Day 94: Jeremy Likness

January 2, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“… the way I continue to inspire and grow is by continuing to seek those opportunities that I’m afraid of, because it’s where the fear is that really is the opportunity to become inspired and to shine and really step into what I think we’re intended to do here.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Jeremy, for agreeing to be part of our Project, and before we go into the questions, can you please introduce yourself?

Jeremy Likness: Absolutely.  My name is Jeremy Likness and by trade currently I’m a Senior Development Consultant; however, a lot of what I do involves not just writing software but actually working with other developers and helping coach and train them.

I do different speaking events in the technology world.   I also do a lot of writing and formerly held my own health and wellness business where I did a lot of coaching on the mindset of really losing weight and keeping it off.  A lot of different, I guess you could say, hats that I wear but excited and have a lot of fun with all of those.

Toni: It sounds like there’s a lot of variation of what you’re doing.  Let’s go into the first question.  When you think about the word inspiration, who do you inspire and how do you do that?

Jeremy: I believe that it starts really right here at home.  That’s one of the reasons why I’m passionate about my current position where I can work out of the house, because I have a beautiful nine-year-old daughter, just about to turn 10, and I believe I inspire her and my wife, and it’s reciprocal.  They both inspire me constantly, and then it spreads out from there.

I’m definitely blessed with opportunity to inspire people in my day-to-day work as I consult and as I speak and coach and train.

There’s a large body of people, ironically, online that I’ve been able to reach out to.  I actually have a book called Lose Fat, Not Faith that I wrote to detail sort of my journey of losing weight and that reaches thousands of people around the world and I believe has been a very powerful inspiration in that method as well.

Toni: So when you are … really when you’re starting with yourself and setting the examples for your daughter and your wife and the people that you’re coaching and you’re training, how do you go about inspiring them?  What happens when they are with you?

Jeremy: You know, I really had a lot of time to think about this, and it’s something that through my career and through some talks and my coaching, I’ve had a lot of people come back and just tell me that it was effective for a certain reason, and I think that reason will amount to honesty and integrity.

I think that in this day and age, it’s easy to get caught up.  There’s a lot of marketing, a lot of sales, a lot of gimmicks, a lot of pitches.  When I set to really start my own business and when I write articles, when I share experiences, when I coach, everything is drawn just from my personal experience.  And it’s open there for people to see, so I really focus on being a person of my word and doing what I set out to do.

I think when people see, number one, that I’m honest, direct, and basically am the real deal, and then number two, are able to see what I’ve been able to accomplish in my life with the things I’m sharing, they realize “Hey, it’s possible, it’s real, and we can connect with this individual and really learn from that and go forward with it.”  It’s an exciting dynamic, and I think that’s what a lot of people look for.

I know when I prepare for my talks, for example, one thing I learned from a very, very good business mentor was not to use, for example, Powerpoint slides as a crutch.  The reason is that a lot of people want to have the cards and the books and the points, but the fact is if you’re speaking about something that you know about and that you’re passionate about, you know what you know what you know.  And so I think it’s important when people speak and connect and that, sure, you have some bullets and some slides that say “This is what I’m going to touch on”, but then everything else really comes on the fly, on the spot, from the heart.

Toni: When you go about it this way, what do you do to help explore the potential in others?

Jeremy: I think in this day and age, there’s a lot of media, a lot of technology, and people can sometimes get buried in just an onslaught of everything going on.  What I see a lot of is just, number one, is lack of belief.  It may be belief in higher power, it may be belief in oneself, but I think that’s the real key and the core that I start with other people, is helping them realize that there are so many gifts that every single person possesses.

I’ll just give the example in my life where when I started my journey, and I was extremely overweight and I was a depressed person, I said “You know, good things don’t happen to me.  I’m overweight, and there’s no way I’m ever going to be able to lose this weight; that’s something for other people.  Look at those fitness people.  They work out, but that’s not for me.”  There was just no belief.

I actually tried a million different diets.  I’ll tell you the craziest one that I did was this diet that I invented myself.  I just had no knowledge of nutrition and I said, “You know what I’m going to do?  I’m going to eat nothing but a can of pears every day.”

Toni: A can of pears?

Jeremy: A can of pears.

Toni: Okay.

Jeremy: That was the most ridiculous, insane diet in the world.  I did that for weeks and got frustrated, and I just couldn’t lose my weight.  I really thought that the solution was going to be finding the right diet, so I just kept trying this diet, that diet, 100 million things, and nothing worked.

It was amazing, because I ended up meeting an individual who had lost a lot of weight themselves and they were sharing their story with me.  It was Jeff Seidman.  He was one of the former Body For Life champions, so he was a big person in the fitness and the transformation arena.

So I went out and I met him and talked to him, and I realized “Wow, this is real.  It can actually happen.”  It was that belief that suddenly transformed things for me.  And so then when I set out and I started focusing on a program and a plan, because I believed that it could work, it did work, and I did change.

Then I said “Wow, so if it works just for something like losing weight, what about with business?  What about with learning new things?”  That’s where I really realized that it all starts really with that core kernel of belief.

