Pat Divilly is an Irish fitness expert, author and entrepreneur. As a guest speaker at the recent ISF Psoriasis Roundtable Meetings, Pat provided practical advice on ways to improve fitness and shared insights about his philosophy for success.
I had the pleasure of being involved with the recent Psoriasis Roundtables meet ups with the Irish Skin Foundation and really enjoyed speaking at, and meeting with the over 150 attendees.
Over the past 5 years I’ve had over 14,000 people go through my online training and nutrition courses and although there couldn’t be a wider scope of people from different background in my eyes two things remain true for us all. We are all seeking more belief and more belonging.
When I left college and started working as a personal trainer I thought it was all about push ups and broccoli! I thought the role simply entailed getting people to eat in a certain way and training consistently. How wrong I was!
After failing with my first two personal training businesses I took a new approach and made my classes largely about community. I moved from one to one training to group classes and built a ‘tribe’ of like minded people all routing for and encouraging one another. It’s one of the things I see to be missing in the world – connection.
This was one of the great things I got to experience at the recent psoriasis round table meet ups. Seeing people interacting and sharing their struggles, ideas and stories was incredibly refreshing and inspiring. I think we all feel isolated sometimes and crave connection with other people. This can be even truer where we have a specific condition or circumstance that seemingly alienates us from those around us.
In my fitness-business, clients saw much better results when training in a group as opposed to when they trained on their own. This is a key message for those looking to make improvements in any area of their lives. Get around people who understand you, will support you and will give you a nudge when you need it.
The second core message I always speak about is belief. We can be very hard on ourselves, in fact we can be our own worst critics. We speak to ourselves more than anyone else in this world, but what are the things we are telling ourselves repeatedly? It was interesting to see at the recent roundtable discussions the difference between what someone thought of themselves, and the perception the rest of the table had of them. Some people talked about being shy and self conscious while the rest of the table would speak up and say they’d never have thought that of the person. It’s funny the way we can judge and see ourselves, and so belief becomes a key part of having a happy and healthy life.
Can you become a little more conscious of how you are speaking to yourself? Belief can be improved by setting a goal and breaking it down into lots of mini steps. If you’ve never ran a marathon the thought can be very scary, but what if you broke it down into a 12 month plan and just focused on what you have to do in todays session. This is how belief is formed, through small daily wins.
I’m grateful to have had the chance to meet and learn from everyone at the recent round table discussions. It further re-instilled my belief that people are looking to belong to something bigger than themselves and people are looking to learn to believe in themselves that little bit more. That’s the ‘secret’ to weight loss, improved fitness or any other change you want to make in life.
Keep Moving Forward,
Pat D
