Summary: Lou Schuler shared his wisdom with respect to communicating, being real, and aging healthily while also developing empathy, humility, and seeing things from your client’s eyes.<br> <br> ------------------------------<br> ♦ Writing & Communication ♦ <br> ------------------------------<br> Writing is communication, and the key there is the other person.<br> If you’re trying to engage someone, tell a story. People remember stories. They’ll stick more.<br> <br> A story that emotionally engages the reader (or the person you’re talking to) is far more useful than just chest-pounding.<br> <br> People talking themselves up are a dime a dozen. It’s hard to separate yourself out from the crowd if you’re just another one of them.<br> <br> Lou really likes focusing on humility and using a bit of self-deprecating humor; in the long-term, if you have a lot of good information to give, couched in good stories, these will work much better incessant chest pounding.<br> <br> Mike pointed out a quote from Jay Abraham: “If you can articulate your audience’s pains better than they can, they will assume you have the solution.”<br> <br> This is difficult, however. Getting outside your own head, and into the heads of your market, or your clients, or your readers — or whoever it may be — is really hard and takes focused effort. You can’t assume you already know what they’re thinking.<br> <br> Scott pointed out the tension, or difficulty, in trying to communicate important ideas that are couched in “entertaining” stories.<br> <br> For Lou, part of the answer is just that sometimes a bit of entertainment is okay. That’s a service too.<br> <br> -----------------<br> ♦ Active Aging ♦<br> -----------------<br> <br> One of the tough things about aging is that there are elements to it you only learn through experience. And the moment you turn 40 you don’t suddenly understand all aspects of “training over 40.” You just got there! You’re barely over 40!<br> <br> For Scott, this is even harder because although the industry likes to lump together everyone over 40, the changes that take place after 50 are often more drastic, so a 45-year-old trainer assuming that he or she is in the same camp as a 55 or 60-year old can often be very mistaken.<br> Lou also points out that people age very differently, and this is true emotionally as well as physically. Yes, that grandmother over there just deadlifted 900 lbs. That might be inspiring to you, but what you’re looking at is a freak of genetics. For many people, things like this are just not within the realm of the possible.<br> <br> This ties into the earlier discussion about getting outside your own head. Just because X, Y, and Z worked for you doesn’t mean it’ll work for everyone.<br> <br> Part of empathy (somewhat paradoxically) involves realizing no, you don’t know what’s going on with that guy, and finally accepting that there are experiences that exist outside your own.<br> <br> Another takeaway here is that you can’t just say EVERYONE NOW MUST STOP DOING X AFTER AGE Y. Trainees are different. The guy who’s been in the gym hanging and banging for 30 years is not the same trainee as the one who’s 80 lbs. overweight and finally wants to do something about it because their doctor has told them if they don’t do something they’ll be dead in 3 years.<br> <br> As Scott points out, one of the difficulties there is not just the recovery abilities of these trainees, but the work capacity changes. The experienced trainee can hammer himself into the ground in ways the other one can’t, even if it would take far less to drive the overweight untrained person into the ground.<br> <br> --------------------------<br> ♦ LINKS & RESOURCES ♦<br> --------------------------<br> <br> • LouSchuler.com - Lou’s homepage. Find links to his books, social media.<br> <br>
