Thanksgiving marks the time of year for reflection and giving thanks. Thankful for our friends & family, our health, gainful employment or for new horizons to come. This year I am incredibly thankful for my occupation and for CPC.

Continuum Performance Center just turned 8! I seriously cannot believe that this concept that turned business just surpassed the 8 ^th year AND a few short months ago we moved the business to a new space. The planning, organizing, coordinating and decisions brought me to a point of stress I have never experienced before. The last time the business entered into a space it wasn’t yet operating. With all the successes and what has transpired that still isn’t why I am so thankful.

I am thankful for my day to day job. For interacting and communicating with people. The two spaces in which I spent the most professional time is on one on one personal training and as a Strength & Conditioning coach. The fitness profession places you in a very close setting with people in which the highest amount of success is accomplished with trust and transparency. Being able to truly effect changes is more than just sets and reps. Knowing the stresses their under and changing a workout based upon that is huge. The list goes on and being able to help another individual is so gratifying but still not the root of this blog.

I’m thankful for the DIFFERENCES in ALL the people I have meet and how on a daily occasion I spend the vast majority of my day with people whom are not "just like me". I grew up and in town where my high school was mostly catholic, and I did not have a single Jewish friend growing up. I literally knew nothing about the religion or the Jewish culture. Now having so many individuals of the Jewish faith around me I feel blessed. I get to ask questions and embark into discussion on the “why”. This opportunity to interact and understand the varying importance of foods, holidays, traditions is just never ending and I love it. I found great honor in a friend calling me a Mensch, once I looked it up.

I’m thankful for the non-heterosexual community that supports and loves CPC. I don’t know the current proper way to state/write this difference of sexual and gender identification, so I am just putting it out here as this. This community is amazing to me and receptive to the questions I have. We ask each other about everything but as people. Not as a hetero asking a gay question or vice versa. Just some people having a progressive adult conversation and I’m so thankful that this inclusion is all MY people.

I’m thankful for the variety of races I am engaged with and learning. I grew up as a white middle class American male. NO, I don’t get it and don’t pretend too! I don’t understand the trials, tribulations or judgements that other races and various difference(s) face, but I enjoy discussing them. I refuse to stand aside and not listen and approach the conversation openly and not from a stand point that someone must be right/correct and the other wrong. We have an opportunity to mutually inform. We have grown into a society that is so averse to confrontation that we don’t even tread closely to a conversation that could be a conflict or conflict of interest. In every conversation make sure you listen to the other individual you're engaged with and you're not just waiting for you tern to speak.

I’m thankful for every individual whom I connect with on Social media. You can be annoying, you can be a bigot, you don’t align with me politically and mostly you can over-share your personal life. But again this is MY opinion and doesn't mean it's correct. Just the way I currently see the world. You follow different media channels than I do and by watching or reading what you have posted or shared can add perspective into your why, your rational and your world. By seeing what you “like” enjoy and follow let’s me expand my current horizons and be influenced by different resources and viewpoints.

I’m thankful because I gain such perspective! I am surrounded by so many people that aren’t me and they’re not my “friends”. We are friendly, and we get along, but we stand on such opposite sides, we value such different things and have varied outlooks. I am proud to say that my scope, my perspective and value system is culturally deepened by my occupation. You’re right in that I absolutely LOVE what I do for my career. BUT I love what my career has allowed me to become. I don’t define who I am through race, religion, my sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, as an owner, a service person and a or a tradesman. At the end of it all I just want to be a human. I want to be surrounded by a community and find strength, wisdom and happiness by those whom I can influence and influence me right back.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Thank you for always showing me your best and true self.