Transcripts from the “Personal Trainer Mastery Series� interview with Tom Terwilliger conducted by Shawn Phillips    

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.â€�
                                                                                                                                              ~Eleanor Roosevelt~
 

Shawn: Although he′s been your host for the past 5 weeks.I don′t really know how much you know about our guest tonight.  So allow me to share a few things you may or MAY NOT know about the man himself, Tom Terwilliger

I have to admit, his credentials even surprised me as I know Tom is Tom a friend, riding buddy and fellow champion for “Life at Full Strength� for people everywhere 
 

Tom is an American College of Sports Medicine certified personal trainer. Has been in the fitness business for over 25 years.  He has owned several successful athletic clubs and exclusive personal training studios in both Denver and New York.  Tom is also an NLP Master Practitioner and Hypnotherapist  and is one of the most sought after life strategy coaches in the fitness industry.   I met Tom in Venice Beach, CAwhen he was coming off his victory at the National Bodybuilding Championship.  So to say that he knows a little something about confidence would be an understatement.
 

Shawn: “What led you to sell your training center and launch your new organization, Coaching Leadership Excellence?�
 

Tom: Several years ago after opening our first personal training center in New York I was faced with a challenge that quite frankly I didn′t anticipate.   That was finding and keeping really good trainers.  The vast majority of trainers I interviewed had good training skills but lacked what I like to call the intangiblesyou know that certain something that allows them to connect to other people and their clients easily and quickly. 

I now know that those intangibles, the one′s that exist in other people can be modeled and developed.  Area′s like communication skills, being a great listener, rapport building skills, and confidence. I have spent the past 10 years studying these skills and realize that they elude most people.  They are not necessarily taught in school so how do you learn to be more confident and therefore become a better person and trainer? So I began to coach these skills to not only the trainers I was hiring but to hundreds of others in and out of the fitness community.   

A few years ago I decided that I could best serve the fitness community by concentrating on that purpose.  So My wife and I founded Coaching Leadership Excellence and have devoted the past 2 years to bringing these life changing skills to as many fitness professionals as we can reach.  We created an intention and are on a mission to serve the fitness community by becoming the number one personal growth and development organization for fitness professionals.  
 

Shawn: “Tom, through your many years experience with all facets of personal training, what have you found to be the single greatest obstacle to massive success?�
 

Tom:  No doubt it would have to be confidence.  I didn′t always have the confidence in myself that I have today.  I can remember being absolutely terrified to speak in public, or to take any sort of risk that wasn′t of a physical nature.  I never believed that I was smart enough to be successful at business or good enough to have a truly meaningful relationship.  I see this lack of confidence in so many trainers todaypart of it is not having had adequate training or having achieved a high enough certification to make them feel confident in their skills.  I remember how much of a boost in confidence having studied for and achieved my ACSM certification gave to my trainingeven though I already had 15 years of training experience and a Mr. America title under my belt.

But another large component is that they simply don′t believe in themselves or their true ability to help transform other people′s lives.  So many young even experienced trainers don′t believe in themselves enough or lack the confident to take the risks that would set themselves apart from the competition and take them and their career to the level of success that they deserve.  
 

Shawn : “Any conversation centered around the concept of Confidence can definitely get a little deep even esotericespecially with you and me in the mix.  So to set the frame work  why don′t we start by defining confidence and maybe even looking at the difference between that and flat out courage.
 

Tom: The American Heritage Dictionary defines confidence “as a state of being certain or self assured“. It defines courage as,”The state of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger.”

So if confidence is the state of being certain or self assuredhow do we develop that state?  Indeed, facing danger and showing courage helps us gain or develop confidence. Years of trial and error, successes and even failurescertainly self esteem plays a role in our level of confidence.  Those among us who were both nurtured, challenged, recognized and rewarded as children tend to have a higher level of self esteem and confidence.  For those of us who simply did not come through our adolescence with massive confidence and self esteem it is going to take a little more effort to develop an empowering level of inner confidence. I have spend the past 15 years literally studying what makes one person confident in their life and others self doubting.
 
Shawn: “I know that in your coaching practice you work with a lot of people on getting “unstuck� in their lives and their careers. How big a role does your confidence model play in that process?�
 

SELF DISCOVERY:
Tom: Most people lack confidence in the area′s of their lives that they are struggling in. It’s fear, doubt, and lack of confidence that generally keeps people stuck in their jobs, relationships, and lives.  So helping my clients work through the confidence model starting with self discovery and working straight through to consistent action can and does have a profound effect on their ability to get unstuck and move to a higher level.

Self discovery has nothing to do with psycho analysis or therapyall though it can be quite therapeutic. Self discovery as it pertains to the confidence model has to do with evaluating and rating the areas of your life that lack confidence vs. those areas that need very little attention. Most of us tend to either clumpor ignore.  Meaning we either clump all the areas of our life into one categorynegative or positive.  Or we take all our attention off the areas that make us uncomfortable and need the most attention by focusing exclusively on what we are good at or enjoy.

