine the speed of someone passing you on foot, bicycle or in a car if you are still (stability) than if you are moving. Analogously, you can better determine the needs of anyone with health and wellbeing challenges, and formulate a plan of action that offers resolution, if you have a strong understanding of your own needs and values (stability).

I frequently tell my students that when it comes to selling health and wellbeing, it is essential that we always tell our clients exactly what they want to hear, yet we MUST always give them exactly what they need! But how can you do that until you have helped them become clear on what their core values are? How can your client differentiate a want from a need, a dream from a fantasy, or fantasy from reality, until they themselves have identified their own core values?

My extensive investigations into human health and behavior have shown me that until someone truly becomes an individual by defining and living according to their core values, they can never achieve inner-peace and wellbeing. This is why it is terribly common to hear, “I don’t know” from clients when we ask them what their goals are. Moreover, this is why it is so terribly common to have dissatisfied clients. After teaching them how to better care for themselves, they DON’T follow through on their own, and return for their next session to display antagonistic behavior. Ask them why they didn’t follow through on all of your work together and the most common answer you get is, “I don’t know!” They don’t know because they haven’t defined their core values.

Those healthcare practitioners that are truly successful and happy in their personal, professional and spiritual life typically exhibit (not just talk about!):

• Self-confidence and healthy levels of self-esteem stemming from a clearly defined sense of self. The have clearly established core values!
• The courage to establish their personal needs and self-management as a prerequisite to helping others. The blind don’t typically do well leading the blind.
• An open-minded attitude toward self and other. They know that any philosophy worth living is worth challenging because upgrading can come about no other way. They are not dogmatic people who make the same mistakes repeatedly.
• Virtuous behavior. Their actions, if repeated by society at large, are more likely to create unity and decrease stress at all levels of existence (I, WE, ALL). By their fruits, you shall know them.

I hope that what I’ve written here shows the importance of defining and living according to your core values. Not only is this crucial to your own happiness and wellbeing, it is critical to the happiness and wellbeing of your clients.

References:
1. Brown, Paul. “Face2Face”. The official member retention solution used by IHRSA. 2008. <http://www.face2faceretention.com/index.php>.

2. Personal communication with industry moguls.