{"id":467,"date":"2013-03-06T18:16:58","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T01:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bornfitness.com\/?p=467"},"modified":"2017-09-26T08:46:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T15:46:09","slug":"finding-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bornfitness.com\/finding-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have an important confession to make that might change the way you look at me.<\/strong> But I don\u2019t care. This needs to be shared.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I used to wonder what it was like to go to a school party. I\u2019d have those thoughts all the time because I\u2019ve never been to one.<\/p>\n

When I was in high school I never went to homecoming. Or the prom. Hell, I never went to any organized dance that didn\u2019t include the words \u201cBar\u201d and \u201cMitzvah\u201d smashed together.<\/p>\n

If you ask anyone from my high school, they might tell you they don\u2019t remember me. In fact, I\u2019ve seen people that I grew up with who have no recollection of my existence. Apparently, I just didn\u2019t make much of an impact. Maybe it wasn\u2019t my time, or maybe I was a late bloomer.<\/p>\n

Whatever the explanation, I knew that the world around me\u2014and the way others perceived me\u2014wasn\u2019t how I felt about myself inside. And yet, in many ways, I let the perception of others shape the world I lived in. And that, in turn, led me to question what I could do, what I could become, and what I would achieve.<\/p>\n

Fast forward many years, and I was named one of the \u201c50 Hottest Trainers<\/a>,\u201d according to SHAPE Magazine. It\u2019s awesome to receive any type of praise, but it made me think about perception. Not the perception I have of myself or even what people from high school would think of me now. That doesn\u2019t matter to me. I thought about your perception of me, and the path I took to get here.<\/p>\n

You see, most of us believe that some people are just born successful\u2026or good looking\u2026or lucky and fortunate. We believe that this is a society of have’s- and have-nots. While it\u2019s true that some might have an easier path, it doesn\u2019t mean that you can\u2019t create the type of existence you want.<\/p>\n

Throughout high school, I never dated anyone. So it would have been easy to consider a loner, introvert, or even ugly. In my early and mid 20s, I didn\u2019t make much money, and you could have considered me unsuccessful or without direction. And for much of my life, I struggled to understand why my own perception of myself differed from the one the world created for me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sharing this now not <\/i>because I want you to feel bad for me. And it\u2019s not because I want you to applaud me for turning things around. I\u2019m telling you my story because it\u2019s important for you to understand the power you have over your own life.<\/p>\n

Why We Fail (And Why it’s Not a Bad Thing)<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve said this before in another story<\/a> I wrote for Greatist, but I truly believe that my success and happiness is a byproduct of my failures. It wasn\u2019t until I understood that my perceptions mattered more than the perceptions of others that I was able to take control of my life and start determining what I could achieve, and the difference I could make in this world.<\/p>\n

The truth is, I\u2019ve failed in every aspect of my life. I\u2019ve been viewed as a loner, a loser, or someone that just wasn\u2019t meant to succeed. The key word here is \u201cviewed.\u201d I never believed that, but I did allow it to prevent me from taking steps I should have taken or wanted to take.<\/p>\n

At some point, I realized that the bumps and bruises might never end. So I could either accept that fate and what others thought of me, or start taking control, stop making excuses, and pushing towards what I wanted\u2014no matter what.<\/p>\n

If you take a brief look back, you\u2019d see that I\u2019ve fallen or been knocked down repeatedly:<\/p>\n