ERNIE SCHRAMAYR
I thought that we’d do something different for Fitness Solutions over the next few weeks. There have been many articles over the years where I’ve interviewed others, so I thought it might be interesting to allow “others” to interview me. I’ve collected questions posed to me via my social media accounts over the past few weeks and I’m going to do my best to answer as many as possible. I hope that you find something in my answers that can be a valuable addition to your life. Or that you just find it entertaining as we get to know each other a little better. Read on …
How do you stay positive and keep moving forward?
I love this question because I believe that mindset determines how well you are going to accomplish or mange anything in your life. While I do all kinds of things like meditate, journal, exercise and eat healthfully, I think that there is one single thing that has made the difference to me. I have a “mantra” or theme that I live by for when times get challenging. That mantra is, “It’s all part of the adventure.”
As simple as it sounds, just living by this credo has allowed me to frame anything that happens day to day as just another piece of the puzzle that makes life incredible and worth living; even the bad stuff. On the other hand, I know people who live their life believing that “life is a party.” They have a lot of fun, but never seem to get anywhere meaningful. Others will tell you that “life is cruel … and then you die.” Faced with adversity, they assume the worst and they stay miserable most of the time. In other words, be careful with the theme that you decide to adopt for your life. It is more significant than you know.
By making the decision to choose adventure as a way to frame the things that happen to me, nothing is considered “negative.” When I was cut from the CFL, had an early business bankruptcy or when my wife was diagnosed with MS, I looked at each of these things as if I was being presented with the gift of figuring out how to keep moving forward in ways that I might not have thought of. It’s kind of like being the hero in my own epic adventure movie. Just think how boring “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or “Mission: Impossible” would be if everything was a clear path to the treasure or to the villain that needed stopping!
I choose to think of the hard times as “adventure” and then accept the excitement that comes along with them.
Why did you start meditating and how has it changed you?
When my kids were in their early teens, my wife was experiencing a progression of her multiple sclerosis and was no longer able to work. I was teaching boot camp classes every morning at 5:30 a.m. before doing personal training all day long and managing my business and my staff. There was a lot going on in my life, including coaching hockey, training myself, writing, prepping for my weekly radio guest spot, playing hockey, playing guitar in a band, cooking all of our meals and just being a husband and father. Around that time, I discovered meditation by hearing Arnold Schwarzenegger describe his chaotic life in the 1970s and how meditating helped him to quiet his mind, giving him the ability to focus all of his energy on whatever task he was working on; he was involved in bodybuilding, real estate development, acting, brick laying and was taking English language classes at night.
What meditation has given me personally is “space.” When confronted with a situation that might have lead me to blow up in the past, I now feel like I have the time and space to respond and react in the way that I would choose to if things weren’t hectic and stressful. Tension and anxiety make you feel like you are backed into a corner, barely able to breathe with all of the demands in your life shoved in your face all at once. Meditation doesn’t change the reality of the stressors or the demands, but it makes you feel like you have all the time in the world to think about the best way forward and that makes you recognize that you have a choice about how to respond or react.
If you’ve ever seen Tom Brady, Venus Williams or Wayne Gretzky operate at an elite level with calmness while thousands of people scream at them and the best defenders in the world are swirling around trying to stop them, then you’ve seen what a mindfulness meditation practice looks like in the real world.
CERTIFIED PERSONAL TRAINER ERNIE SCHRAMAYR HELPS HIS CLIENTS PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY PREPARE FOR SPECIAL EVENTS IN THEIR LIVES. YOU CAN FOLLOW HIM AT ERNIESFITNESSWORLD.COM; 905-741-7532 OR ERNIESFITNESSWORLD @GMAIL.COM.