So when I’m working with people and trying to pull out their inner power and to help inspire them to do the things that I know they deserve to do and can do, it really starts with focusing on that core belief and helping someone realize that “Yes, I can do this.  I can make these decisions.”

Probably one of the most important things for people to learn which was … it seems obvious, but it was amazing for me, is just that you can listen to your own thoughts and you can change the way you think.  So, when you have that little voice inside your head saying you can’t or you won’t or you shouldn’t, you can listen to that thought, or you can start ignoring that thought and you can replace it with a new thought.

I think people once realize that they’re in control of their own thoughts and their own inner dialogue and they start to change those thoughts of can’t with “I believe I can, and I will”, that amazing things can happen.

Toni: Thank you for that.  That’s really an awesome way to describe how what you went through helps others with exploring their own potential of what they can do, so thank you for that.

When you look for inspiration, what do you need to be inspired, Jeremy?

Jeremy: You know, there’s a few different things, and I think in this day and age it’s become almost politically incorrect for some people to express their beliefs and views, but I really think we operate on two levels.

We operate on sort of a day-to-day where we’re in the “mix of life” level, and there’s certainly lots of inspiration that we can find here.  There are stories of people who have just overcome great adversity.  I love reading biographies of individuals, especially people who came from an obscure background and just created something amazing.  I love learning about companies that went from average companies to grand enterprises and understanding all the dynamics and pieces.  I love things that cover conquests and courage and overcoming obstacles; all of those things are great.

I know that a lot of people listening to this may have been to a seminar and heard just an inspiring speaker and been just motivated and ran out feeling like “Man, I can take on the world and do everything.”  That’s great, and I think we need that daily in our lives.  We need to avoid the constant news network and all the things that we’re exposed to that are a negative and focus on that.  But I also think the second level and the important level where I feel inspiration from is my faith.

I have a very strong core of faith.  My family and I participate in our events together.  We’re a Christian family and we focus on our core Christian values, and that is truly the root of my inspiration, because I thank frankly if all that inspires you is contained within your life, then you’re only touching the surface.

I think there’s something greater, and when we tap into something that’s bigger than who we are and lasts longer than how long we’re going to be here on this planet, that that is a true source of inspiration that allows us to just overcome the day-to-day obstacles by realizing that there’s really something bigger than that for us.

Toni: And what do you do when you take all of this that inspires you on both levels that you’ve described?  Does it flow into helping you explore your own potential, or are there other things that you need to explore your own potential?

Jeremy: I definitely need things to explore my own potential.  I think, you know, it’s popular for people to say “Hey, I’ve got religion” or “I’m spiritual” or “I have this and that”, and I think it’s important for us to tap into that.  But we’re also here in this world where we’re slave to our five senses and the things that we do day to day, and I think we’re wired on a biological and a chemical level to overcome adversity.

I think that the biggest mistake that anyone can make is to take the happy path and to really avoid resistance, and this is easy and comfortable; and I think it’s very easy for people to get caught in what’s comfortable.

I know I had a major decision when I was younger.  I was, you know, with a crowd that was just not the right influence for me.  I was doing a lot of things that just weren’t healthy and weren’t right for my life, and I really had to pick up and move to a new state, and that was tough for me because I was leaving my hometown.  I was going out on my own.  I didn’t know anyone.

It was the hardest decision for me to make, but when I made that, things started changing in my life.  I met my wife the first week that I moved to Atlanta, and I started pursing my own business.  And so what I found in my life is that I need constant challenge, and that the way I continue to inspire and grow is by continuing to seek those opportunities that I’m afraid of, because it’s where the fear is that really is the opportunity to become inspired and to shine and really step into what I think we’re intended to do here.

Toni: Well, you have put this beautifully with what you’ve been through even just personally with your own challenges and coming out of the other end of that, to what inspires you but also to not be afraid of the fear, but to almost seek opportunities from that fear.  And I can imagine how that then translates into how you help others to frame their own fear so that they can work towards their own potential based on your experience.  I would imagine that’s pretty powerful.

Jeremy: It’s very powerful and I mean, I think the fundamental thing for people to realize is that fear is not real.  It either comes from something happened in my past that was painful and I don’t want to repeat, but you can learn from that and have the power not to repeat it.  Or it comes from the unknown, but the unknown is just … it’s simply not real.

The “what if” gets us nowhere.  It’s embracing that and understanding how to deal and react that really causes the catalyst for change and where we discover potentials that we just never knew existed within us.

Toni: Well, Jeremy, I can’t thank you enough for the information that you have given, the personal inspiration that you have described in this interview.  I know that the people who are coming to the Get Inspired! Project will benefit greatly from your interview, and I thank you on behalf of the Project team for your time today and what you’ve given us, truly.

Jeremy: Thank you.  I appreciate the opportunity, and I’m excited about the Project and what it can do for people.

Toni: Thank you, Jeremy, take care of yourself, and I hope that our paths cross again soon.

Jeremy: Absolutely.  Thank you.

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For more information about Jeremy Likness:  csharperimage.jeremylikness.com, jeremy@jeremylikness.com

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