Hi! My name is Carl, and I am the Human Performance Facilitator here at Day One Performance. I want to welcome you here and thank you for considering working with us. I am going to take this moment to tell you a bit about myself and to tell on myself. I think it is important that people realize that coaches are people too, we struggle, we fail, we have the same issues with discipline and motivation that our clients deal with. Often, we have come from similar circumstances and through the journey that led to us overcoming those circumstances, we find a purpose. That purpose usually is to help people, like ourselves, navigate that journey more efficiently than we had. This is exactly what lead me to start Day One Performance, my drive to help people operate at their best.

From 1998-2004 I served as an active-duty US Marine. As you could imagine, being a Marine requires a high degree of physical fitness. Were their outliers? Sure, but a Marine who took his or her job seriously was a generally fit individual. I will not say Marine Corps training was physically easy, but it helped that I was already in shape from being an active high school athlete.

While units and their subgroups had regular physical training, the Marines who tended to succeed in tasks of physical agility, strength, mobility, and capacity were the ones who also trained on their own time. I had already had a taste of the weight room from high school, but now I found myself on base fitness centers wherever I was, wanting to squeeze out more. It was here that I started to learn and understand the patterns that lead to results. Before long, my fellow Marines were asking me for advice and help, and I found that helping those Marines get better was personally more fulfilling than the actual exercise. It was this feeling that would resurface later in life.

Now, here comes the part where I tell on myself. After separating from active duty, the operational slowdown from active duty to civilian life had started to take its toll. There were so many things swimming around in my head that I started to find solace in food and drink.  I was embarrassed, depressed, and miserable. I stopped weighing myself at 240lbs, although the weight gain continued (the heaviest I was during my service was 167lbs). The jokes about my weight took its toll further on me than I would admit at the time, I would actively hide from mirrors and shy away from the camera (I still am not crazy about having my picture taken). I had become so adept at hiding that I cannot find a picture of me at my heaviest. Let us just say I was not my biggest fan.

It all came to a head, and a decision had to be made. Fortunately for myself, I decided that I wanted to not just live, but to lead a life that I could be proud of. I know that sentence sounds easy, but it was excruciatingly difficult, as I had dug myself in such a deep hole, I was not sure if I would get out, but I had to at least try.

It was not easy. I had a bad habit of not asking for help, wanting to power through it alone and under my own steam. I failed so many times that I cannot even begin to count. I tried all the diets, used all the supplements looking for something that would give me the path that I wanted to be on. I would at times, have small segments of wins, only to self-sabotage and fall backwards. It was such mental torment!

It was not until I started repairing my relationship with myself that I started seeing appreciable success elsewhere. I first had to forgive myself, not absolve myself, but really and honestly forgive myself for being in this position. I then had to learn to be kind to myself, which is not how I grew up (for clarity purposes I have GREAT parents, I just placed unreasonable expectations on myself), or how I treated myself for most of my life, I was and remain my worst critic. At times, it is tough to be kind to yourself, but as a member of the Day One Performance team, you will have me regularly telling you to be kind to yourself, it really is critically important. I had to accept that I am not in control of anything but my own thoughts and actions, nothing else. I also had to accept that I am going to fail, and oddly look forward to what I can learn from failure.

It took me nearly 10 years to be able to get through those items in that last paragraph! During that journey I found purpose. A real purpose that burns bright and hot within me. I do not want your journey to take 10 years, I want to be able to provide you with the guidance necessary for you to get the best version of you in a much shorter time. It is my firm belief that we have in all of us the tools needed to be successful in our lives, sometimes we just need someone to help us along the path, keep us accountable, remind us to celebrate the small wins and to be kind to ourselves. It is our relationship with ourselves that is the most important relationship we have. It is the relationship that defines every other relationship we have

By redefining our relationships with ourselves, we can redefine our relationship with food, with exercise, with our habits and with our lives. But is starts here, with our relationship with ourselves on Day One.

Again, thank you for stopping by and checking us out. It is my hope that we can help you in all your future endeavors!

Yours in health,

Carl