How Will We Be Remembered?

Today was fairly quiet for Parmasters Waterloo Region. It was still very productive, but just seemed like a rather quiet day. We welcomed another investor on board, and had initial conversations with a few others. I also did some banking, bookkeeping and other administrivia. And they day started out with another fantastic workout.

Lately, each week, I’ve been tackling a new program/routine from my Men’s Health subscription. Most of these have concentrated on chest work lately. So each week, early on a Monday morning, it’s a bit of an adventure to open up the magazine and see what’s in store. This week’s routine involves some cluster sets at maximum weight, and then some strip sets (where weight is quickly stripped from the bar and more reps are performed). The cluster sets start with four reps – maximum weight – and then a fifteen second rest, with the bar still in hand, and another rep, before finally racking the bar. Then another fifteen second rest, another single rep, repeated till exhaustion. It sounded like fun … when I read it.

I had lunch with an old friend. We worked together some 17 years ago. Lots of reminiscing about former co-workers, times when we laughed until it hurt, times when we were ready to quit, and everything in between. We both agreed we learned a lot in those years.

The reminiscing left me wondering, how will the early years of Parmasters Waterloo Region be remembered? By me and my family? By our investors? By the franchisor? By our future staff?

One method of “goal” setting – sorry Jay (he dislikes that word and all it stands for) – involves establishing a vision of what you want to achieve, along with the date when you want to achieve it by, and then working backwards, setting incremental milestones. You then start by working towards the next/nearest milestone.

Another concept involves writing your own eulogy. When you bring a sense of mortality to the exercise, seemingly one tends to focus more clearly and precisely on the things in life that truly matter. But this process also leads to the concept of how one will be remembered?

This is something I plan to ponder more deeply? How do I want to be remembered? And how do I want our stakeholders to remember the early days of Parmasters Waterloo Region?

“Stephen Southern. Born 1966. Died 20?? in his ??th year. He was a witty and handsome fellow …”

Well, it’s a start.