So we now had a scale in order to measure not only his progress but the amount of work that would be needed to bring everything up to a level 130.  And the first step was stop working his chest!!! Here′s the thingif he had been training to win the Mr. Chester contest then he would have been fine.  But what he wanted was to be a champion and to do that he needed to have balance and symmetry.

If all we need is a massive level of confidence in our ability to coach and produce results with our clients then that′s all we should be working on.  But my experience tells me that we need a little more balance then that.
So wouldn′t it also be beneficial in our own careers or lifeto first know what areas are out of proportion and which areas we have been ignoring.

I mean you could be an extremely confident partier dudeyou can pound back the brews with the best of them and go all night.  But your really week in the area of business. Instead of ignoring it because it′s uncomfortable and weekyou need to identify it, measure it, and improve it.  That is if being good at business is important to you (what we can measure we can improve).
 

Here′s the bottom lineif your not where you want to be in your career, life, or relationships, it′s very unlikely  that it′s a lack of education, not knowing the right people, having been abused a kid or any other victim mentality excuses that have been holding you backit′s you holding you back.  

What if my former bodybuilding client had not had someone honestly critique his physique and help him discover his imperfectionshe may very well have kept on finding excuses as to why he was not  taking home any trophies other then “best chest�. He would have continued to scratch his head and wonder why he wasn′t succeedinguntil it was time to quit.feeling like a failure. So you can see that self discovery although some times uncomfortable is an absolutely invaluable component in the confidence building model. 
 

Shawn : You have some really amazing exercises in your Inner Game of Confidence that can help people shatter through the often invisible barriers that are holding most people back. Personally, one of the greatest obstacles I see in people is weakness in their ability to focus can you say something about the role of FOCUS in developing confidence?�

FOCUS: 
Tom: Focus is about chunking down and distinguishing between the areas we have confidence and the area′s we do not.  Then working on strengthening the areas that need our attention and modeling our strengths. In my earlier example of the young body builder who refused to see his weaknesses, he was indeed using the power of focus and what he focused on did indeed improvebut he was only focusing on what he liked to do what he enjoyed doingnot necessarily what would produce the greatest results for his desired outcome.  He wanted to be a championnot just a guy with a massive chest.

If you want to be more than a $25,000 or $30,000 dollar a year trainer then you have to focus your efforts on improving the areas of your career that need to be brought up a level 130even if it scares the be-Jesus out of you just to think about it.
I guarantee that if you focus on improving your weaknessesthe ones that will ultimately produce the greatest returns your already existing strengths will improve as a result.

We know that you can bring up your bench pressby doing heavy squats, for example. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hanson the authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul wrote another best seller called, The Power of Focus in which they state, “People who focus on what they want prosperthose who don′t struggle�. Like a table with one or more broken, unsure, or weak legs your confidence will wobble, or crumble if you do not focus on what you want and work on developing the skills needed to achieve it.
 

Shawn: “It′s really easy to confuse courage and confidence when we talk about the last component –Action.but you insist that courage is one of the necessary components or legs in building or developing confidence itself. 
 

COURAGE:
Tom: Journalist/Politician, Clare Booth Luce once said, “Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.”
 

Shawn you quoted Eleanor Roosevelt earlier You must do the thing you think you cannot do.�  If I “think I can′t do something� that certainly doesn′t suggest a great deal of confidence does it?  But doing it any wayeven in spite of fear or doubt does take a great deal of couragedoesn′t it?

So you can see how confidence is ultimately built on courage and therefore one of the most important legs in the confidence building model. “Courage, as John Wayne once said “is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway.�
 

Ultimately, “saddling up� and moving forward takes either courage or confidence or bothIf I lack confidence then I must exercise courage or hide in the closetthere is no middle ground. I feel that the emotional muscle of courage is one of the most important legs in developing and supporting your confidence table.  In the absence of confidence in a particular areait takes courage to take the action needed to develop confidence for the next time.
 

In return for taking actionyou will be rewarded if you are successful at the specific actionyou develop confidence.  If you failyou develop confidencein your ability to act in spite of fear. “There is no failure only feedback�. In our program Inner Game of Confidence I provide several assignments that allow you to develop the important emotional muscles of courage and to quickly build confidence in your ability to take action.
 

ACTION:                                                                                                                                                                                            Shawn : “Tom can you give an example of a time when you took action and how it made you feel and the confidence that developed as a direct result�
 

Tom: Taking action is a critical component in the confidence building process.  It is were the rubber meets the road.  Just last week during a speaker training I was attending I was asked to step up on to a cement pedestal and as loud as I could and with as much passion as I could muster give my 10 minute speech.  This task would not have bee so bad except that the cement pedestal was right in the middle of a buys city street at lunch time.  I have to tell you I was scared shitless and had to muster up some courage real quick or retreat back to the hotel defeated.   When you are challenged or challenge your self with no option but to take actionyou do it.  And when you do, something amazing happens inside.  A new set of neuro pathways develop and your ability to take action the next time becomes that much easier.  Not only that but you get to experience an adrenalin and endorphin rush like nothing elseI actually wanted to get back out there the next day and do it again.
 

The Inner Game of Confidence Is a powerful time and science proven confidence building program that includes the complete 42 day audio coaching program, book, and workbook. 

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