Two Sides of Coin

Choice you make or habit you create will lead to certain results. Health, finance, career, relationships, all revolves around this principle. In my personal life, I am a trainer and play soccer for enjoyment. As a trainer, not only I train my clients, but I also train and educate myself on everyday basis. Although I play soccer for enjoyment, my training is dedicated towards improving my soccer performance and I take it seriously.

Every day I have two choices. Whether to study or not to study. Whether to train myself or not to train myself. Whichever I choose, it will lead me to certain outcome. If I choose to study or train, I will improve even if the progression may be slow. If I choose not to study and not to train, there will be no improvement and regression gradually sets in.

It is like a flip of the coin when you choose “head” you are not choosing “tail”. Meaning when you choose something, you are automatically not choosing the other side.

Every choice I make, there will be certain consequences. When I choose to study, I will need to invest my time to search the topic that I need to learn and time to educate myself. The choice will automatically take away some of the leisure activities like, partying, watching TV and so on. When I choose to train myself for soccer, I will need to work on my training, nutrition, and sleep because poor nutrition and sleeping habit can negatively affect the training and its outcome. Depending on what time I train myself, I may need to wake up early and sleep early, which also force me to be organize my schedule so I can fit everything else in. Outcome of choice above would be knowledgeable and productive trainer and constantly improving soccer performance as well as being healthy.

If I choose not to do any of the above, I can have luxury of partying, watching TV, eating, and drinking whatever I want, stay up late and sleep in but I will most likely not be a productive trainer and will be performing poorly while playing soccer.

What dictates my choice is understanding or knowing what is important to me. There is nothing wrong with me not performing well in soccer. There is no issue with me being average trainer. I don’t think anybody going to judge me, criticize me. But I will. I want to be a better at playing soccer and I refuse to be an average trainer. I cannot allow myself asking my clients to pay me by being an average. I love playing soccer well because it’s fun outperforming other players. It is fun to be above average trainer because I can provide more information and results to my clients. Sometimes more than they wanted.

Choice of which side of the coin to choose is made because I love playing soccer and I love training. There are consequences that came along such as waking up 4:15am and start training myself at 5am before I start my first client at 6am. Read and study 1-2 hours per day to keep up and advance my knowledge. Eating healthy according to my nutrition goal and sleep 7-8 hours a night. Do I follow this perfectly? No but 80% of the time. It is work and sometimes I wonder why I’m doing it but results so far is pretty awesome.

The point of this is not for me to show off how much I am doing but consequences that came along with the choice that I made, which will be like what choice you will be making or have made. Question is what is important to you, and are you ready to handle the consequence that comes along with your choice?

Kota Shimada