Black Belt Fitness for Life. Grandmaster Tae Sun Kang

way too out of shape for exercise.”

      It’s so sad for all of these dedicated parents—for them, their lives are basically over, and the worst thing is that most of them are not even 40 years of age. They think about their childhood and how fun it was. Now all their focus is on their jobs and families—they don’t feature in the equation.

      Tell me how ridiculous that is! Not even 40 years old and they’ve already given up. Don’t they understand that they, as parents, are the most important thing to their kids?

      As parents, we want the very best for our kids. But what happens if we’re sick, and even worse, if we are no longer there for them? When are we going to realize that our health is more important than our jobs?

      I look at life as a constant juggling act. You have to be able to adapt to the constantly changing equation, but at the same time not forget about yourself. Please exercise regularly!

      CHAPTER 3

      Finding the Fountain of Youth

      There are lots of people promoting workout programs that they say will get you in the best shape of your life in a very short amount of time.

      Others say that they’ve developed the perfect diet, where you’ll drop a dress size in just a single week. Some claim that you are what you eat, and that juicing is the only way to go. Many say you have to go vegetarian or totally vegan.

      And of course, there are those that say, don’t even waste your time. There’s botox, collagen, cellulite creams, massages, steam and sauna rooms, you name it, we’ve got it. Just come to our spa for a week and we promise you that you’ll feel brand new.

      Then there are plastic surgeons that ask why even waste a week when we can make you brand new in a few hours? Just lie back and relax, we’ll remove that unwanted fat from anywhere in your body. Want a bigger chest or breasts? Why not let us take care of your abs and butt at the same time with some implants. We’ll have you looking great and out in a jiffy.

      Maybe I went a bit overboard with the above comparisons, but all these things do happen, every day. Turn on your television set and watch some of the talk shows or infomercials. On one recent show, they were interviewing a doctor while he was performing a live liposuction, and the crazy thing was that the patient wasn’t even overweight!

      A few months back, a middle-aged couple that I know decided to purchase one of those short-term, quick-fix programs. After doing one session, they told me they were aching for a week, and they had to have massages just to relieve some of the soreness; they never tried doing the program again.

      My philosophy has always been if it makes you happy, then it’s no one else’s business. But one important thing I’ve learned in my 40-plus years in the fitness industry, is that there’s no quick fix when it comes to taking care of one’s health and fitness. It should be something that we’re concerned about on a daily basis, just like eating and sleeping. If you didn’t have a meal, aren’t you constantly thinking about food? If you didn’t get a good night’s sleep, don’t you feel groggy throughout the day? Do you ever lose your cool or get stressed out easily? I can tell you that’s definitely because you don’t exercise regularly.

      Sure, it would be great if we were born into a super rich family, or had the looks and body of a supermodel. I don’t know how many of you are that lucky, but I for one can tell you that I wasn’t that fortunate. Everything I have in my life I owe to the confidence I achieved through Taekwondo. I had to work for everything. Do you think people who are born into wealthy families, or are just naturally beautiful, really appreciate what they have? If you said “yes,” why is it that we hear stories all the time about the rich or famous going in and out of rehab, or committing suicide, or going from one relationship one day to another the next?

      What would you appreciate more: becoming wealthy by winning the lottery or making a lot of money through your own efforts? You might have said getting lucky winning the lottery, but let’s be real. We were not all born with silver spoons in our mouths and the chances of us winning the big jackpot is one in billions. And how many times do you hear stories about lottery winners only ending up even worse off than before they won? Most of these people even say they wish they’d never won the money in the first place. But if you worked really hard to make millions, wouldn’t you appreciate it more?

      One thing I’ve learned in life is that nothing is impossible if you’re determined enough. I believe that you’re in charge of your life and destiny. If you don’t take the necessary actions to make things happen, it’s not going to happen. I never look at the final destination or my ultimate goal as my driving force. I emphasize each day as my objective. Each and every day should be a goal, where we’re learning something about our lives, our jobs, our families and, yes, about our potential.

      The problem with most of us is that we don’t want to deal with the journey, but just want to get to our destination. It’s easy for the aspiring football player to dream about winning the Superbowl in a packed stadium, but few aspiring athletes dream about the endless hours they have to spend training or all the injuries they’ll incur. Even if you know someone who has lost a drastic amount of weight, it’s easy to look at the “before” and “after” pictures and dream about achieving the same results—but often we don’t think about all the hard work and discipline that went into losing that weight. Most of us don’t realize it’s the journey that teaches us about ourselves. It’s the journey that’s constantly making us evolve into being a better, healthier, more positive individual.